Heading Home

Nearly every time we walk out the doors of a plane, we are arriving home - regardless of destination.

We find ourselves one week away from our return "home" to Honduras. Home has been an ethereal but dearly-treasured concept for us over these past few years. Indeed home is where the heart is. As it turns out however, our hearts are not tied off to any particular geographical anchor. It would seem that in our case, our hearts are tied to family - yet another slippery concept that we have already spoken to, but will elaborate upon yet again as we prepare once again to cross the threshold of our house in Las Lomitas with another baby girl.

At our most basic level, Stacey, Kaleb, Eliana and Alida are family, which ,geographically-speaking, is a moving target that could be found anywhere in North America at any given point. Since Stacey and I were married in 2009, we quickly discovered that home is wherever the suitcase and the sweetheart happen to be. We have been very blessed to walk a difficult, exhausting road with a worthy partner. The long, hot, muddy days are cooled off in the refreshing company and conversation with the other. Whether that be sipping something and looking at one other in our living room hammock in Las Lomitas, or at the quiet basement table of Gary and Marilyn's house in Bellbrook is largely irrelevant. The only truly unbearable times are those spent away from one another. We are one another's foundation in the "home" of our wayfaring life. The addition of Alida and Eliana has simultaneously complicated and enriched our mobile existence. Sinking their sticky little fingers into that same foundational concrete, they've left permanent handprints and heartbeats in our understanding of home.

The concept of "home as family" is extended to blood relatives scattered from the Great Plains to the Eastern Seaboard. Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, grandparents and parents in North Dakota, Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, each with their own homes, weave in and our of our journey as we manage to sporadically pass time together as we are able.

Muddying the matter even further are those family members that bear different last names and nationalities - people that have joined us in love on our journey, sharing their own houses, resources, hearts, and time. On both sides of the border, our family waits for us with open arms, grinning hearts, and those words on their lips... "Welcome home... bienvenidos a casa." Each and every time that we hear it, regardless of where feet, cars, and, airplanes may have carried us between our last encounter, we recognize the irony, and the truth of the statement.

We have been richly blessed to have such an extensive family - and by association, such a large home. As we now return to our southern home, we mourn the distance that will open up once again between us and those in northerly latitudes; simultaneously, we eagerly anticipate our reunion with those that await us even now in the tropics. We have already begun the sad and difficult process of" goodbye," but thankfully, on the other side, there is a "bienvenido."

A profound thank-you to all who have stayed in touch with, reached out, prayed for, visited, or wrote us over the years. Life in a constant state of flux is not always easy, but your engagement, encouragement, love and friendship are a sustaining strength in our lives.

Please continue to pray for us as we return to Honduras with a cranky baby. Daily life there takes significantly more energy - a resource that Eliana all by herself is bound and determined to use up. Stay in touch as you are able, and until we see one another again,

Grace and peace to you and yours.