Yesterday was a day filled with emotions for me and my little family as we went to check up on two of my remaining sisters I still have left with me.

They have been in a lot of pain for months but found both doing better.

One had a fractured hip to be replaced from a fall and the other had a fractured heart from the death of the love of her life.

Jeanette, for the first time, was smiling when we entered her hospital room eating a bowl of her son’s gourmet cooked homemade soup.

Net has already served notice to all of us her projected stay at Walthall General is going to be cut short as she wants to return ASAP to her temporary home.

I say temporary because even though she and Preston have resided in the old Dillon home place now for 60 some years she will leave it for good one day.

If anybody could lay claim to being a homebody, it would be Preston and Jeanette Dillon.

They won’t be coming to visit you, so if you are going to see them, it will be in that old restored and remodeled home place I love so much.

But, this “stay put and not move around” couple are only living for now and the time being in their temporary home.

My other sister Dale was found smiling as well when we drove up to her residence down in Talley Town, my little girl went running to jump in her Auntie Dale’s arms.

With a fresh grave in sight of her front porch across Hwy. 26 that runs between her home fondly dubbed Little Blue and Talley’s Chapel church, she has been hurting a lot lately.

Almost a month ago, she said goodbye to a perfect husband and best friend, but for nine years this was her temporary home.

Ever since, she has been packing up to move to her new residence with one of her daughters out in hot Arizona, where she had lived for 40 something years before coming to Talley Town to marry Mayor Wayne Talley.

Soon, the quaint little cottage that once was her happy home will be vacated and sold to the highest bidder, and she will be living elsewhere — for the time being.

Like myself, she has had a lot of moves and, after a story book romance and marriage, is now learning how to be a widow.

It is not where she wanted to find herself to be, but it is what life has issued out to her and for the time being.

What comes to mind in my visits yesterday was this scripture:

“For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” Heb. 13; 14

For me, well it seems I have had more moves than a U-Haul, and at last count about 25 to be exact and only counting places I have resided for at least two months.

I started out in Tylertown, where I was birthed and old Dr. Harvey swatted my little rear to make me cry. I have been crying ever since in all these moves.

I have lived from the West Coast to the East Coast literally and many points in between.

The shortest stay has been as mentioned two months — the longest, 17 years — but yes, like the old country song Johnny Cash sang and made famous, of “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man.”

I remember one of the fine men helping me move my heavy furniture off of the moving van and into the church parsonage at Powell’s Grove. Mike McCloud said, “Bro. Dykes, I am helping you move in, but if you decide to leave us you will have to move out by yourself.”

He meant it because he wanted me to stay put and never leave him and was as good as his word. Five and a half years later, me and my boys packed me up and, like another song and singer Willie Wilson sang, we were “On the Road Again.”

Like the writer of Hebrews was saying, as much as we would love to think it, we have here no continuing city but seek one to come.

So, I find myself back where I started out from here at Tylertown 66 years later….for the time being.

But, this is not my final home or continuing city but I seek one to come.

Packed up, prayed up and ready to go up to my final home in the sky.

God bless you, and God bless America.

Mike Dykes is a pastor and story teller. He can be reached at angelsmannow@yahoo.com.