And It Begins

My love leaves in the morning. Orders were issued last week. He’ll be home in December. I don’t feel anything at all. Just numb. I’m sure it will crash over me when I come home from the airport in the morning and the house is empty. No husband. No kids, at least most days. Just me, and Bob the cat. 

I had a flare the day before yesterday. A “flare” means I chill and ache all over. It means every effort is hard and I don’t want to do anything. Dry my hair. Lift my backpack. And yet the longer I don’t move, the more it hurts, so I pace, and rock, and sleep nil, and pop Tylenol over the other four pills I take every day to try to take the edge off. Fortunately it didn’t last long. I felt like my muscles were oozing the sad my heart is refusing to board.

And honestly, I know I’ve been weird about it all. The deployment. My health. I want people to know so they can cut me some slack, but I don’t really want to talk about it or appear weak in front of others. I want to vomit it out on some quiet blank page and let cyberspace swallow the shock without my having to deal with other people’s words or emotions about it. I don’t want to know you’re praying for us; just do it. I don’t want to feel like I need to comfort you in your sympathy for me. I’m working hard enough to stave off my own emotions; I can’t handle anybody else’s right now. Not about this.

And to stave off my fears for what this experience will do to Patrick, I am trying to stay positive. I need others to stay positive with me. He is going to be in a part of the world he has never seen before. He will experience the landscape and the culture and the simple living he craves. The camp bumps right up to the Gulf of Aden. The weather is rather stable. It will be in the seventies at night and eighties by day. He will have unlimited access to the sunshine I crave. He will make friends with people who share his experience, and have space for reading, and music, and working toward another promotion. He will have a smorgasbord of healthy food laid out before him three times a day. His meals and dishes and laundry and trash will magically disappear and reappear. And he will be doing powerful ministry there. Separations like these tend to remind people of what really matters. When we’re spoiled we tend to let really stupid things affect our relationships and emotions. Things like dirty dishes in the sink when the dishwasher is empty, and the empty peanut butter jar deceitfully squatting in the cabinet. Those things just mean there is somebody in your life whose presence you get to take for granted. The absence of these things just means you’re alone.

But then I go out visiting my little old widows and widowers, and I see the way they survive. Systems they create so they can reach the bread and ration the butter to make the toast. Leaving laundry day otherwise unplanned because that one or two loads will utterly wear them out. They budget to the dime their groceries and prescriptions, and then they send me out the door with the wave of a crippled hand from their recliner, my head humbly hanging with a check for the church in my bag and a belated Christmas gift in my wallet. My goodness. What generous, lovely, life-giving people they are. And when I leave they will return to the norm that has no end. They will be utterly alone for most hours and days, sitting in that chair, reflecting on the good ol’ days of peanut butter and dirty dishes. If you ever want to peer into the face of God, then visit these hidden among us. Their little homes and apartments are as holy as a manger bed.

I really am okay. This is just a little bump against the reset button. Somehow Patrick and I will come out of this better people, better lovers, better parents, better pastors. The long months will provide the discipline of mindful living as we make mental recordings throughout each day of what we’ll share in letters. This will do good things for us. And my, what a wonderful present Christmas will bring this year.