Today my little brother Ben is being deployed to Iraq, and it’s scaring me out of my mind! I am so proud of him and his Marine unit, but we’re going to miss him so very much. I’m planning on keeping tabs on how long he’s gone.
For some of you, you’re thinking, hmm KM doesn’t have a younger brother named Ben, she only has a brother Dave, well Ben sort of adopted himself into my family about 7 or 8 years ago. Dave was away at grad school and my parents needed someone to help with the lawn care and doing projects around the house and Ben was a teenager at my church, and needed a job. Very quickly Ben began calling my parents ma and dad, which has stuck ever since. So I sort of got rid of a Dave and gained a Ben. I think I got a great deal out of it.
So Ben and I began referring to each other as brother and sister, sharing pieces of ourselves with each other as siblings do. When his daughter Hailey was born my folks and I were at the hospital within hours to greet my new niece (and their first “grand child” 
) We’ve had the pleasure of watching Hailey grow, now into a beautiful 6 year old.
So I leave this post with a prayer for Ben:
A PRAYER FOR THE ARMED FORCES
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace, strengthen them in their trials and temptations, give them courage to face the perils which beset them, and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
http://www.beliefnet.com/prayeroftheday/more_prayers.asp?paid=70&faid=68
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