The Big "D": The day after good-bye

26 March

My husband is safely on the ground on the other side of the world so I thought I would share some of the things we did to make our family ready for this part of our Army adventure.

1. I spoiled my husband. Whether it was sex, food, a new play station vita, taking a weekend away...if he wanted it, he pretty much got it. We didn't have this "It's my last meal," doom and gloom mindset. I just wanted him to really enjoy his last few weeks at home. We ate a lot of good old American junk food, watched a lot of movies, took a couple of days to go to the beach and eat ice cream with the kids, simple pleasures. No big vacations or spending sprees. Not enough money for that and not enough time, to be honest. When your turn comes, you'll find that there is so much last minute stuff he has to be around for that really seems to drag on and on and on that taking a week long Disney vacation (or whatever) is just not possible. We will save that for when he gets back.

2. I did NOT spoil my girls (4, 7, and 9). We had to wait until nearly the last minute to drop the bomb on them because we didn't know for sure ourselves and I didn't want to burden them with, "well, Daddy might go in a couple of weeks, or he might go later this summer." We just didn't say anything to them until we were sure. I had been dropping little hints here and there that it would be our turn some day. By the time we told them the news, it wasn't a big shock to them. When the time came, we gave them some time to cry and cuddle with him. And then we told them that this wasn't the end of the world and he would be back soon so don't spend the next 10 days being sad and weepy, please.
One of my daughters was especially broken up about the fact that Daddy will miss her birthday AGAIN. So we splurged on an ice cream cake from DQ and had a very, very un-birthday for her last Sunday.
One huge blessing is having them in on-post schools. Half of their class has a mom or dad deployed so it's sort of normal now and their teachers have been amazing.

3. We got wills done at the JAG office (which was free and totally painless, by the way) and we made sure I would be able to handle financial stuff on my own, which basically means my husband set everything up for automatic bill pay because I hate being responsible for paying bills, and he made sure I had all the passwords.

4. The countdown board.

Some people don't do this because it makes the days drag on, and it does seem in the beginning that there are so many it will never end. But it's worth it to me beause at the end, I feel this huge sense of accomplishment. Seeing that big empty board is so rewarding! We do not have an exact homecoming date but my kids are old enough to understand if we have to add a few back on toward the end. I took a picture of each child with Daddy and stuck it to the board, and hung it low on the wall so they can look at it and participate in taking the ribbons off each day. I also gave my girls a copy of their picture with him and they are free to sleep with it, carry it around, take it to school, whatever. I'll just print off a new one when it gets ruined.

5. We turned my husband's phone off. It broke my heart to get a text message from t-mobile the day after he left that his phone was no longer in service but he had been advised by others in his unit to just go ahead and turn it off because it would be a nightmare to accidentally receive a call or a text message while over there. He still took his phone with him to use as a camera and a wifi connector and he also has his laptop and his psv so he has lots of ways to skype and FB message. Which we did last night. And it was awesome.

6. We prayed. A lot. And had lots and lots of people praying for us. I do devotions with my girls every morning and wouldn't ya know it, but practially every single one on the days leading up to the big "D" could be applied to us and what we were going through. This gave us an immeasurable amount of peace about it. If you are not a praying person but find yourself gearing up for deployment, this would be a great time to start. The bible has so much to say about anxiety, and worry, and going through difficult things, and waiting, and accepting life's twists and turns, and having peace when your world is going crazy, and not complaining about your situation, and protection, and how God fights for you....I just can not imagine navigating this whole thing without it.

7. I kept my mind on things that would happen after my husband left. It was hard. I wanted to devote all of my energy to saying good-bye and preparing him and being there for him and my kids. But I didn't want the big day to arrive, drive back to an empty house, and sit there wondering, "Now what do I do?" This may sound simplistic but physchologically, it was important: I got ingredients for chocolate chip cookies when I went to the commissary last week even though I knew I wouldn't be making them while my husband was still home. There they sit in the pantry, begging to be used. BECAUSE LIFE HAS TO GO ON. I have a friend coming up from FL to visit me today, which I had to clean the house for. My in-laws are flying in next weekend, so I have to plan fun things do to while they are here. I'm planning a trip home this summer, I'm writing a lot, I'm working on a Christmas stocking for my youngest daughter, I'm helping my older girls plan a sleepover. Just living and working and planning and trying to enjoy life.

8. Friends. I just got here two months ago and haven't had much time for making friends but the few I have are worth their weight in gold. I have met women from this site, from FB page, moms of kids at school my girls are friends with, a bible study I go to. There are lots of ways to be out in the world, meeting people, and you can't stay holed up in your house the entire time, as much as you might feel like it some days. Having another human being who knows you and knows what you're going through is invaluable. I always tried to be the mom/woman who had "it" together...you know, I always tried to be on time, have my girls neat and well-behaved, know what was going on in school or church, etc. But apparently, God wanted me to be the mom/woman who is a wreck and needs the help and support of others because I have found myself relying so much on friends and family over the past few years. All I can do is let this time in my life mature me and grow me so that I can be the one to help someone else down the road.

Anyway, that's been my experience so far. I can't really speak to the logistical side of things because my husband's unit was already gone when we got here so I missed all the deployment fairs and FRG meetings. But we survived saying good-bye and seem to be holding it together pretty well.

I know for some of you, deployment is your greatest fear, and I thought it might be helpful to tell you, like I told my kids, it's really not the end of the world. You'll be ok because you HAVE to be ok. If you treat it like it's the worst thing that could possibly happen and you fill your imagination with thoughts of him dying or worse, you're going to have a really tough time. But it doesn't have to be like that. Seriously, it doesn't.           

