You Can Never Go Back… Except to Him

I’ve long believed that you can never truly go back.

That idea was born when I left England for America. It was only supposed to be a two-year assignment, but two years became a lifetime. In those early years, I would occasionally return on business trips. But each time I did, I found the place I had once called home felt… different.

Not just changed—but distant. Not just unfamiliar—but foreign.

It wasn’t just England that had changed – I had changed.
And strangely, the changes in me and the changes in the place I left behind always seemed to move in opposite directions.

That’s when I began to understand something: we can remember a place, a time, or a relationship with fondness… but we can never truly return to it. Time keeps moving, and so do we.

Even vacations have taught me this. A trip that once brought joy, if revisited, rarely carries the same magic. The light has shifted. The people are different. I’m different. The memory becomes something to honor, not to recreate.

And in relationships, it’s the same. I’ve looked back with gratitude on the good moments. But I’ve also learned the hard truth—when you try to return, it’s not the good that greets you. It’s the very things that caused the separation. They come into sharp focus, as if waiting there all along.

You really can’t go back.
Not to the past.
Not to who you once were.
Not even to how things once felt.

But there is one exception.

The one place where the past doesn’t haunt and the future doesn’t threaten.
The one constant in a world that never stops shifting.
The one who never changes, yet always welcomes change in us.

In Christ, I have found a place where I can always return.

He doesn’t change.
He doesn’t grow distant or unfamiliar.
And when I’ve drifted, stumbled, or outright walked away—He doesn’t lock the door behind me.
He waits. He watches. He welcomes.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” —Hebrews 13:8

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son…” —Luke 15:20

That’s the difference.

In Christ, I don’t go back to something that was.
I come home to something that still is.

I don’t have to relive the past.
I don’t have to pretend I never left.
I just have to turn toward Him—and He meets me there.

He is the only place I’ve found where returning doesn’t bring regret…
It brings restoration.

So no, I can’t go back—not to the country I left, not to the years behind me, and not to the relationships that were never meant to carry me forward.

But I can come back to Him.
And that is enough.
That is everything.