Please pray for our family

We are celebrating our last Monday! Who thought I'd ever celebrate a Monday!? We should find out tomorrow exactly what day Dan will be leaving and it should be sometime between this Friday to Monday.

Preparing for this deployment has been so different from our last experience. For those of you who didn't hear that story. Dan had been out of basic 2 weeks when we found out he would deploy for a 15 month tour 3 weeks later. Which means, there really wasn't time to mentally prepare. He was gone before we even realized it.

This experience has been different in many ways. We have known that this was coming for over a year and this time around Dan has to say goodbye to me and to his little girl. We have been surprisingly tough so far, bar a few weak moments, but now the tears have begun. Yesterday we went to our church for the last time and it ripped my heart out. I cried most of the service. Partly from the joy of being part of an amazing church family, and partly because I knew the next time I walked through the doors of a church I will have said goodbye to Dan.

It is very hard for me to admit that this is hard and that we need prayer, but I foresee this being a pretty tough week. Please pray for strength and joy as we cherish this time. And please also pray that I will not wallow in my own self pity, yet at the same time be able to admit that this isn't fun. This is a difficult balance for me.