Exceedingly Abundantly Beyond

This morning I woke up to news articles about the Marines lost at sea.  The articles said that the search and rescue efforts have concluded and the official status for all five Marines has been changed to deceased.  Our friend, Daniel, is one of those Marines. In visiting with his parents last Saturday night, Duane asked that if I had any stories about Daniel, could I write it down and share it with them.  Derick and I knew Daniel mostly from the church bike trip that we all rode together.  Daniel and I rode together three times and Derick was with us 2 of those 3 years.   Three hundred miles on bicycles from Tremont, IL to the eastern side of Lake Michigan, and then a skeleton crew from Lake Michigan to just outside Ann Arbor, MI.  I felt like Derick and I were able to form a little bit of a bond with some of the young guys during that trip.  Especially with Daniel.  I told Derick last night, I remember riding with Daniel more than I...

Saturday night, I had a conversation with Derick.  I have been amazed at this deployment so far, that neither of us has been angry or resentful at the other person. Not at all!  Even on those days that I felt frozen in my tracks, clueless when it came to preparations. Sure, there were things that we could have done for each other to make life easier for this separation.  But, so far, we seem to have taken it all in stride. This is the fourth time Derick has been gone for an extended period of time.  And by extended, I mean more than 3 or 4 weeks.  The shortest time that he was gone, has been 5 months for boot camp and A school.  The longest was his deployment to Afghanistan for 11 months. This time he'll be gone for about 10 months.  Or at least that's what his orders say.  His deployments have never actually ended up the same as what the original orders say.  Its like waiting on a baby to be born on the due date... its pretty...

This week has been so busy. Not just busy, but inconvenient. Everyone has had to make adjustments. The washer is broken. I couldn’t even consider fixing it until now. And a broken washer seems to affect everything! But the Lord always takes care of us. And this week was no different. Thursday was a good example of that. I woke up with a sense of dread, an emptiness. And an acute awareness that Derick is not here. Of course I am aware of his absence everyday, but Thursday was different. Thursday I could physically feel his absence. My alarm sounds before the sunrise no matter the time of year. My dogs are whining and the coffee is brewing every morning, without fail, at a time that doesn’t exist in my family’s world. Mostly because I’ve discovered over the years, I’m just nicer to my kids if I’m up and going before them. Getting them out the door on Thursday, was the easy part. Nothing extraordinary. Their clothes were actually clean, in spite of my broken washer. The kids wen...