It's not just the yard work.

I would not want anyone to get the wrong impression. I definitely miss my husband more often than when I mow the grass.

I miss him when the car or truck need something done to them.

I miss him when sink clogs or the disposal messes up and needs reset.

I miss him when the kids are acting up and I am ready to kill them. Or just want to let daddy handle the discipline for a while.

I miss him when a doctor or a dentist or a school psychologist tells me my kid has abnormal brain activity or a disc out of place or needs medication or could have a learning disability or could have seizures or may just be dehydrated or may not pass fifth grade or may need surgery or may need to wait on medication right now so we will wait and see. Or anything else that has happened with B in the last 3 months.

I miss him when kids wake up puking in the middle of the night.

I miss him when we have to make ER visits. Or even when kids think they might be broken and dying but are fine. And when they each need surgery at 6am and we have no childcare.

I miss him when the kids do crazy things. Or say funny things. Or learn new things. Or are just outside trying to shoot birds with a BB gun or build forts with leftover wood or hunt wild animals that wander into the yard or rig up swings by themselves. And when they ask hard questions.

I miss him when I am tired. I miss him when I am not tired.

I miss him when we go to church.

I miss him every time I cook dinner. I miss him every time I bake sweets. I miss him every time I make gravy and biscuits.

I miss him every night when I turn on the security alarm before I go to bed. I would not be doing that if he were here.

I miss him every morning when I make my bed and only my side is messed up.

Yes, I miss him all the time. I miss him doing things I don’t like to do or can’t do. I miss sharing all of the things that go with raising our children together and sharing all the things they do. I miss cooking for him and watching TV with him. I miss sleeping with him and hearing him breathing in the bed next to me at night.

I have never written about how hard deployments are. I hate to complain. I know things could be worse. I know women going through this for the third or fourth time. I married Luke knowing that the military is something he always wanted to do. I knew deployments were part of that and that is just how it is. I still don’t like it and wish he would never have to do it again. I know he does not like being away from us either.

I have had people tell me I am strong. People say they could never do what I do. It isn’t easy. I don’t feel strong. I don’t know how anyone who does not have God does it. The only strength I have comes from Him. The only way I have been able to make it through the last year has been by trusting God. The first time Luke was deployed it was unbelievably hard (3 kids ages 5, 3, and under 1). But this time is hard in different ways, the worst is knowing things about “over there” that I was naive about the first time.

The first few weeks he was gone I realized something about faith that has gotten me through the last 12 months. I even wrote it down and I found it a few days ago:

Faith is not about God answering my prayers or doing what I want. Faith is believing God will do all things for my good. His will is perfect, not mine. I have to submit to His will and trust Him in all things.

That can be very hard. It even scares me to type this while Luke is still gone. I will be so grateful when he is back home, helping me, doing things for me, doing things with me, sharing things with me, being here for me, and just being with me. I just pray that God’s will is that Luke would not have to leave us for this long ever again. I KNOW without a doubt that God put us together and meant for us to be together. Now I am just waiting for next month when we will be back together.

It's not just the yard work. I love that man.