Day by day

We're making it through one day at a time. A long time ago I was a newlywed. It will be ten years in December. Holy cow!! I can hardly believe it myself when I think back over the past ten years we've had together. Somewhere along the way I gave my hubby a note. I used to do that a lot. Much more than I do today. Somehow family and work and careers got in the way of our road to happily ever after. We realized this the other day as hubby got ready to deploy. We were holding hands more and watching each. We were sleeping huddled together instead of in our separate corners. This note was a quote from a book a dear friend had given me, The Notebook. This was before it was glamorized on the big screen of Hollywood, back when Nicholas Sparks was just being discovered. Here is what I gave him:

"In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life."

I wish I had written the date on the note so I know when it was given. So as I look back on what was to come after this note, I'll not take him for granted. We lost a daughter after this note. She never made it into the world, but we mourned her as she if she had. We made it through life in the desert, our wilderness experience, out of which came the biggest blessing we've ever seen- our daughter. Career changes have come. Economic lows have come. Now we've arrived at a huge growing experience. Six months of being away from each other. The longest we've ever been apart is ten weeks and then he was only right up the road. This time he's very far off. We're only three days into it. He's my best friend, we tell each other everything. We lay in bed at night and talk about our future together, about our daughter and how fabulous three year olds are. Our plan is to grow old together... "as we make it through the potholed streets of life".