Long way Home

The Long Way Home

The road was quiet that evening, the kind of stillness that makes you think the world is holding its breath. Jess had been driving for hours, chasing the sun as it melted behind the Tennessee hills. Her GPS kept trying to reroute her to the highway, but she ignored it. She needed this road—the long way home.

It wasn’t just about getting back. It was about remembering who she was before the detours, before the heartbreak, before life got heavy. Every curve in that old country road held a memory: laughter spilling out of open windows, the smell of honeysuckle in June, the sound of her dad singing along to the radio.

She passed the bridge where she used to stop and toss rocks into the creek. She slowed down near the churchyard where her mom’s voice once echoed in the choir. For the first time in a long time, she let herself smile.

The long way home wasn’t about distance—it was about healing. Each mile peeled away another layer of worry, another weight she’d been carrying too long.

When she finally pulled into the driveway of her childhood home, she didn’t see the cracks in the paint or the weeds in the yard. She saw home—the place that had waited for her, no matter how far she’d gone.

Sometimes, she realized, the long way home is exactly the road your heart needs to take