midnight.

Well, its a blessing I refuse to watch T.V. and that I realized a long time ago that its not good for me to watch the news... it seems that there was a big avalanche on the pass that Brett's company was driving through on their way back to Fort Lewis this evening... fortunately it missed them ( by a very close margin apparently.)... but there were some seriously scared wives. I was not one of them. I was happily ( well that's a bit of an overstatement) passing my waiting time talking on the phone with Carmi and making Brett's birthday strawberry cake truffles... totally oblivious to any danger.
I was glad that I have been able to talk to Brett several times over these last nine hours that he's been trying to get home-mostly because I have been able to calm the fears of other wives who couldn't get ahold of their husbands for whatever reason.... and this is why we have FRG! ( for those nonmilitary people, FRG stands for Family Readiness Group... and its basically made up of the wives of the service men-meeting together once a month...I confess I have a pretty bad attitude about the group because their meetings take up my valuable time with Brett...and when the guys aren't deployed I could see no reason for us meeting at all... but I take it ALL BACK...I see now the importance of such connections.

Annnnyway, I should have KNOWN something bad was going on-because I've been praying a lot harder this time around then I did the last time brett was out on the field. And it looks like prayers have been answered, while its already midnight and they are still far from being home they ARE still safe...thank goodness.

So, since I've got this time waiting for Brett...and since I definitely can't sleep ( among other things-I have had a considerable amount of sugar this evening...) I will account some of the words of wisdom that I've been given over the past few days so that I wont forget and so you can share them with me...

Someone recently sent me an email talking about how easy it is misunderstand, to be hurt and hurt forever by people around you....this particularly struck me:

If we could just see beneath, we could work to mend the wounds, to rebuild relationships, to set people free, or at the very least, to understand and extend them some grace. Instead we stumble around, unintentionally sparking off people, annoying them, hurting them, misunderstanding them, missing them. Give me eyes that can see and give other people eyes so that they can see me.

I loved that. I'm adding that to my prayers...to have eyes to see people and for people to see me....

I was also given this really good analogy of God working in our Spiritual lives...it is like building muscle. When you do weight training you are suppose to wait a day or so between training sessions for your muscles to rest and rebuild. In fact, it is during that restoring stage that the muscles rebuild themselves bigger and stronger than they were before-thus how one builds muscle in the first place...the point being the "muscle growing" happens during the rest period.... Sometimes when things seem to slow down, trials seem to be in the past and the present day doesnt seem particularly difficult ( or at least something we handle) we start to doubt whether God is still working in our lives-we start to think maybe we're getting lazy or something. No, these are just times of muscle building...times when God reinforces the lessons of yesterday, writes the words of the past pain upon our hearts so that it cannot be erased. It is the days of rest that are actually be filled with the most growing....

Eh. Unfortunately that analogy was told to me a lot better at the time...I should have written it down earlier...or at least when my brain was more awake. ( Hope Carmi will forgive me for butchering her words so badly.)