Something I never thought about

My brother-in-law, Seargent First Class Rob Hughes, was recently deployed for active duty in Iraq. He and my sister had known for a little over a year that it was possible that his National Guard Unit would be deployed to the Gulf. Rob began his 397 day deployment on June 5th. He is currently at Camp Shelby, Mississippi for training prior to being sent overseas sometime the first part of August. He and my sister are the proud parents of two boys, Eli who is 2-1/2 and Jay who was born on May 20th. All this time I've thought about how hard all of this was going to be for my sister with a new baby and all. I've worried, stressed and prayed over her situation and I never once considered Rob's feelings.

This morning my mom called to say that my nephew, Eli, had been admitted to the hospital because he had a very bad asthma attack early this morning. My mom is staying with Jay while my sister, Alicia, stays at the hospital with Eli. I went over to see him this afternoon and he is doing some better. Alicia said that everything just seemed to be going wrong....Eli is sick, their cows were out, someone destroyed her mailbox, etc. etc. and again I felt sorry for her because of everything she is having to deal with on her own. But then she began talking about Rob and it struck me that I had just totally not given any thought to how hard this is on him. He is having a really hard time. He is, of course, proud to be serving his country but he is really missing his family and feels bad that he isn't around to help Alicia. She said that he had emailed her and told her how much he missed her and the boys. He said that he couldn't look at Eli's picture without crying and that he felt so bad for Jay because he would miss the first year of his life. She went on to say that Rob had called to talk to Eli and that Eli had really carried on a big conversation with his daddy. He wanted to know if he was still in Mississippi and if he was far away and then he asked Rob if he could take him for a ride. Rob told him that he would take him for a ride when he could and Eli told him to wait and he would go get his shoes so they could go now. She said Rob broke down and started crying and was so emotional that he had to hang up. My heart simply broke as she told the story and even now as I type this I want to cry. How could I have been so unthinking? Why did I never even think about Rob's feelings in all this?

Please, God, watch over Rob and keep him safe. I pray that you will hold him in the palm of your hand and help him during this time. I pray that you will be his strength and encouragement during the dark days and that you will bring him home safely to his family. In Jesus' name, Amen.