This day

I was wide awake at 4:00am this morning.  My big, rugged man that is usually beside me to make me feel safe, to reach out to and touch and take the ever present feeling of loneliness away, is ever absent.  Even though we talked face to face via Skype for almost two hours last night, the void he has left is palpable.  

Tears come easily morning, noon, and night.  They come when I let myself feel how much I love and miss him and rather than push those feelings down, I let them come.  I let myself cry and miss him and grieve as I feel all that is changing and unraveling.  All that we are both losing and gaining in this.  

I've decided there is strength in tears instead of pretending that I can handle all of this.  Because I can't handle it.  I don't want to toughen up and swallow my tears away and act as though I've got this.  I'm weak and needy, and that's okay.  I can live and breathe and feel and cry out to God through it. 

This man - the one I wanted to give up on and quit only a year ago - I thought I knew how much I loved him.  I thought I knew what it meant to need him and want for him.  But the past week has felt like an eternity and yet we have only just begun this season.  Our time apart is still early and there are many more days and weeks and perhaps months to come where I must live day-to-day through phone calls and text messages and computer screens.  

If anything, the last week has shown me that I love him and want him and need him far more than I thought I did.  That he is more to me than someone I share my bed with, whose name is next to mine on our checkbook, or some cute guy that gave me an impossibly gorgeous diamond ring.  We do life together and at the moment, how we're doing life together doesn't feel very togetherish. 

It's interesting how absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  When one of the greatest gifts you've ever been given isn't in front of you every single day, you begin to appreciate and remember more of who they are and why you love them so much.   He really is an extraordinary man - with all of his faults and flaws, he is still my beloved.

Everything in me - my heart, my body, my mind - all of it, aches for him and I find myself wanting to speed up life so that we can be together again.  Not just as a family, but as one - the one he and I make as two.  

I see the obstacles that stand in our way and they feel big.  Will our home sell?  Will we find a place to live in North Dakota, crowded by all of the business that has boomed up there?    How many more lonely days and sleepless nights and reaching for my man who isn't there?  

I spin and I spin.

And will I be able to say goodbye to my family and my friends and a city and lifestyle I have known for these thirty-two years without falling to pieces?  Can I really do this?   Is the love we share great enough to leave all of these other loves behind? 

I spin and I spin again.

Then I breathe deep.  I remember that it's just this day - this very one, where I still go to work and care for Tommy and care for myself and the child inside of me.  This day, where I reside in Texas and enjoy February's spring and sunshine filled skies.  This day where I miss my husband and live with this ache - this day, this gift, this is where I am.