The Big D: Day 5

29 March
Just wanted say that 5 days into this deployment, I made those chocolate chip cookies!!

By the way, we ate obscene amounts of cookie dough before those bad boys were baked. And I might or might not have left a little dish of dough in the fridge for a late night snack for mommy.

Yesterday was a pretty awful day for my husband. He flew from the airbase where they hold them out of country for in-processing, into Afghanistan and was basically walked from the plane, to the dfac for chow, to his bunk. He hadn't slept well in days, didn't know a soul (his unit is already there--he flew with a small handful of guys who were kept back for one reason or another--all of them new to him), and was incredibly homesick. When we skyped in the evening (early the next morning for him), I'm not ashamed to say we both cried like babies

I worried over him all day but he sent me a fb message this afternoon that said he had a pretty good day--he almost forgot where he was at. He got to play flag football for PT this morning and he met his platoon SG, who told him it's possible to go to WLC during deployment and that he wants to get my husband to a SG promotion board before he comes home. Then he said he was sleepy finally, and said goodnight.

I can't tell you how good it was to hear that.

          

The Big D: The Kids

16 April
I can't begin to describe how much I dreaded telling our kids. They had been through so much already with having my husband gone for the last six months for BCT/AIT, moving away from family, starting a new school and now THIS?!?! I felt horrible for dumping this on them on top of everything else. The main thing I can say is that I act normal. I get up every morning on time, I keep the usual routine, I take them out for ice cream every once in a while, and maybe the biggest thing I do is to just expect them to be fine. If I'm not tip-toeing around them, waiting for them to have a mental breakdown, I guess I hope it won't occur to them to have one, ya know?

That's not to say that everything is just fine and peachy. My 7 year old (my middle one, tends to internalize things and take things to heart--she's the one who's always homesick) started complaining of tummy problems last night at bedtime. I gave her a puke bucket and let her be. (I'm not very sympathetic, lol). She never got sick and went to school the next morning. The nurse called me later in the day and the convo went something like this:

Her: I'm calling because your daughter came in complaining of an upset stomach.
Me: Crap. She WAS sick. Er...um...yeah, she was having problems last night.
Her: She was also complaining of a pain in her ankle.
Me: Really?
Her: She also said bad things seem to keep happening ever since she moved here.
Me. Huh?
Her: Look, my husband is deployed too and I recognized some things when I was talking to her. I asked her if Daddy was gone and she said yes. I asked how long and she said, 'about a month.' I asked if she'd like to talk to Miss Emma, the school counselor. Would it be all right with you if she did?
Me: Oh, sweet mother of relief. Yes. Please, have her talk to Miss Emma. That would help her out sooo much. Thank you, thank you, thank you for seeing that she needed someone to talk to.

What a blessing to my family, right?!? I'm so thankful for the school and their familiarity with deployment and military issues. And for the fact that the Army takes this seriously and makes sure counseling is available for people who need it. They don't want families back home falling apart while Daddy's away.          

The Big D: How We Deal

03 May
Well, it's been a weird week. I've been debating posting anything about this week because I didn't want to cause unecessary stress or fear for anyone who might come across it down the road but I decided that it's not going to help anyone to pretend that it doesn't happen.

Sooo....apparently the bad guys are still at it over there. I know, I know, the "drawdown" and "the war's over" and no one's talking about Afganistan anymore. But I'm telling ya, my husband's base has taken some mortar rounds over the last few days and once it was bad enough that he got to spend some quality time with some other guys in a bunker, waiting for it to end. There have been some other things I probably shouldn't talk about here and he's got a mission coming up that makes my heart go pitter-pat and not in a good way. Ok, it kinda scares the be-jeepers out of me.

I haven't breathed a word of this to my kids, obviously, and I'm a little divided on whether or not even I should be privy to it. That's what makes daily communication both a blessing and a curse. I don't even stop to think what stuff he keeps from me or isn't allowed to tell me (imagination is good but not in situations like this).

Scary stuff, right? I just wanted to share with you all how I'm choosing to deal with it. I could sit around the house all day, biting my fingernails and calling my mother-in-law so we can feed off of each other's fear. But I don't want to live like that. My husband wouldn't want me to. He's actually looking forward to his mission. He said it would be kind of fun and he's glad he gets to do something important. That's WHY he joined the Army in the first place. He's not some kind of thrill-seeking adrenaline junky, but he's the kind of guy who wants to be doing something with his life that matters. And in his totally irreverent way, he says he wants to come home with some good stories, lol.

So I'm just carrying on with life as usual. I took my kids to the bookfair last night and got them each a new book. We made sugar cookie fruit pizzas when we got home and watched "Ella Enchanted." Then we skyped with Daddy for a few minutes and off to bed they went. Just normal, fun, peaceful stuff.

That's the key, I guess, to have peace despite our circumstances. A lot of us make the mistake of thinking that we can only have peace if the world around us is peaceful. But I would challenge you with the thought that true peace is not found in the absence of conflict, or hardship, or trial, or unexpected challenges. True peace is not something you can have *only* when your husband is safe and sound next to you and far away from imminent danger.

My 9 year old daughter lost the first, of many I'm sure, friends who pcs'ed last weekend. She sat in her room at bedtime, crying and carrying on about how awful everything was so I opened up her bible and told her to read Philipians 4. The whole chapter (I show no mercy, lol). I want her to learn to be joyful in all circumstances, to pray instead of worry, and to be thankful for all she has, so that she will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

I thought that was a lesson for her but what a treasure that little passage has been to me over the last few days.          

The Big D: Murphy's Law

11 May
Tonight I'm going to talk about a little thing we Army wives like to call "Murphy's Law of Deployments." This is when your husband is gone and something that is supposed to run smoothly goes horribly, horribly wrong at the worst possible time. It tends to involve fuel pumps, stomach flu, hot water heaters, things of that nature. No one is immune to it and it seems to hit no matter how well you've planned.

