we're heading home

Photo credit: Emma Penning

We could never have dreamed that God would have lead us through a season of four years in a busy, bustling peninsular in southeast Asia. He has given us the ability to endure some amazing highs and significant lows and we are thankful for it all.

It has been a bittersweet realization that our season living and teaching abroad in South Korea is now starting to wrap up and come to an end. The focus gradually shifting to finishing strong and returning to our homeland.

As I pause to acknowledge the season we are in and share it with you,  I know fully that the realization of how we have changed and what we will take away from this experience will become 'real' as we make sense of our next steps. We already recognise that we have learned lessons here in Korea we would never have learned back at home and how our little New Zealand viewpoints have been melded and stretched. We are so grateful. There is something very unique and poignant about living in an expat community; friends become family and your identity is shaped even more so by what you carry inside of you and is mixed with what you meet along the road.

We are thrilled to settle back home and see our little boy gain strong roots in his kiwi identity. Drawing closer to our extended family and friends. Initially, of course the unsettling feeling envelopes and you think, how can we do this?!; it has been one of the most overwhelming things to look ahead into this year and to be met with question marks staring back at you.

But with my Hubby's super awesomeness, he has secured a permanent position at a local area school and we start back at the end of July. For the next six months I plan to transition with Isaiah and initially pick up teaching assignments where available. I don't know where I fit yet and would like to continue to develop in the educational leadership field somewhere. That's one question mark I am accepting right now. I am learning that question marks are also possibilities.

There are still the unknowns and adjustments and 'Oh can you imagines', the thrills of forgotten comforts. We sure will bleed some as we leave this place where lifelong friendships have been forged, sisters/brothers, and made memories that will last forever.

So, very hard.

But so right.