Home is Where the Heart Is

I am going to set this page up today, but don't know where it will lead me.  I have been up all night...a few nod-offs watching tv and babysitting Ginger, our yellow lab, who has taken ill.  Lots of vomiting yesterday.  And this morning we had more when she got rid of the water I'd given her.  She is not eating now.  I have made her some rice broth, but she only took about two tablespoons before saying she'd had enough.
So I'm tired and worried and heartsick.  My FB post explains more.  I don't feel like going into it all again.

That said, I'm going to try to pull myself together and get the First Spiritual Journey Thursday link up ready at the very least.  Then I hope to take a nap while my husband figures out if he is heading to the vet with Ginger, or we are riding it out a bit longer.

This was to be a "heartwarming" post today.  And I am going to try to remember what I had in mind and get my focus back there.

Essentially, I was thinking of how no matter where you are, being with family and with those people that you hold dear in your heart constitutes being "home".
I have had many homes in my lifetime, both as a child and when married.  We are yet again embarking on making a new place a home.  We have a good start.  We are with our daughter and two grandchildren.  But then we left our old home where our son lived.  So part of my heart still lies there.  My brothers and sisters are spread out over the United States now, as well as their children.  My heart has had to stretch to encompass lots of places.  I've come to realize that home is not where the heart is in this sense.  It can't be.  I have too many places to call home.  My heart is getting stretched too thin.  I get sad thinking just thinking about it.

I've discovered that it has to mean, and that I have to focus on the "other" meaning of home and heart.

Matthew 6: 20-21
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I am laying up treasures in heaven.  And that is where my home is.  And if that is where my home is...that is also where my heart must be.  It's a home I have not yet moved into perhaps, but it is there and real nonetheless.

For now, my verse that I must keep in mind as I am growing a new, on Earth home and repotting my heart in its new location is:

Philippians 4:11
11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

This is just another stepping stone.  And it is ALL good.

Home is Where the Heart Is

Treasures in heaven
Are waiting for me
Treasures in store
That I cannot see
But someday my home
Will be in the clouds
I don't know just how
But I'll join the crowds
Of family and friends
Who've gone on before
And that is the home
That my heart will adore.
Until then I'll wait
With feet firmly set
For it isn't my time
To be with them yet.

by Donna JT Smith, Feb. 6, 2019 (I had a bit of a poem in my after all.)

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Been up well over 24 hours now.  I have to go check on Ginger, and see if she will take a bit more rice broth.  And I should probably wake up my husband, who went to bed at 5 am, and take my turn at getting some rest.  I'll post somewhere later to update Ginger's state* **.

* Update - Ginger went to the vet.  Had an ultrasound, and they didn't find any obstructions.  She is home again, with NO surgery - yay!  But she doesn't seem any different.  Won't eat her rice.  Just wants water.  I am only giving her a little at a time.  So far it seems that she just stores it to get rid of in HUGE amounts all at once.  I've been fairly successful at limiting the vomiting to the kitchen vinyl floor, but not always able to keep it from going under the refrigerator...  We will cook her some chicken tonight and see what she does with that.  Good news is ultrasound was $300.  Surgery would have been $3000+.  We could still end up there, but I don't think so.

** Second Update - Ginger went to the vet again this morning (Thurs.) as she was still doing very poorly, and got a free second ultrasound.  It was definitive this time.  There is an obstruction that requires surgery for removal. She is having today.
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