Just about for the Last Time...

We sent John away again this morning, after a lovely long weekend filled with too much play and not quite enough work to keep us on track for the big move. We dutifully said goodbye. We are used to this routine.

For the past 9 months or so we've had that "he leaves on Monday and comes home on Friday" kind of life. A long lay-over means an impromptu trip to the airport, so kids and wife can hang out with travel weary dad for an hour in the short term parking lot-playing tag on the cross walk and generally hanging on this man we all love so much. Children, during those hour long snippets with a father they adore, interrupt their parents who, having longed to view one another's faces and hold one another's hands, instead find themselves trying to whisper sweet nothings and also discuss important logistics of family living (how the budget is going, or what upcoming engagements must dad remember and cheer lead or even weightier matters like do we buy before we sell and how do we feel about one Utah suburb over another...). It is a busy kind of life. Even an exhausting one. But in large measure this was the life we chose when we chose to move back to Texas. And the more recent months of this have been due to the lack of a sold piece of property; we'd gladly have joined John in Utah before now had our home become the home of someone new.

Last night as John was dancing with me in the kitchen I told him, like I do on every night before he leaves, that I wish he didn't have to go. And he bent down and whispered in my ear that it would only be a few more nights, and that then this would be behind us.

"you made it Katie. We are finished. You did it and now it is over."

And my tears surprised me completely. The emotional outpouring was nothing shy of utter relief and the realization that this particular little trial; the one where John is away most of the hours of our life, is very nearly past. New trials await, and many many uncertainties. But what a relief to know that the airport parking lot will no longer be our spontaneous rendezvous, and that face to face conversation will soon be more frequent between us.

I know John will travel quite often in our new life ahead. And that he will be called away not only in his professional service, but in the religious service that is much easier for me to sacrifice him to-but for now in my mind I am clinging to the truth that this life with more nights of him in some other bed than ours is coming ever closer to an end.