My greatest comfort must be found in Christ. Christ, who came to earth, away from the Father, to do the work set before Him. Christ, who reigns in heaven now, while His Bride, the Church, is here on earth. Christ is acutely familiar with the loneliness of separation. And He is greater than my loneliness and sufficient for all my needs.

My husband has worked away for most of our marriage. By this I mean he is not home at night for supper, he can’t tuck our kids into bed, and I don’t get the opportunity to make his lunch. He is often living in a work camp or a hotel. A rough, conservative estimate would say that he and I have spent as many nights apart as we have together in our 9 years of marriage.

When we got engaged, I imagined our marriage would resemble the way things were in my family home. My dad worked at a local mill, five days a week, ten hours a day as long as I can remember, and we saw him nightly. I didn’t think I would ever have to figure out, alone, the best bed time routine for five kids ages 6 and under. I have learned how to function without my husband home every evening. I’ve learned to fix dripping faucets, leaky refrigerators, overflowing toilets, broken window coverings and bicycle chains.

My husband working away has introduced hilarity into situations that probably would not have happened if he was home on the weekends – like the time my family was celebrating a late Christmas together in February. My husband was gone, we had just had about 3 feet of snow fall, and the car battery was dead.

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