I think it finally hit me when I crossed the finish line of the Luxembourg night half marathon on June 11, 2011. It was four days before Patrick was due to come home from Afghanistan. It was also the first time I'd run a half marathon without him by my side. Usually we run half marathons next to each other, and his cadence calling helps me push through the pain. But this time, it was up to me. As I turned the corner after 13 miles, I had 1/10 of a mile to go. The pitch-black course was lit up with candle lanterns, Europeans were wildly screaming on the sidelines, I could see the finish line, I could feel my spirits surge, and it struck me quite suddenly, "I. Did. It".

12+ miles were over. 12 months were almost over. The miles were symbolic of the months. There were miles with good friends by my side and miles when I ran alone. There were miles when I felt like I was going die from the pain and never see the end. There were miles when I had to toughen up and pray for  God to give me the strength and endurance. There were miles with enthusiastic fans, cheering from the sidelines and there were miles when there was no band, no fan in sight, and it was up to me to push through the pain.

One of the keys to surviving a deployment as the wife of a Soldier is a set of good friends. The dismal morning after Patrick left, I was sitting at the breakfast table crying into my Cheerios. I was tightly holding on to all of the "lasts". The last time we hugged goodbye.  The last time I saw his smile. The last time I saw him shave. The last time I saw him put on his dog tags. The last time I saw him put on his boots. The last time he held me. The last time I looked into his eyes. The last time we said "see you later" in person. My heart feared in a way that it never had before and it hurt in a way that words cannot describe. My heart wasn't sure that it wanted to keep beating. I remember the fervent, desperate and hopeful prayers to God the weeks leading up to deployment. I'd never cried more in the past 25 years of my life than I had in the week before deployment and the morning after Patrick left.

It was in this moment that a good friend called to see how I was doing. I bitterly mumbled through the phone, "I can't do it. I absolutely cannot do an entire year of this". And she said something that stuck with me the entire deployment: "Pick up your spoon and take one bite of cereal. That's all you have to do. And when you're finished, just take one more bite".

And so started the year of taking just "one more bite". The Excel spreadsheet with an automatic formula that counted the days he'd been gone and calculated the percentage of deployment we had left. The holiday countdowns, "Easter is over! Next Easter, we'll be celebrating together", "next New Year's, we'll be ringing in the year together", you get the idea. The daily workouts at the gym, the weekly girl's nights. Whether it was the 365 Hershey's kisses, the Johnny Walker with friends for every 25 percent, the obsessive counting of anything and everything - "let's see, there are 100 vitamins in each bottle, so by the time I finish the fourth bottle, he'll be home from war!" It was these countdowns that moved deployment very slowly forward.

As the year of "one more bite" progressed, it transformed into the year emotional "firsts". The first time I received a text from Patrick when he arrived in Kuwait, touching down for gas on the way to Afghanistan. The first time I saw his face on Skype from the Barracks at Kandahar. The first time I got a letter from war in the mail. The first time he told me of being attacked by the Taliban. The first time he had a friend killed in Afghanistan while he was at war. Those firsts mixed with the events during the year of one more bite and subtly transformed into moments. The moments of sweet, joyful, hopeful prayer with Jesus every morning before breakfast. Moments of prideful reflection of my Soldier at war. Moments of excited anticipation as the weeks grew closer and war came to an end. Moments of joy. Moments of running across the finish line in Luxembourg, tears streaming down my face, with Patrick's cadences in my head and the anticipation of his hug in a few short days. Moments of relief.

A few days after Patrick returned from war, we were lazily sitting on the couch, enjoying a few cold ones and watching baseball on ESPN. It still hadn't hit me that he was back and that we both did an entire year of deployment. Admittedly, his year was much more intense, life-threatening and heroic. But the feeling of surviving a year without each other in the flesh, and of him walking through the door and feeling like nothing had changed between us, was the best moment of war. All of those countdowns, the tears, the laughter, the stories, the pain of missing my best friend for an entire year and the joy of having him in my arms again. All of those moments. They seemed so small when I was walking through them. So torturingly never-ending. The end seemed so far. And yet, each one was painstakingly important. And "are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history"?