Ryan and Christy's Place

I've taken to fits of inexplicable crying.

I'm not sure where this comes from. I'm not sad. I'm actually shocked I'm not dried up. Apparently there's a drought in the part of North Carolina where I live, and I'm convinced I could fix it, if only they'd let me cry into the lakes around here. But unlike tears during the deployment -- tears of fear, uncertainty, loneliness, etc. -- I think these tears are relief, and something else.

For instance, on the way home from Thanksgiving in Tennessee this week, I heard the new Kenny Chesney song "Who You'd Be Today" on the radio and started sobbing. It made me think of a woman I "know" (through reading her blog) whose husband died in Iraq. The song just cut through me because I thought of her and wondered how her Thanksgiving was, and if her little boy was OK, and I was holding Ryan's hand, and I remembered last year eating Thanksgiving dinner at my tiny apartment with my mom, sitting on the floor with the food spread over my coffee table, not being able to eat it because we were sad.

Listening to that song, and just in general, I've felt relief and happines that Ryan was home, and this overwhelming joy and feeling of thanks. How can you thank God enough for bringing someone you love more than anything home to you? How do you tell the people who prayed for him, and cared for you and him, what it meant to you? I have this huge ball of emotion in me, this thanks and joy that I don't even know how to express. Every night I read my Bible, the same Psalm (Psalms 91), over and over, so much that the page was crumpled and worn. I prayed to be strong, to get him home, to keep him safe, and now he is. How do I give thanks enough? I never knew the power of prayer, the true power it can have. Now I think I know a slice of the infinite power of God and His love.

Then I think of people who didn't get the chance I have. I can't answer the question of why they didn't and I did get my loved one back; nobody can. I just don't know. That also makes me cry. To know that life is so delicate, and we never really know the outcome, but here Ryan and I are, blessed with this chance at life together, one that we'll cherish more than ever because now, I think, we realize the price that can be paid.

It's an amazing tangle of emotions, the end of something like this. I guess it will continue to be. This whole holiday season, this whole year, my whole life, I'll be giving thanks for the gift I got: my husband. 

And now, since this post made me cry and I want to end on a funny note: Coming Soon: Pictures of the soldiers who are serving and protecting our Christmas tree.  

-- Christy