{"id":281,"date":"2024-02-01T00:58:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T05:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/?p=281"},"modified":"2024-02-01T00:59:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T05:59:36","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/2024\/02\/01\/home\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Where is Home Little Pip? This is a story about a penguin chick who needed to find her way back home, back to her parents.\u00a0 It is a story I have read to my children many times.\u00a0 The penguin asks various other animals, \u201c Where is home?\u201d But the home they describe is not the home that she knows.\u00a0 Oh how we can relate!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Home is a complicated and tricky topic for many like us who have lived outside their passport country for extended lengths.  This is always amplified during the days surrounding our international travels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is my passport country my home?  My children know we are Americans, but if you asked them where their home is, they would say that Thailand is home because that is where all of their things are, including their close friends.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is home the place of your birth?  In the case of my two youngest, that would make Thailand their home, but they have no privileges to stay when we no longer have permission (visa) to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is where I lay my head my home?  Well, considering we slept in 4 different places in the matter of 9 days during our transition back to Thailand that would complicate things.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some like the phrase, \u201cHome is where I am with you\u201d.  While it is a sweet sentiment, as we do love to be together as it provides safety and settling, I pray my children eventually find \u201chome\u201d outside of their relationship with Chris and I. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On December 30th, our family returned home? to our dog Snoopy, home? to the familiar noises of the birds<\/a> (and traffic), home? to our beds, home? to the ants, home? to the space we have worked to create over 13 years, home? to hugs and hellos from close friends, home? to both the teams and work that we enjoy, home? to our favorite Thai foods, home? to our normals.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also returned home? to all the memories from the last few weeks here: days of chaos, concern, and God\u2019s provisions in the first weeks of Chris\u2019s cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song, Christ the Lord is with Me<\/a> by Steffany Gretzinge shares the truth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have lived enough to know, anywhere with you is home\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this time of transition this is the truth we continue to remind ourselves of- both in our joy, and times that are palpably surreal that we are in fact back in Thailand: anywhere with you, Lord, is home.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been well over a month since we last wrote.  Thank you for your prayers as this was another significant transition for our kids; to leave family, school and new special friends in the US.  Our time of returning included our organization’s annual conference 2 days after our arrival, a rich time for all of us.  All of this mixed with unpacking, Emalene\u2019s birthday, jumping into the middle of the cross country season for all the kids, meetings for Chris, and starting a new semester of school (with no snow days, boohoo).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog will continue but less often than the fall of 2023, it will continue to update on Chris\u2019s cancer checks and our family\u2019s ministry journey as there is both inspiration and opportunity to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is common to see Thai people making use of spare land to grow little gardens. This is very close to our home, we have run by this countless times. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}