Eight Weeks

I just walked in from saying goodbye to David.

I can’t tell you how weird it is to know that I won’t see him again for eight-nine more weeks. And while we know that in the military world eight weeks is nothing, in the Callie-David world, eight weeks seems next to impossible.

We’ve had an amazing weekend of seeing good friends and spending time with family. And here is what I am learning from all of this so far:

-We have been blessed with such an amazing group of people who love us. David said he was having thoughts of “Why would I ever take a job that would make me leave these people?!”, but it’s amazing to know that “these people” will pray for us, visit us, call us, write… We love you guys.

-I don’t think I could handle a minute of this without God. I think I’d be sitting here crying and miserable if I didn’t know that there was a God who was bigger than eight weeks and who would comfort us, protect David, and get us through this.

-David is the most amazing man ever. We were talking to some family friends the other day, and they were telling us how they’d been married over thirty years and that they dated since high school. The husband said, in all seriousness, “We’re one of the greatest love stories of all time”. How great is that?! So David and I decided to go ahead and claim that too. And I think it’s true.

-We take our marriage for granted. I want to challenge all of you to really spend some time appreciating hugging and cuddling and watching TV together- everything.

We’ve decided that when David arrives in Chicago today (when he gets to make his last phone call), we’ll talk on the phone and then hang up and be happy. We can be sad until then, but after the phone call, we’re going to look to the positives of the next eight weeks.

Now I’m off to read the letter he left for me… ahhhh….