"Are you sitting down?"

This is a phrase that demands attention. Right after someone asks you this, bad news inevitably follows. There is the rare occasion where good news could follow but that would be rare indeed.

Ignoring this phrase is deadly, especially if you are not in fact sitting down. Getting the bad news while standing is perhaps one of the dumbest things to do. Somehow, the news has a massive affect on your body when you do so. Your heart starts racing, the lightheaded feeling starts, the shaking starts and your stomach begins to churn. Suddenly, standing is no longer an option. Your legs won't hold you and you begin to think that maybe there will be more air if you're closer to the floor. Sort of like leaving a mountain top and heading to sea level. Of course, you're rather lucky that thoughts are coming to you at all - you've just been blindsided by the voice on the other end of the phone. Thoughts have ceased. You could stare at that spot on the wall all day. There aren't even thoughts on the subject at hand, a problem when there is still someone trying to talk to you. It's like everything froze or turned black and making conversation becomes the biggest task you have ever undertaken in your whole life.

Perhaps all of this is true when receiving the news in person but I have yet to have that experience.

I got a phone call from my mom yesterday afternoon, right as I was finishing work. We made small talk for a bit and then she told me - the phone call we've been subconsciously dreading for three years finally came.

Kevin is being deployed to Iraq this fall.

And that's all we know. I don't know the exact date, I don't know how long he'll be gone, I don't know what his duties will be. I know nothing.

I hate knowing nothing.

Once again, I know all of the right answers. I'm not that stupid. I know that this could turn out for good, this could be the thing that turns him around and God knows what he's doing. This didn't happen outside of his will.

None of that makes this any easier. I suppose it should. It doesn't. It's not stopping the fear of getting the other phone call. That last phone call. The one that will cave the world in on top of you. There's nothing stopping that from being in God's will. We just don't know.

I suppose that makes me look like some sort of depressed cynic without a hope in the world. I'm not. I've had a good day today and laughed a lot already. I'm ok. I just found out yesterday. It's still new. It's still terrifying. It can still make me feel sick.

I will never again ignore that phrase.