{"id":1858,"date":"2021-10-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2021-10-07T08:05:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T12:05:55","slug":"love-worth-returning-to-over-and-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/?p=1858","title":{"rendered":"Love Worth Returning to Over and Over"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"563\" height=\"750\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/touchofcharacter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/day054.jpg?resize=563%2C750&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1856\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/touchofcharacter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/day054.jpg?w=563&amp;ssl=1 563w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/touchofcharacter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/day054.jpg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 563px) 100vw, 563px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Day 54 (March 29, 2019)<\/p>\n<p>Hi Lord,<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saying goodbye sucks. It just royally sucks. I cried some last night as I talked with my mom and dad. It is just hard because (and I may have mentioned this a few hundred times to you before but bear with me) I just switch who I miss on a regular basis. Living so far away from family rarely allows for Dane and me to constantly fly and visit loved ones together. Often times\u2014when it is not holiday related\u2014only one of us is flying to see friends or family. So, as the story goes, either my heart hurts to be away from my mom, dad, brother, and sister while I am happily with Dane, OR I am missing my husband and cat terribly while I am enjoying quality time with a large chunk of my family. I just want to live close to all my family, so I don\u2019t have to miss so many people all the time. (This move for my family will make that difficult, but who knows what the future holds. Maybe we will stay on the East Coast\u2014stranger things have happened LOL\u2014and be near my mom, dad, sister, and aunt when they move to North Carolina.) Though missing people sucks, I will say that one of my favorite things is that airport hug you get from a loved one you have not seen in forever! (The hug I got from Dane today did not disappoint.)<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A little background info, during the last two days of the trip my phone basically stopped working, and I had to borrow my sister\u2019s phone to send some \u201cI love you\u201d texts to Dane. As you can imagine, not being able to talk to each other as much as we wanted to was torture. BUT that kind of separation sure did make that airport hug, and smooch, sweeter. (I could not wait to get to Dane!) Lord, he was so stinkin\u2019 sweet. He kept telling me how much he had missed me, and it meant so much to me to hear that. Sometimes I can\u2019t help but wonder if the distance weighs more on me than on him, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. He did fill me in once that the first couple days I am away are not too bad because he gets to play video games even more than usual hahaha, but then by the third day he says it really starts to make him sad when he opens the door, and I am not in the living room waiting for him. Hearing that helps me truly see that my husband misses me as much as I miss him, and that means a lot to me. I like that we like to be with each other all the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ohhh, and you know who else missed me, Lord!? My little fur baby, that is who! (Maple may have vomited she was so excited to see me. Poor baby.) For the first few hours I was home, Maple absolutely smothered me with little nose bumps and kisses on my nose. If I was not touching her, she would nudge me with her nose incessantly until I petted her and tickled her ears. Once seated on the couch, my lap was no longer my own, and she was instantly cuddled on it and staring up at me with such love that I thought my heart would burst. My mother-in-law often likes to say that it makes it easier to go home, after a trip, when you have furry companions waiting there for you. Lord, she is 100% correct! It is one of the sweetest things in life to be loved so unconditionally\u2014not for your money, talents, or looks but for your heart alone\u2014and that kind of love reminds me of the way you love us, Lord. A love that is pure and one we never ever want to miss.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Always,<\/p>\n<p>Your Daughter Kaitlan<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Lord, for those who are returning home, can you please allow them to have someone they love there to greet them and wrap them in that special airport bear hug? I realize each person\u2019s situation is unique, and there may be more difficult circumstances where people are estranged from loved ones or even parted by a passing of someone they love. So, in those situations, especially, can you please put a furry companion in their life? A pet who is over the moon happy to see them the moment they set foot through their front door and who loves them with a love that, in my opinion, is the closest earthly example of your love. (So pure.) But, most of all, no matter where people are\u2014near or far, at home, or abroad\u2014please greet each person with your perfect love, Lord. A love they never have to be parted from if they so choose. Thank you, Lord.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"has-inline-color has-cod-gray-color\" data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">Thank you for reading! If you are new, this is a chronological blog series. It is best read in order. <a href=\"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/?p=1033\">CLICK HERE<\/a> for the intro.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saying goodbye sucks. It just royally sucks. I cried some last night as I talked with my mom and dad. It is just hard because&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trichotillomania-timeline"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/touchofcharacter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/day054.jpg?fit=563%2C750&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1863,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/1863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/touchofcharacter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}