Murphy's Law came knocking on our door last week, walked right in uninvited, put his stinky, smelly feet up on the coffee table and crashed at my house for a few days. It started when my husband left for his big mission that I mentioned in a previous post. Wait. Let me back up. The day before that, there was a big news story that was plastered all over my homepage. "5 US Deaths in Afghanistan." I wasn't going to read it. I stay away from stuff like that. Some things I just don't need to know. But that little white arrow hovered over the story and, entirely against my will, clicked on it. Might as well read it now. Great. It was on a road near Kandahar. IED's. My husband is getting ready to head out on those roads to a remote base 9 hours away. I am not a worrier by nature but that got to me.

Life must go on though, right? He made it safe and sound, texting me the next day to say that his 9 hour trip turned into a 17 hour trip. He didn't bring his laptop and internet is sketchy anyway but he arrived at his destination in one piece and I can't sit here frozen with fear and freaking my kids out. My oldest has a birthday party next Saturday and I had a couple of things on my list so I decided to go to walmart. Driving home with $79 missing from my checking account (how does walmart DO that???), I'm jamming to my favorite band, windows are down, it's a beautiful day, I've got stuff to make lasagna for dinner (this is a treat since we've eaten ramen noodles three nights this week ).

Suddenly, I look down at this little red flashing light on the dash that looks like a sailboat. I get that little butterfly feeling up in my neck, you know? And I am literally willing it to go away and NOT be a problem. I pull into the garage and see steam rising up from the hood of the car. Maybe if I pretend I don't see it, it will go away! But my amazingly perceptive kids say, "Cool! The car is smoking!" NO,NO,NO,NO,NO!!!

I pop the hood, which is totally useless to me since I know NOTHING about cars, and close it again. Shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot. What to do...??? I know. I'll post it to facebook and see what happens. As soon as my mom sees my status update she calls me and hands the phone to Dad. Now my dad (who I don't talk with on the phone except to say, "Is Mom there?") has to walk me through finding the radiator, opening the valve, and filling it with a freaking ton of water. That should get me a couple of miles to a mechanic. Only problem is...it's Saturday night so....it'll have to wait until Monday. Oh, and I don't know how I'm going to get home from the mechanic, or how I'm going to get back to the mechanic when it's fixed, and what if takes all week to get the parts? I mean, I just went to walmart so I'm stocked on food but I'M COMPLETELY ON MY OWN HERE. No husband, pretty much brand new to the post so a small handful of friends that I don't know very well yet. Can I panic now? Is it all right to panic??

Sunday we're stuck at home. I hate missing church but what can I do? I walk the girls to school Monday morning and come home to face this nightmare. The first place I call, I get an answering service and the girl ends the message with "Have a blessed day." I don't know. Maybe that's a stupid reason to pick a mechanic. But it sucked me in and that's where I went. We (me and my 4 year old sidekick) make it there without doing any more damage to the car. Whew. One hurdle mounted. It needs a new radiator, the girls at the shop says, and will cost $600 (gulp), and it's going to take aaaallllll day, so.....do I have someone who can come and pick me up, or......?

Oh, sure, sure, I say. Yeah, I got a TON of friends who can help me out...*smile politely*... I go back to my seat and flip through my phone that is full of numbers of people back home. 1,000 miles away. Ok, there is this one friend I made here a few weeks back. We've had a couple of playdates for our kids, met at the library once for story time. I've got her number in my phone. I hate asking for help. I mean, I hate it. But what am I gonna do? I text her: "car trouble, at mechanic, can you get me? across from ranger joes" Maybe I should say, "Hey, it's Robin." Nah, she'll know. I hope. I shudder and press send.

Wait...wait...wait...

please text me back.

*buzz*

Yes!!! She can pick me up! She'll be here in 10! Yes!!!

She takes me by the bank to get the money out of our emergency fund (thank GOD we thought to do that), takes me home, then tells me to call her when the car is ready to pick up and she'll take me back out there, which I do and which she does. Thank you, thank you, God. Crisis over.


Ok. Two big lessons from Murphy visiting my house last week.
1. Army wives are wonderful. We are all in the same boat. We understand. We are there when your husband is deployed and you need help. Call us.
2. I can not stress enough how important it is that we took some of the money we got back from DLA and per diem and all that and put a little in a savings account all by its lonesome JUST for days like that day. I can't imagine how much worse that whole episode would have been if we didn't have the money. Please. If you don't learn anything else from this post. Don't let your husband leave you without an emergency fund. That's what keeps minor little horror stories from turning into major catastrophes that take months or years to recover from.

Have a blessed day, friends           

The Big D: Day 57

20 May
We are 57 days into this deployment and things have been pretty quiet for us, thank goodness. I have been asked to lead a group at the bible study I go to in the city and finally found a church home. It's been good but weird to begin to feel so established here without my husband. I wonder often what his adjustment period will be like when he comes home because this place was hardly "home" to him before he left and it's become "home" to me in his absence.

Hazard pay and separation pay kicked in last pay period so for the first time in like 4 years, money isn't tight. I would give it up to have my husband home again but I'll take it, I guess! We're saving up for a Disney vacation during his block leave and just the simplicity of talking about it and planning it has lifted both of our spirits. He says his commanders are "confirmed" to be "trying" to get them home early but I'm not holding my breath, lol.

He ended up taking his turn at the remote base, which has been good and bad. Getting there was an ordeal. His plane out there was grounded and then he was kicked off the next flight so he had a long, difficult night and day of traveling in full gear (plus medic gear), but he's there now and went from having a nice big room all to himself to having 2 roommates squished into a little space. The base he's at now is smaller and dustier and doesn't have all the shopping and things but I think he'll be happier where he's at now. For one thing, because he'll be busier, but also because we were always the type to pick second shift because there were less head hanchos around and that's what it's like at this smaller base. He likes that it's more laid back and I think it's good for him to have roommates even though he can't skype with us at 0430 (8pm for us) anymore.

