Can I be tired enough to just sleep?

One week down--only 36 more to go (or so!).  It's 10 p.m. already, and I am just sitting down finally for the day.  It amazes me how doing another's work can be so consuming.  And, yet, I feel closer to him somehow while he is gone.

The thing that generally aggravates me the most in my marriage is my husband's "OCD" side.  He cannot, and I repeat--CANNOT--just sit down and be content.  Everything has to be put away; we're talking every cup, every paper, and every counter wiped clean.  I'm sure you can see how this might lead to some aggravation.  Seriously.

But now I miss that.  So much.  I only leave out a few things each day, but I find myself stressed with the 10 things that I have to find a home for before I can sleep peacefully.  How often I overlook the blessing in what God has given my husband, and instead tend to see it as a weakness in him, or even in our marriage.  How often I have complained about this to friends, and held up my husband as a "can you believe this?" example.  I pray God can remind me of the blessing provided with this when he returns home!

I also have the new responsibility of fixing everything as it comes along.  So, the drill is my new best friend.  But, really--did this much stuff break regularly for him and I just never noticed how often he came home and simply fixed the next thing?  Or is this just a breaking-in period for me and an unusually high number of things have been broken, needed hanging, and generally need my attention--now.

243 days to go.  And I have worked myself into exhaustion daily, perhaps hoping that I will sleep soundly if I am that tired.  It's the sound, restful sleep that eludes me right now.  Knowing I am the one keeping watch here, and no one can back me up.  There's sort of that feeling like I'm about to fall over the edge and can't stop it.

Tonight my prayers will be for my children, for their daddy's safety.  As hard as this is, I don't think they've yet felt the full impact.  He has started writing postcards daily to us (bless him!).  These will be my daily saving grace.  Just seeing his handwriting is a comfort.  But, it reminds me, too, that God wrote for us as well--and left it for us to return to again and again.  Isn't it funny that I've never really looked at it that way--as the treasured postcard, love letter, or note from the most important person in my life?