Thinking thankful thoughts today...

When I pray at night, I don't pray for my soul, or for money or for stuff or for things to happen. When I pray to God at night, it is to say thank you. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things I would like, but the truth is, I'm quite content with the life that I've been given. I am thankful for my child, for my loving husband, for his job, and our house. I am thankful for my wonderful friends and mine and my husband's amazing family. We are SO blessed. But mostly when I pray, I am thankful for the fact that J has deployed four times and that my little brother has deployed two times, and in all of that, neither of them was harmed. They got to come home and live their lives, no matter that they were changed by what they saw. I'm thankful for all those that went and came back. And I'm so very grateful, for those that went and didn't.

This morning on Fox News, they said that in the last twenty four hours eight U.S soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. Eight. That's eight lives gone. Eight people who will never get to come home and see their loved ones ever again. Eight families torn apart by unmeasurable pain. Eight. Eight doesn't sound like that many; in the grand scheme of things, maybe it isn't. It's not even a percentage of all we've lost. But when you take into account that each person will have touched the lives of countless others, the ripples will go on forever. Eight, in twenty-four hours. Eight people taken, in a day. Such loss and all I can think is 'eight.'

Tonight when I pray, it will be for these eight people I didn't know and for their families. I hope they find peace in such a horrible situation. And as always, I will pray for all of those that went in theater and didn't come back alive.