These pictures were posted on facebook the other day and it really got to me. Thought I'd share with you.

At the range

typical Afghan dust dorm

It really was about 115 degrees yesterday so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers!          

The Big D: Life Has To Go On

02 June
It's a new month! It's always kind of a big deal for me to turn the page on the calendar during these times of seemingly endless waiting.

June promises to be a busy month for me. My husband made me promise we would stay active and busy and we are but I'm learning another difficult lesson as I get into summer and that is: if I want to enjoy the things we've always done together while my husband is away, I'm going to have to learn to do some things without him. That leaves me torn because there is a little piece of me that thinks I am not allowed to have fun in his absence and he is not allowed to have fun in my absence (little rabbit trail...near the end of AIT the movers came to pack up our stuff. So my already bleak existence--sharing a room at my parent's house with my three kids while 90% of my stuff was in storage--was even bleaker. My sister took the kids for the night so I didn't have them underfoot during the packing and I found myself in bed after a long day, all alone, with a pathetic little bowl of popcorn in my lap that was my dinner. My husband picked that precise, miserable moment to text me to say that FTX was over and he went to Fago De Chao in downtown San Antonio in his dress blues with his buddies to celebrate and it was sooooo wonderful and amazing and he gorged himself himself on 7 different kinds of meat and had sooooo much fun. So I did what women do and felt sorry for myself and got mad at him for having fun while I was miserable and engaged in an ugly text fight. Not my proudest moment. I admit with equal parts shame and pride that I texted him back 20 minutes later, apologetic, and telling him he had my permission to blame this all on my "time of the month," which was partly true. ).

Now I find myself, after receiving an invitation and talking it over with my husband, having agreed to drive down to Florida later this month to meet friends and go camping. Gulp. I've never even thought about attempting camping without my husband (who earned his Eagle Scout at 16, btw, and can do anything camping related). I'm even raising the stakes by renting a pop-up from the MWR (something we always talked about doing together). I'm slightly scared to death to pull that thing for 354 miles alone but my friend's husband has been informed that it will be his job to back it into the campsite once I get there. It kills me to think of doing this without my husband. He would really enjoy this trip.

I'm going to pour a little more salt in his wounds while I'm there and go to a Tampa Bay Rays game because our Kansas City Royals are in town. Correction--HIS Kansas City Royals. Not mine. I'm a fan only because he is (one of our first dates was the cheap seats at a Royals game ).

 And I'm the one who gets to see them play in Florida. He will be sitting in the back of a first aid truck in the middle of a 15 hour shift, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert, waiting for someone to need him and his medic bag while I am proudly wearing my jersey that he got me for our first Christmas together, eating peanuts and ducking pop-flies. It just doesn't seem fair.

THIS is the hard part of being an Army wife, I think. Missing them when you're bored and lonely and miserable is one thing. But missing them when you're out there, living a life you are supposed to be living together is a special kind of torture. But I will do my best to have fun with my friend and her family. I will take lots of pictures and tell him how I wished he was there every second and it will be true and he will believe me. And he may secretly want me to be as miserable as he is but he would never say it out loud. I wouldn't hold it against him anyway--I would be a hypocrite if I did. So I will soften the blow by telling him how much better the trip would have been if he was there, and how we'll do it again next summer when he is home. What else can an Army wife do? She still has to live, as weird as it feels to be doing it without her soldier.          

The Big D: It's not end of the world

20 June
Ok. True story. I had written this really long post about how I survived my camping trip with my kids and how miserable I was, missing my husband the whole time--I even included cutesy pictures of my daughter on the beach. And then I deleted it all because I sat there reading it and thinking...naaaahhhh, this isn't really true. This is the same story Army wives hear and tell each other ALL THE TIME. "I miss my hubby so much! He is my other half! I can't do anything but lay around and feel sorry for myself when he's gone!" You don't need another one, right? So I'm just going to tell it like it is. Or was. For me.

First, I have to tell you, this was hard. A few days before we were supposed to leave, we were in the dr's office with pink eye and all my kids were on antibiotics. Being a single mom right now, I barely left the house for ANYTHING much less getting ready for this trip. I had a couple of moments when I thought to myself, "Screw it. This is too hard to do alone. I'll call my friend and tell her I can't go." But their infections started clearing up and I had spent $20 on a tow hitch for the camper so I figured I might as well go for it.

I was so stressed with having everything ready to be loaded up, dropping off the dog at the kennel, picking up the camper, reloading half of it because the bicycles wouldn't fit in the back, parking the camper halfway around the block because I live in a 4-plex and couldn't exactly park in front of my front door, making 17 million trips with sleeping bags, coolers, camping chairs, etc, screaming at my kids because they were underfoot and not helping, that I texted my husband just before getting on the road, drenched with sweat, to tell him that I was never, ever doing this again without him.

But it was definitely too late to back out now so I got on the road. Roughly 350 miles later, I was watching my friend's husband back my camper into its spot (as promised) and thinking, "Thank GOD for men." I know we're supposed to be women, hear us roar, but sometimes you just need a man around. There's no way to get around it. The world will never function properly without men. Once the camper was plugged in and the air conditioner roared to life, I could finally relax and look around me and realize how lucky I was to be there.

Yes, I was tortured with constantly wishing my husband was with me, doing these things for me, especially when we were on the beach and I was seeing all those men on vacations with their families, playing with their kids in the ocean. I tried not to stare like freak at them. It was hard not to feel sorry for myself.

