How Life Is

So, Jonathan has now been gone about 5 days, plus a few more hours. It can be frustrating and wonderful thinking of the time that's passed. Sometimes I can have a positive outlook, thinking that 5 days is 1/14th of our time. And others I can get discouraged because it's not even been a week. Yet one week will be 1/10th of the way.... So, I just have to pray every morning for perspective and strength, for both Jonathan and me. True to form, sometimes we have different emotional trigger-points. For example, nighttime is my hard time. I am alone, done with work, and just hating being alone in the dark. Yet in the morning I get fresh perspective with a quiet time, I feel like there's one less day in the countdown, I get to make myself some yummy coffee, and I get to look forward to calls/emails/webcam with Jonathan that day. He is opposite. At night he feels he has completed one more day of deployment, he is one day closer to it being over, and he gets to spend some easy hours sleeping. Morning he has a whole work-load in front of him of some long days and he feels far from the goal of 70ish days. So we can help one another and pray when the other is weakest and we are strongest. Even at this distance we can help each other bear this load.

We had such a precious thing happen with Baby Girl before he was deployed. When I first started feelings flutters I could identify in the 15 week mark, I told Jonathan. He then replied, "I can't wait to feel them myself before I deploy." I basically let him know this was near to impossible, as at the time they were so tiny and almost unfeelable, and only by me because they were hitting organs and parts inside. We never said another word about it. Then the morning he was to leave, we were lieing down on the couch and I had my shirt up to show my belly. We were just laying together and talking, when I felt a sharp kick in my left upper-belly. I realized it as a swift kick. I pointed it out to him and Baby Girl gave two sharp visible kicks right after. It was truly amazing. It was as if she were just saying her little good-bye to her Daddy. I couldn't belive it. I have not seen a kick since then, though I have felt them at times, so that stands out as something really special for him.

We have been really surprised and our spirits so lifted at our ability to webcam where he is!!! Last time internet there was really restircted and difficult to obtain for long at all. Now? There are a few different public areas with wi-fi, so we have been able to webcam every day he's not been flying. We even got 2 hours one day, plus our daily emails!!! So that is a kindness of the Lord we never thought really possible. It has lifted our spirits more than words could express by having face-to-face unhurried conversations. Last time, we just got 15 minute calls every other day or so, and believe me, when you try to put 2 days worth of our lives into 15 minutes, you just end up putting on a brave face and keeping it rather surface because you just want to keep your spirits up. We ended up with much deeper communication though email, which was fine, but we missed that real-time conversation. What a blessing skype has been!

As we speak, I am in Tennessee, 4 hours from my house, staying in my sister Crystal's apartment/dorm here at Lee University. It's an easy drive for me, and I wanted to visit her (I did that last time too). It's been SO good being with a family member, and she always makes me feel welcome. I was going to leave today (Sunday), but she really wanted me another day, and there's no reason I can't work here while she goes to school tomorrow, if just to give us more time together.

So for now I'll close this out with a cute picture I took at 18 weeks. I haven't gotten a 19 week belly shot in, but Baby Girl has had a growth spurt, or just really moved to the front of my belly now. Days ago I could lie down and my stomach was flat so you couldn't tell I was pregnant. All of a sudden she moved and there's no losing the belly now. :)