{"id":345,"date":"2008-08-03T08:34:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=345"},"modified":"2008-08-03T08:34:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T13:34:00","slug":"sunday-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren’s home photo this week – a nice soft summer sunset taken from our front porch.\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230284642341462002\"<\/a>People always ask us what it is like for us to have a child in Iraq. I don’t blame them for being curious but it is a difficult question to answer. To begin with, we are very fortunate in that Lauren’s location is fairly safe. There are troops in far more danger and events, for the most part, are much calmer there than probably they have been since the start of the war. <\/p>\n

She is there by choice – she and Steve decided that when her active enlistment ended she would join the Reserves, knowing full well that most reservists end up being activated these days. Lauren, like many troops, believes in what she is doing there. I know it is not easy for her. Not easy to be away from her husband. Not easy to be so far from home. Not easy to see some of what she will see. <\/p>\n

Over all of that though is the belief she and Steve and our family has that she is in God’s hands. And believing as we do is a very “hands-on” God, that is not a bad place to be. There is no safe place in this physical world. Shocking and violent things happen to people and to their children every day. We aren’t immune from the effects of living in a fallen world, no matter what our location. <\/p>\n

I do not dwell in my mind on where she is. I don’t mean that I pretend she is home in Georgia or living up the road in a rose covered cottage. I just mean that I don’t let the idea of her location become an overwhelming thing to me. I pray for her numerous times every day. She calls about once a week, we chat in IMs, email each other and if we can get it to work, we use the web cams to talk. I look forward to the updates on her blog<\/a>. And every day I pray Psalm 91 over her. You can click here<\/a> if you don’t already know why.<\/p>\n

And every Sunday, she gets a photo of something I know she would love to see from here at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren’s home photo this week – a nice soft summer sunset taken from our front porch.People always ask us what it is like for us to have a child in Iraq. I don’t blame them for being curious but it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}