Those moments passed because I allowed them to and I gotta tell you--I had the best time with my friend. I've known her since kindergarten (that was in 1985 so we had to keep in touch via snail mail when she moved away in the 5th grade--I know you youngin's who were born in the mid-90's are going to think that's, like, so old fashioned). She moved to Florida for grad school and now happens to live 2 hours from where we got stationed. How cool is that?!?

At some point during this trip, I came to the conclusion that I might have, in some ways, been able to enjoy myself more because my husband was gone. Is that terrible to say? It is true that the whole dynamic of this trip would have changed if it were "couples," instead of me needing my friend and her husband, not just to do those complicated "manly" things like setting up my pop-up camper, but for simple things like company. And because my husband wasn't there, we could share a car to get around. We could have dinner together every night at their camper (which was much nicer than my little rental). I could visit endlessly with my friend who, before we moved here, I hadn't seen for 5 years.

I love my little family and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love doing things together and going places together and I hope that we can go back to St. Petersburg when my husband comes home so he can see all of the things I saw and it will be a totally different experience when he's there. But I can be glad, in a way, that this trip was "mine" and not "ours." It's ok. It's not the end of the world. Deployment is not the end of the world. Life still goes on and fun still happens and good can be found in the absence of your other half.

And because I just can't resist...here's that cutesy picture of my little princess at the beach.

The Big D: Our First Skype Fight

Sometimes I love FB. It's my main line of communication with my hubby. It has been a great way to get to know new people at my FDS and I've also been able to keep in touch with friends back home. I can post a pic of my 7 year old with her just-pulled tooth between her fingers instead of having to call all the grandmas individually. It's great. But sometimes I believe that FB is the freaking spawn of Satan and has no earthly business distracting us from our real lives with virtual pseudo-crap that masquerades as real life. But I digress.

 My husband and I fling arguments back and forth for a while on FB chat but he has to go to work and I have to take my daughter to art class so hours go by without responses and a conversation that should have taken 20 minutes and been done with dragged out ALL DAY LONG. That is not good for women--to stew all day on stuff like that. It makes petty little things grow and fester into malignant, all-consuming problems. Yes, it was a horrible, horrible day.

So, here's what I did and why I'm telling you guys about this. I've been around long enough to know the destruction that can be wrought during a fight in which the words you use are typed/written instead of spoken. Once you click "send" he can read your words over and over again. He can read in between the lines and infer things you didn't mean. You can never take the words back, even if you apologize and say you didn't mean it--the words are still THERE, hurting each other for internet eternity. So I thought on that and prayed before every single reply I wrote to him. There were some messages that I typed while my heart was thumping and smoke was pouring out of my ears that I deleted and started over because it was more important to me that he understand why I was ticked than to just know that I was ticked. I could have called him names (and believe me I wanted to) but I didn't. I didn't want to pretend nothing was wrong either, so I kept my words honest and focused on me instead of accusing him (he didn't hurt me intentionally and I always knew that even though it didn't diminish how hurt I was). It wasn't about venting or harping at him either. That's not communication. I tried really, really hard, as mad as I was, to keep an even temper while I was writing and tried to anticipate his reaction to what I was saying. Honestly, I didn't know for sure. He said he thought he was being funny and meant nothing by it. I could have been makings worse but hoped I wasn't.

And you know what? I woke up this morning to a lengthy, apologetic, sappy, romantic message and I wrote him one right back. Can I tell you part of what he said? It makes me smile.  "I'm waiting to come home to you because you are the most beautiful woman I know. You are the mother of my children, the love of my life, my best friend, the person I would die for." I would have rather had hot make-up sex, of course, but this wasn't a bad substitute. And now we have those loving messages full of kind words that we can look at over and over, for all internet eternity.

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dweling on it separates close friends. Proverbs 17:9.          

The Big D: Passed the 100 Day Mark

09 July
Ok, the kids are in bed and it's late but I'm going to crank this out while it's on my mind.

A while back someone asked me why I moved to our FDS when my husband deployed so quickly. I responded hastily and without much thought that I am 33 and too old to be living with my parents and gave her a little smiley face. This is all true, but after spending a LOT of time with my family on a little "vacation" (that's only half over--ugh!) I kinda feel like I owe it to her to find that thread and let her know that my reasons really go much deeper than that.

I love spending time with my family. They spoil me in some ways--not in others--but generally, we are a happy, healthy, functional bunch.

At an amusement park over the weekend after the 4th, my sister and I are in this little boutique that sells bath salts and body lotions and stuff. I'm sniffing bath salts and there's this one I keep going back to. I nudge my sister and tell her she needs to smell it too because I really like it. She takes a sniff and says, "Ew. It smells like a man." I tip back the container and see that it is called "American Cowboy," and is, in fact, a man's scent. Oops. I sheepishly put the lid back on and tell her I guess it's because I haven't smelled a man for so long. She quirks her eyebrows and shudders a little bit like she doesn't know if she should be amused or grossed out and leaves the shop but I steal another sniff because I realize that it faintly reminds me of my husband and I'm not ready to pull myself away from it yet.

I consider buying a little package of it but don't feel like explaining to my family why I'm buying men's bath salts so I just let it go.

When our day is nearly over there's a free concert when the park closes. They do this big patriotic tribute and ask the veterans to stand up and be recognized and there's the usual smattering of gray-headed old guys in leather vests from Vietnam who stand.   No big deal. But then the guy on stage says that last year a soldier who had just come home from Afghanistan personally requested that he also thank the families of those deployed, specifically, the wives and children who are left behind. I just about lost it. I'm shrinking in my seat, trying to hold back tears and my 7 year old spins around to flash me a big smile because she knows that guy is talking about us. I give her a watery grin and hope she doesn't notice and ask me why I'm crying. I wouldn't be able to speak if I had to and even if I could, I wouldn't because there isn't anyone here who understands.

