After the Rain

Does anyone other than me remember back in the early 90's that song by the band Nelson? It was called After the Rain? The chorus went "after the rain washes away the tears and all the pain. only after the rain can you live again". The song is actually about a break up. They are singing to a girl telling her that they know she is hurting but after she is finished crying and this pain subsides she will heal and be ready to love again. But really the words of the chorus ring true for so many things. We have to get through the tears and the pain to truly live again. As we are coming to the final months now of this deployment and i look back on all the pain, i realize that while parts of this was really hard, i have become a better person over all. We still have several more month to go. So there will still be times of pain i fear. But i see now how these times of pain and tears have helped me to grow and have helped me to become stronger. Deployment though a really hard thing and difficult for our family really can be a good thing when you do your best to make it a good thing. I feel that we have done our best to make it a good thing. We have used this time to communicate in ways that maybe we wouldn't normally and our kids have learned to communicate with Daddy in new ways. He's learned new things about them and me. And we are learning about him in new ways also. We are all growing and changing but we are doing it as a family. So we aren't pulling apart. I am hoping that will help in our transition time when he comes home because everyone keeps telling me that the coming home is so hard and you just get adjusted when he starts preparing to leave again. But we don't normally have problems that others experience we normally don't fight. So i'm hoping that helps us too. Anyway.....that was totally not the direction i intended for this blog to go when i started it this morning. I just thought of it when i was thinking of a title and it rained here yesterday. I was listening to the birds singing outside and i thought about how after the rain it is so nice out. The sun is shining and the birds are singing and it's is just nature at it's best. So then i thought of that song. And then i was thinking i wonder if life really is like that. After the rain and storms in our life.....is it life at it's best? We recently experienced some other pain in our life too. Our bird died. We miss him a lot. Taco was such a great bird. Now it's really quiet here. He talked and we miss him greeting us when we came in. Or hiding from us when it was dark in the house and then laughing. He was just the best. Jay says he'd like to get another sometime in the future. I think that would be great. So does Kaitlyn. But Keliah is still grieving Taco too much too consider it. She says she's ok with Taco being gone but not ready to replace him. Well you can't replace him! He was too cool to replace! But we can get a new one that can be cool in time too. We will give it 6 months or so and see. Otherwise things are going pretty well. We are taking walks daily. My girls are taking swimming lessons everyday. They are doing great with it. I'm so glad i signed them up for this. They really love it and are just really enjoying the water. Which is fantastic! As much as Jay and I love the water, it's nice to see our girls finally getting over their fear of it and finding a real love of it too. Speaking of swimming though.....it's time for us to get up and get dressed to go. So i suppose it's about time to stop typing now. Have a wonderful day! I'll return again one day!