Zero Week is almost over!

Whew... by the grace of God and through His strength alone we have almost made it through our first week (okay, half a week, but feels like eternity) without Kirby.  Weird is the only word I have to describe it.  It's weird to go to bed at night alone and wake up five hundred times and realize that you're still alone.  It's weird to get up alone in the morning, and to be responsible for everything on your own.  It's weird to go through the day and have no idea what or how he's doing.  It's weird to get busy and remember something you want to share with him, only to be snapped back into the reality that you can't just pick up the phone and call or text.  Being apart is hard enough, but this no contact at all is a whole different game.

Kirby did get to make his one phone call last night, and it was the worst call of my life.  He didn't even sound like my husband... sounded so drained and defeated, and then within seconds was overcome with emotions.  Even typing it now hurts my heart in a way I can't comprehend.  The worst of it was that I could hear his superiors shouting at him in the background, and he had to drop the phone before I could even utter a word of reassurance.  Needless to say, it was a rough night here.  That was the most helpless I had ever felt.  I wanted so badly to be able to call him later and just hear if he was okay, but there is no way to do that.  So I did all I knew to do... I prayed, and I got all of my prayer-warrior friends to pray. 

Fortunately, despite my feeling of helplessness and my own defeated spirit, God heard those prayers and answered.  I got up this morning and was just overwhelmed by a calm that I haven't felt in a few weeks.  There was this incredible sense of peace, and I woke up just knowing that everything is fine... such a God-thing.  When we give up on ourselves and give ourselves to Him, He fulfills His promises.  He fills us with His peace, His strength, and His grace, and when we allow that to happen, it is the most amazing feeling.

Now, that's not to say that I'm not still upset, and I have no idea how Kirby is feeling right at this moment.  I'm trusting that God has filled him in the same way.  I still have those moments of weirdness, and sadness, and I still have two blue-eyed beauties who miss their daddy with every fiber of their being.  We all do.  There's nothing quite as hard as holding your seven-year-old as she cries herself to sleep because she just wants to see her daddy, or trying to explain to a three-year-old that no, we can't just call him and tell him goodnight, and he won't be home tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day.  But I know that God will pull us through this, and that He is going to strengthen our family as a result of this experience.  So, woo-hoo for surviving "zero week"!