That, friends, is why I couldn't stay home, 120 miles from the nearest Army post, 1000 miles from where the home is that I will share with my husband. He may not be there with me right now but the promise of him is. His things are there: his uniforms hang in the closet, his tool box is in the garage, his soap is under the bathroom sink. The office where he will work when he gets home is down the street. And there are thousands of people there who have been right where I am. They're living it right now. They know. You don't have to put words to what you're feeling when you are so lonesome for your husband you could cry. They don't baby you and they don't need to because in the presence of those who've gone before you and endured one or two (or more) deployments, you feel a little stronger and you know you'll survive it too.

I am here tonight in my parent's living room, surrounded by people who know me and love me and feeling a little bit lonely. I am actually sitting on the same old hard blue couch that I grew up with and finding myself homesick for our duty station, where I now feel that I belong, even though I had never stepped foot in the state prior to moving there in January. It makes me marvel at how wonderfully, miraculously adaptive we human beings are. We can pretty much get used to anything that's thrown at us and have the capacity to make the best of anything. Everyone has this capacity, I think, but most people are so afraid of pain that they avoid change in order to cling to a thin thread of comfort (which is really only just a facade, isn't it?). Those people really sell themselves short. We Army families are lucky in a way to be forced into big life changes without being asked. I would have never said to my husband, "Let's move to another state and start over," but here we are, happily adapted to it, calling it "home," and craving the new comforts of it.

Night, all. *Yaaawwwnnnn*          

The Big D: And Marriage

26 July
Well, I am back from the longest vacation EVER, and glad to be home. I loved visiting my family and my husband's family but it's nice to wake up to reveille every morning again.

I have learned a little bit more about deployment. For instance, one of the biggest health issues my husband treats is...er...pooping problems. Do your husbands a favor and tell them to eat the fresh fruit that is offered at the dfac every chance they get, lol. That will keep them from knocking on the medic's door and asking all sorts of embarrassing questions while the medic's wife waits patiently on the other end of Skype, snickering quietly and honestly feeling bad for the guy who's never experienced these..."problems" and their side effects before.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet for my husband and his unit. They continue to work at their mission and have nearly completed it. They have begun talking about making preparations to return to kaf, and then to return home even though they're barely more than halfway through the whole deployment. I'm learning that it takes a lot of time to get things put away, packed up, inventoried, and ready to out-process (by the way--helpful tip: "Redeploy" means "come home"). They are even spreading rumors about coming home early but I don't believe them for a second. My husband was given a target date at the beginning and that's what we're looking at as a countdown day but we all understand that everything is fluid and subject to change.

Ironically, things back home have NOT been quiet at all, I discovered as I spent time catching up with old friends. Three families we knew split up. Three. Two of them were not surprising, but one of them was a total shock and it makes me want to cry to think of it.

So many of us in this Army life worry about the separation the Army causes and the toll it takes on marriage and kids but in my little universe, it's living in the real world that is more destructive to a marriage. This family I know...they had it all together.  They had some issues due to job losses but they still got to live in the same house and be parenting partners and figure out how to get through their trial together. I envied them their "togetherness" when my husband was yanked away from us by the army. And yet that family chose to separate.

I felt so bad for the wife, my friend, until she started talking about the therapy she was going to and how it was time for "her" now and she deserved "respect" too and in a way she was relieved by the separation.  A part of me wanted to pull my hair out and scream that she GETS to be with her husband and CHOOSES to do life ALONE!?!? I'm so sick of doing life alone and I long to be with my husband again and no, things are not perfect in our marriage--no one gets to say that. Sometimes he is selfish and sometimes I am selfish. We had a particularly difficult time in our marriage a couple of years ago when I wanted to throttle my husband and was so mad at him I wouldn't speak to him for days. Some might have said that I would have been justified in leaving him but no matter how much my feelings were hurt I couldn't deny that deep down he was a good man, and I picked him, and I considered myself "stuck" with him. Now that we are past that trial we had, I can say it with a smile. And I can tell you what a GIFT it is to be married and to have a partner in life--even when he is on the other side of the world.

I've said it before I feel so strongly about it, I'll say it again. Deployment is NOT the end of the world. It is not the worst thing that could happen to a marriage. There are ways to stay close and connected and we are SO BLESSED with technology that keeps us in contact every single day. It is hard work, yes. It's not the same as having him here with me. It's not what I would choose. And I have no idea what it's going to be like when he's actually home and we have to relearn how to do life together after being apart for essentially a year and a half (with a few hectic weeks thrown in there between training and deployment). But life rarely turns out how you plan it. It just doesn't. You don't always get to choose how things will be and even if you did, there is a limit to what you can know about the future so your choices will be flawed and leave you with a feeling of discontent. All you can do is to learn to be content in every circumstance--whether you have a little or a lot, whether your stomach is full or empty, whether you wanted things to be this way or that. This is not some kind of phony "positive thinking" mind game you play with yourself. It can sometimes only be accomplished through prayer and dependence on something you believe is in control when you realize you are not.

If your husband is near you right now, do me a favor and give him a big hug and tell him you're thankful for him. If he's not, write him a love letter and tell him you're doing ok and that and you're thankful for him. And if you're a praying person, toss one up north and tell God you're thankful for your husband even when things aren't exactly as you thought they'd be.


 "It would be the greatest of tragedies to sacrifice others in the effort to find ourselves." Erwin McManus    

The Big D: A Hard Week

02 August
I tried to update you all on this past week last night but it turned into a boring rant (this has kinda been the week from hell) so I deleted it. You don't need to know all the details about how much my husband and I are missing each other, or how down in the dumps he is about a few specific things that will probably be of little or no benefit for me to share so I'm just going to let you know that even though I put on a brave face and smile through my hard weeks, all is not well all the time over here in ArmyWifeLand.

