In Christ Alone

The very first time I heard the worship song, "In Christ Alone" was way back in 2004. It was the first Sunday after Josh deployed to Iraq for the first time. I didn't try singing it since it was new to me, and so I sat there and listened. It was beautiful. It gave me so much hope and encouragement for the year that lay ahead. I still love this song, and I still get a little emotional whenever we sing it at church. (I'm not entirely sure, but I think we sang it in chapel the first Sunday after Josh deployed to Iraq the 2nd time too.)

Saturday night, as I was doing the dishes after putting the boys in bed, I was planning out Sunday morning, so it would go smoothly and we'd hopefully get to church on time. I stood there and though, "Oh gee. If we sing "In Christ Alone" tomorrow morning, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep myself together." Can you guess what happened?

We were a song or 2 into worship, and I was sitting down (probably because Deacon was starting to get heavy by that point) when the music started. As soon as everyone around me started singing "In Christ Alone" I started crying (just a little...not full on sobbing or anything...but enough that I had a hard time singing along). Zeke looked at me and said, "Mom, your eyes are tearing." Then he wiped my tears with his hand, climbed into my lap and sat there hugging me. He didn't let go until I stopped tearing and assured him I was fine. I know, I have the sweetest boy in the world.

So, since this song seems to be my "anthem" for when Josh is gone, and what with Easter rapidly approaching, I'm putting a video of the song at the bottom here with the words. Feel free to sing along if you know it. Or just sit and listen to the beautiful words. Or skip it altogether.

On a completely different note, sort of an aside here, not 10 minutes after I wrote and posted yesterday's blog post about our weekend and all the throwing up Finn and Deacon had done, I went downstairs to fold laundry before getting Finn up from his nap. I think I folded one shirt when I heard Zeke crying. I went in, held him for a second, then he jumped out of my lap and started throwing up. All. over. his. rug. Yeah.

That means that in the first 3 days Josh was gone I had all 3 boys' throw up to clean up. I did learn something though. I learned that throw up on the bed is MUCH easier to clean than throw up on the rug. Here's hoping we've gotten it all out of our systems now (pun intended) so that we don't have to deal with it again while he's gone.