Never felt like this before

The past 7 weeks have been by far the most difficult I've ever endured in my life. Yep, that's how long Mike's been gone, and we found out yesterday that they want him to stay another 3 weeks. After he told me the news yesterday, I was so devastated that I actually had to take the rest of the day off, I couldn't work.

Never in my life have I experienced a depression, but I feel like this is it. I haven't felt like cleaning, cooking (crazy, I know), or even shopping, things that usually make me feel better. I haven't even had that much motivation with Pampered Chef either. See? Weird. It's all I can do to get out of bed to work each day, and I try to stay busy, but I just haven't felt like doing anything. Normally I would NOT be OK with the kitchen counter being dirty before I hit the sack at night, but recently I just didn't care. 

My FT job is extremely exhausting, physically and mentally, and I really depend on Mike's physical support every day and it hasn't been there. When he's here and I'm out either running errands or out doing my own thing, I can hardly wait to walk thru the door and see his face and get a giant hug and kiss. But I'm starved for that. It seems like the stress of him not being here has aged me and is starting to affect my immune system.

I know all this will pass after March 27th, but I never wanted to be one to just live for the future and not for the present. But the present kind of sucks.

HOWEVER in the midst of all of this, I have been shown the most amazing grace, comfort, peace, and closeness to my Heavenly Father EVER. With Mike gone, it has given me more opportunities to serve God by volunteering in various activities and it has also given me more time to spend with Him in the morning. And one of my biggest fears after marriage didn't come true: I was always afraid that after we got married, I would lose many of my girlfriends and after this time without Mike, I have learned that my girls are still out there and we're still close.

I feel like during this time, the Lord has spoken to me in ways that I may not hear if Mike were here. I have had plenty of alone time to hear Him, but it has most usually been in the form of song. Last night I was on the way to Bible study and the songs, "Jesus Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood and "He Will Carry Me" by Mark Schultz came on my iPod and I just started bawling! And at Bible study some verses were brought to my attention that really made my day.

So, in summary, life has been massively difficult, but there is a silver lining. He is coming home eventually. Oh, and I get to go visit next month. :) And Jesus is STILL faithful. Apparently He knows we can handle it, otherwise He wouldn't give us this challenge. 

PRAISE GOD FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS!!!!

~~Fear not, for I AM WITH THEE!~~

Chloraseptic?

Yesterday when I was on the phone with one of my health education participants, I was in the middle of explaining something and he asked, "Do you use a lot of Chloraseptic in your job?" I asked, "No, why?" and he replied, "Because you must get sore throats all the time."

Thanks, dude.