I do want to share with you this image:


I believe in this with every single cell in my body so I'm going to list a handful of things I am thankful for.

-I am thankful for the Word of God, which reminds me to focus on things that are lovely, and admirable, and excellent, and worthy of praise, instead of things that irritate the living crap out of me.

 -I am thankful for the calendar, which tells me that this deployment is more than half over because in my heart the end feels about as far away as it's ever felt.

 -I am thankful for the Army and all it's given us even though it feels like it's causing a lot of heartache right now. I have only to close my eyes and remember what our lives were like the day before we got the news that our waiver was approved and he could swear in--how much we hoped that it would happen and feared that it might not! We had reasons--good reasons, and it's easy to forget them a year down the road when the struggles we faced back then are now a distant memory and are replaced by new, different struggles that we kind of knew were coming but had no way of really being able to prepare for.

 -I am thankful that this week will pass because that's the thing about time--it's always moving forward even when it feels like it's not.

You guys have a BLESSED week and feel free to list things you are thankful for too

The Big D: Convoy

I am very relieved and happy to report that my husband texted me at 7:30 this morning with the words, "Made it."


 I like to say I'm not a worrier (and usually I'm not) but I would be lying if I told you I didn't go to bed last night with images of him, sweating in the heat of the day, in full gear, rattling around in an armored vehicle, down some awful, dusty, dangerous road, and WORRYING about what could happen. I mean...HOW COULD I NOT?!?!

So I did what I do and I opened my bible. I could not have fixed dinner for my kids, or helped them with their homework, or bathed them, read to them, and tucked them into bed with a kiss goodnight, or found sleep for myself, if I did not have a source of comfort and security to turn to.

Every single person alive has to put their trust in something just to get through their day. During that difficult day, I could have put my trust in my husband's training but it can only carry him so far. I could have put my trust in the leadership of our country and of the Army but they are human and fallible. I could have put my trust in body armor and vehicle armor but that is penetrable. So I chose to put my trust in God, not only to protect my husband, but to protect my heart if the bad guys got their way.

It's the only way I know how to have peace during a time of unrest. I sincerely don't know how people who do not believe in SOMETHING can get through times like this. 


This is my favorite "worry Psalm."


I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
He freed me from all my fears.
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened;
he saved me from all my troubles.
For the angel of the Lord is a guard;
he surrounds and defends all who fear him.
                                                Psalm 34:4-7


I read once that the word "surrounds" is translated from a Hebrew word which means, "encamped."  That's particularly helpful to one who's praying for a soldier, don't you think?

The Big D: 9 Deployment Fun Facts

12 August
Nine Deployment Fun Facts:

1. Every once in a while I hear the neighbor's garage door go down and even though I know in my head it's not mine, there is a rebellious little subconscious synapse that fires in my brain that cries "He's home!! He's home!!" Then the conscious side of my brain takes over and I have a quick moment of plunging sadness that takes a minute to recover from.

2. It is my husband's job to turn on the fan before we go to bed. That's why, nearly every night for the last 150 days or so, I have kicked the dog out of the way, climbed into bed, gotten comfortable, then had to get out of bed to turn the fan on. Almost without exception.

3. I have come to treasure that precious 2 hours of blissful peace and quiet between the hours of 9pm and 11pm (sometimes midnight) after the kids go to bed and before I go to bed. Sometimes I plan all day what I will do with those hours: read a book I haven't gotten to all day, watch a movie I've had DVRed for 3 weeks, take a bath with Pandora blasting from the computer in the other room. Whatever. Those hours are MINE and I'm not going to give them up easily when my husband gets home and we have to go to bed at 9:30 because he has to be up for PT so stinking early.

4. I probably spend about half on groceries what I spend when my husband is home because I have daughters who graze like I do and are happy to have a bowl of popcorn, some cheese slices, grapes, and maybe some carrot sticks for dinner. I will probably also gain 10 pounds in the first month after my husband comes home because I'll have to eat a real dinner every night...like the kind you need a fork to eat.

5. Sometimes you haven't any idea what you are capable of handling until you have no choice but to do it on your own and that's not always a bad thing. It can be very empowering if you can keep yourself from self-pity.

6. Sometimes things happen that you just can't handle on your own. So you learn that you can't really make real friends until you are forced to depend on someone because your husband is gone and you have no other choice. But then you get to return the favor and friendship blossoms.

7. Every bad thing that happens will pass.

8. I love my kids. I have always been thankful for them. But lets be honest--kids spend their entire lives learning how to push your buttons. There are days when they can drive me so crazy that I question why I wanted to have kids so bad in the first place. But not on a Sunday evening when we're watching a movie together and all three of them--and the dog--are crowded together on the couch with me and I can feel their warmth and hear their giggles when I would otherwise be totally alone. I appreciate the company of my kids in the absence of my husband more than ever before.

9. I fantasize about my husband's homecoming and *ahem* his first night home (or the first 10 minutes when we sneak up to the walk-in closet and lock the door) like every wife whose husband has been gone for a long time. But sometimes I just fantasize about being hugged.          

The Big D: Countdown to the end

12 September
Every day that passes gets me closer to the end of this.  Until then, I just continue to carry on and stay active, putting things on the calendar and taking care of things that need taking care of but I think this last little bit is going to feel like the longest of the whole deployment.

