Round 2

This week our family got a healthy dose of "Round 2"... continuing from last week's drama. Round 2 didn't bring a flooded kitchen or blown light. It brought the stomach flu!! We allllllllllll had it. All week. Tuesday night was so bad that at 1am I had to call Rick at 1:30am and ask him to come help. He wasn't thrilled to be woken up in the middle of the night but he saw how bad things were when he got to the house. There was no way I could take care of all of the sick kids while getting sick myself. It was a rough week but we survived it. And Rick stayed 2 nights to help us through.

The highlight of the week came on Monday and the low point hit last night. The stomach flu was just the all-consuming middle portion of our week. Monday night Rick sent me a text message with some of the sweetest words... some of the most sincere words I've heard from him in a long time. He said he missed me, and somedays he even thought he missed me as much as I miss him. That might not sound like a big deal to most wives but to me it was sooooooo HUGE. One of my deepest hurts the past 10 years has been that my husband never misses me. I miss him the moment that he walks out the door and he doesn't miss me after months of being gone. He's always pleaded that it's "normal" for a man to not miss his wife and I've always argued that it's not. It's hard not to feel like there's something terribly awful about you when your own husband doesn't ever miss you. So, to hear my husband voluntarily offer up that he misses me.... well, that did WONDERS to my self-esteem. And it felt very soothing to my heart. Again... another glimmer of hope. Another step forward. Another brick added to our new foundation.

The low point, as I mentioned, hit last night. Rick got a voice mail from Amy, a friend he was in LPN school with at Walter Reed in DC. Amy had married his good friend Kenny, who was also in that class. Amy was calling to tell Rick that Kenny had been killed. Not in Iraq, tho he had seen combat 8 times. He was murdered during a mugging at his apartment complex in DC. This hit Rick so hard. I'm praying that God will use this as sort of a wake up call for Rick.... a reminder that life is so short... a time for him to re-evaluate what is important in life... what's worth dying for and what's worth living for.