WHAT'S MISSING

Last night, after a wonderful but exhausting four days in San Diego, I crawled into my own bed thinking I'd sleep like a rock.

We were home. My children were home.

And I had finally placed my travel weary and worry torn heart into my favorite resting place - my bed.

And yet, I lay there for a while unable to sleep.

My body felt like it was made of jell-o. My eyes were scratchy and raw from fatigue.

And yet sleep wouldn't come.

I had reached the point where I'd become too tired to sleep and I hate that feeling.

So I lay there and asked myself what was wrong and all I could think of was that something was missing.

Something was missing? How could that be? I was in my bed, my head on my own pillow, listening to the hum of my fan - my family all in the house - and I couldn't sleep? Something was missing?

And then it hit me. Worry. Worry was missing.

The worry.

I was lying there waiting for worry to make it's nightly visit into my heart.

Only this time it wasn't going to come.

It's not that I wanted it to come; it's just that it had become such a part of my life for 13 weeks that I had taught myself to lie awake and wait for it. Because night time was when it opened the door and crept in. Always. Always at night when the lights were out and the house was quiet, I'd stare at the ceiling and think of my boy.

And now it is gone - that worry.

For now.

I left it at the curb outside the St. Louis airport as soon as our son climbed into the van.

I know it will return.

It will return when he leaves for combat training and then again when he leaves for his job school. And then again when he is with the fleet. And then again, with horrible force, when he is deployed (for we've been told to prepare ourselves for a deployment).

It will return when my daughter leaves for college.

But for now?

Now it will sit on that curb in St. Louis and I will refuse to pick it up while my boy is home.

And when I realized all of that I closed my eyes and slept with a peace that had, for a few months, been unknown to my heart.