A Christmas story

On this day four Christmases ago I woke up at 4:30 in the morning in pain. I tossed and turned, finally got up and took medicine. Went back to bed. I was laying there, trying to will myself through the pain and back to sleep, when the phone rang. And I knew one of my worst fears had come true. Whenever your husband is deployed to a war zone and the phone rings at 5:30 in the morning, it can't be good.
At the time I had a 10-month-old baby who was supposed to be celebrating his first Christmas, and I had been struggling with depression, gripping fear, sleepless nights and uncontrollable weeping for 5 months and one day. I lived in daily fear I would lose my husband, an only son and my soul mate. This would explain why my first question to him was "Are you coming home?" That's all you care about, really, when they're in danger. Are they going to come home...and not in a casket.
Thanks to a Squadron-run Bible study, I had begun to rediscover the deep faith I had had as a teenager and so desperately needed at the time. And that faith got me through the next few months, some of the worst of my life, as I watched my husband deal with trauma, the support I depended on crumbled around me and my brother-in-law committed suicide.
Fast forward to this Christmas, where once again I find myself without my soul mate, separated by a war we didn't choose. I now have an almost four-year-old boy who knows his father is gone and feels the loss. But I - I am a different woman. I'm a woman who barely survived a deployment, but I did survive it. I mended my husband, heart and mind. I raised a strong-willed kid, my only son, whose birth was the culmination of another journey of faith. And this time, when I hugged my husband goodbye one more time, and we grabbed that last desperate kiss, I was not scared. I was not worried. Because I knew my God was a loving god, who showed mercy when he allowed my husband to come home to me. Who blessed me with a gift I could not give myself in my son.
Who showed me love by sending HIS only son on the first Christmas day, with a fate so horrible and so beautiful at the same time. Because of Him I can always have HOPE, no matter the separation, that I will see my husband again. And on this Christmas Day, I celebrate life - the life of my soul mate, the life of my son, and the life of Jesus Christ, who saved the world. And me.