Day 19. These last few days seem the hardest. Even though the kids and I have kept busy with outings and visits, with still more planned between now and Sunday, I’m just plain old worn out. If this were a marathon (and by the way, I am not, nor do I ever see myself being, a runner), I’d be nearing the finish line, wondering if I could make it to the end. Sometimes I think I don’t have the mental toughness for such endurance.
When my husband (then my fiance) was in Iraq, I thought of our relationship in terms of a huge rubber band. Each of us was standing on one side of it, and the farther apart we were geographically, the more our relationship was stretched. Sometimes it seemed like it was so tight it was going to snap. But we held on and eventually, we came back together, stretched but tighter somehow.
I’m feeling stretched again. I’m glad I don’t have to go on this way indefinitely. I’m desperately hanging on for Sunday, hoping I won’t be too exhausted to enjoy being together.
Hoping, too, that once again, our relationship will be stronger because we were stretched.
I think that every hard, painful and seemingly impossible thing that we go through gives us a choice to become stronger people, stronger in the Lord and stronger in our relationships with our significant others. However, I’m sure that when you two finally get to see each other it’ll be relief, love and a million other things in the first look, touch and everything else and I really appreciate the strength you have that you can make it this long without his physical presence 🙂
I completely agree with Charlotte. You are an outstanding woman of God, and I have seen you leap over hurdles that only God could guide you through. I feel like the best thing to do when we find ourselves enduring a tough time, is to reach out and embrace each moment. God gives us those trials for a reason, and he gives us the strength to endure them. To be stretched is a God-given chance to bounce back even tighter than you were before. I feel like Jon and I are continually being stretched, but I have faith that God is going to bring us back together, closer and tighter than before.