LYRICS:

looked around as a tear left my eye
I had to say goodbye and leave
didn't know I was trying to find
what was right in front of me

no I didn't say it, but you could read on my face
I was so scared to leave
that's when my dad cuffed me
said how much he loved me,
"son, listen real carefully"

he said "Don't look back
you will only be deceived
what you thought that you had
wasn't quite what it seemed
and all the things that you'll miss
aren't a matter of geography
but what you tasted is right there waiting
the hope of things not yet received"

I still slow down when I pass her house
as if I might see her out in the yard
we know she's gone, but our hearts won't listen
didn't know we could miss her this hard

before she passed we never thought to ask
"do the days that we share have an end?"
when it gets too much, I swear I feel her touch
or she'll whisper to me in the wind

She'll say "don't look back
...old friend...
you will only be deceived
what you thought that you had
wasn't quite what it seemed
and those things that you miss
had nothing to do with me
but what we tasted is right there waiting
the hope of things not yet received"

can't deny it, I can't fight it, no
the truth is too strong
this time and this place I'm in
ain't where I belong
so I'm down on my knees
begging, "Jesus, please
tell me where do I go?"

He says "don't look back
...beloved...
you will only be deceived
what you swore that you had
were just traces of Me
and those things that you miss
can only be found in Me
that homesick you're feeling
only I can heal it
so come to me now and believe
that homesick you're feeling
only I can heal it
so come to Me now and believe"

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”


― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

(BACKGROUND VOCALS DURING QUOTE:
we could stay out on your front porch
or go park by the lake
if I could just see you
I think you know what I'd say
I'm missing you now
still wishing you were here with me
taking us back
to where we used to be)