I have a handful of friends whose husbands just returned in the last week or so and I'm not going to lie to you. It is so hard to see them with their husbands. I had to watch a friend and her family sit in front of me at church last Sunday and their little boy (who looks SOOO much like his daddy, who I had never seen before) was crawling all over him, clinging to him and whispering in his ear, and I knew how happy they were because I watched her cry, 10 days before his return, overwhelmed by the absence they had endured and the excitement of him finally coming home. But there I was, still alone and fighting the urge to be insanely envious of her. In those moments, it feels like I still have SO LONG to wait!

There are so many of those hard moments when it feels like this separation will never end, and maybe it even feels like the cost of this life is just too great.  I've heard from several women who are struggling and I'm the kind of person who says we have to be master of our emotions and turn to something that encourages us.

I happen to be reading "Bonhoeffer," right now, a book about a German pastor who stood up to Hitler in the years leading up to WWII and was arrested and executed for his part in an assassination attempt. He spent 18 months in prison before being executed by the Nazis but during those long months he was permitted to write letters and he had a fiancé named Marie who received many of them. Something he said to her in one of his letters has encouraged me and I go to it in my mind every time I want to feel sorry for myself or I wonder if this is all worth it:

"No, you needn't have a moment's worry--I'm not worried either. You do, of course, know from the little we've said to each other that danger exists not only out there [on the battlefronts] but here at home as well, sometimes rather less so, sometimes rather more. What man of today has the right to shun it and shrink from it? And what woman of today should not share it, however gladly the man would relieve her of that burden? And how indescribably happy it makes the man if the woman he loves stands by him with courage, patience , and above all--prayer." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I want to encourage you who are struggling. The separation will end, the hard moments will pass, and when you are reunited, the painful memories will fade. I don't say this as an expert because I am still living through it. I say it because I believe it will happen. Be courageous, have patience, and pray.  If all else fails...

    

The Big D: The end is near and the pressure is on

02 October
With my mind on reintegration (we have such an unbelievably short time left--and the date is still holding!!) I've had some strange thoughts swimming around in my head and I've resolved some of them, which has removed a huge amount of pressure I stupidly placed on my shoulders, so I thought I would share some of my stupidity and how I am getting past it:

I am an over-achiever. Let's just get that out there. You might have been able to figure that out through reading my other posts, or if you know me personally. If you ask me to do something, I will not only do it, but I will do better than that if at all possible. I also like order. I like when things make sense and that's a big reason why I am even writing all of this. For so many young wives, enlisting in the army and sending a husband off to BCT makes them feel like their life is a suitcase that's been dropped down the stairs and all the insides have been dumped out and scattered all over the place. I like to walk up behind you, pick up your things, fold them neatly, tuck them back in, then hand you back your suitcase with a smile, having made sense of it all for you.

So now you will understand, maybe, the range of emotion that has been running through my brain at having such a close homecoming date to hold on to. I have gone from "This doesn't feel real yet," to "I've got to drop EVERYTHING and make the house perfect," to "Forget perfect, I need to finish this project before he gets home because he will totally not 'get' why I'm spending so much time on it and I won't be able to work on it much after he's here," to "Crap. What else about the way I've been doing things is going to have to change?"

Let me clarify...it's not "change" that scares me. We've been married a long time and have been through lots of things that have changed us as individuals and as a couple. Change is just a part of the marital package. What's had me all wound up is the fact that I have ordered my life in a very intentional way that makes sense to me. I have priorities--for me, they're spiritual things (church is where we are on a Sunday morning; yes, Bible study is an hour away twice a week but I wouldn't miss it for ANYTHING, if there is a social thing or a service thing going on with church, I do my best to be there). Doing life this way is how I feel I am being obedient to God (maybe if you're not a person of faith you have nothing to relate this to, but maybe you do, so I'm just going to put it all out there).

A couple of days ago, I had this raw, panicky thought: how do I continue to live in what is, for me, a God-honoring way, when I now have to share my daily life and these priorities that I have had the ultimate say in, with another person--a person who hasn't been on the same journey as I have and who isn't where I'm at spiritually? My husband and I make a really good partnership but my walk with God is something about me he appreciates from a distance, y'know? Anyway, this thought really threw me for a loop and I shared my concerns with my bible study friends (who are much smarter and wiser than me, lol) and one of them said to me, "Can I say something? You're breaking my heart a little bit by thinking you have to have everything perfectly ordered when your husband comes home. It doesn't have to be, ok? Just take it a day at a time and quit trying to be everything to everyone." I burst into tears when she said that. It was such a relief to hear someone say those words and I didn't even realize that's what I had been doing in trying to anticipate what my husband's reactions would be to the way I'd ordered our lives (let's face it--it's been a year and a half since we sold our house in Kansas City and had anything resembling a normal life as a family unit so there's bound to be some surprises for him), and trying to fit all the mixed up pieces together beforehand.

So, I'm not doing that anymore and it is SUCH load off! I do anticipate that some of my habits will have to change but I will give them up and not require my husband to conform to my routines because it just shouldn't be that way...in my very old-fashioned opinion, anyway. My husband has never been one to aggressively be "The Man of the House" and he's never played that card with me to get his way, but I think deep down, that's what men really are when they are at their best, God-given potential as leaders, lovers, providers, and protectors. I want him to slip back into that role without being hindered by my whining about what I'm giving up. And even though it feels like what I am giving up is good (and I've been fortunate to have the alone time to develop some of the life-long disciplines I didn't have before), I am resting in the knowledge that by submitting to the way my husband wants to order our lives--it's ok, because God gave me my husband and in being a good, and happy, and undemanding, and uncomplicated wife, I'm still honoring God with my life. It will look a little bit different after the big day but I'm not really losing any ground with Him. He knows.

Wowza. That ended up being really long. I'm sorry if this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, lol. But I still hold onto the off-chance that there is someone out there who can use this to make sense of their own unique situation and so I'll hit "post" instead of "delete."           

The Big D: It's over

18 October
No words. Just.....