A Few Steps Back

Sometimes, we just need to let go.  As we slowly move through life in the military, we learn to adapt and become stronger, building brick walls around our hearts as we go.  We begrudgingly move through deployments trying our best to ignore the feelings of emptiness that threaten our success.  We tell ourselves we are ready to move and that a change will be good.  We guard our tongues when all we really want to do is scream at the military for making it so hard because we know that no matter how hard we try, we cannot change our circumstances.  We deny our minds access to think about the things we are missing because of our duty to the military.  Every so often, though, a brick becomes loose and the wall crumbles a bit.  With hardened hearts, we quickly try to patch it back together before it falls completely.  We push the thoughts to the back of our minds hoping that with time they will just go away.  We are unwilling to lose strength.

Randall and I had just gotten the kids to bed and sat ourselves on the couch ready to watch our evening television shows.  I was ready to decompress for the day and forget about the thoughts going through my head.  Randall, with his impeccable instinct, noticed that I had been quieter than my usual self lately and asked if everything was okay.  He makes a habit of checking up on me regularly, but I generally tell him nothing is bothering me and that I’m just tired.  But this time, something urged me to talk to him.  Something in my head told me that he needed to know what was on my mind.  I broke down. 

The truth is, my heart has been yearning for those things I miss.  Growing up, it wasn’t just me, my brother, and my parents.  It was my entire family—grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, close family friends—and I never missed out on anything.  Now, family is hundreds of miles away and we see them only but a few times a year.  When I talk to my mom on the phone, I find joy in hearing about the family get-togethers and the new things that my one-year-old nephew is doing, but deep down it breaks my heart because I can’t be there myself.  I think about Randall’s brother and sister-in-law, who we haven’t seen since January of 2010 nor have we met their baby girl who just turned a year old.  I am saddened by how little my kids get to see their grandparents because of how much I treasured seeing my own grandparents while growing up, and how they don’t get to play with their cousins.  I miss always having places to go and people to see, people who, no matter what, were always happy to see me.

And then there are my dreams.  For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed about a house, a big and beautiful house in which my family and I would settle down.  I fantasized about lots of windows to let light in, a wonderful gourmet kitchen which opened to the living room, and a large deck outside where I would sit and drink my coffee while listening to the birds in the morning.  I dreamt about the memories that would be created in this home.  I visualized my kids running around a large yard in their bare feet, or sledding down a hill in the winter.  I see myself looking out the windows admiring the plush, green leaves in the summer, the beautiful colors on the trees in the fall, the softly-falling snow in the winter, and the first blossoms in the spring.  I miss the seasons of the north where I am most at home.  Now, despite my acceptance of my current circumstances, I can’t help but crave this dream and wonder if it will ever happen.   We have made some wonderful memories in the places we have lived, but all of these places are temporary residences we inhabit based on where the military sends us.  We acclimate to our surroundings but, for me, there is always a void, always something missing.

It felt good to vent my feelings, although Randall struggled with it because he couldn’t fix what was making me sad.  But there is no way to fix it, and that’s okay.  Being strong all the time is extremely difficult and no one is perfect.  It is inevitable that our bricks will crumble a bit here and there and we will regress.  Honestly, I am grateful that I miss these things so much because it means that I had a happy childhood.  It means that I paid enough attention while I was little to appreciate what I had.  It means that I learned to dream big so that I would have something to strive for when I got older.  The military lifestyle is nowhere close to the way I grew up.  But because I cannot change my circumstances, I can choose to accept them and create a new lifestyle, one that my kids will look back on one day and miss just as I do.  Every so often we fall a few steps behind in our journey towards strength, but eventually we catch up, all the while gaining a little bit more perseverance.  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” –Serenity Prayer

Learning to Swim

There are some things in life that are so simple and so obvious, yet we never realize them.  We take for granted the things that are amazing in our lives because we just don’t see how much of a blessing they are.  As I talked to my dad on Father’s day, he asked how the kids were and if anything new was going on.  I told him that they would be beginning swimming lessons that week.  He was excited for them and pleased that they would be learning something that is a huge accomplishment for kids.  Somehow we got on the subject of how my brother and I learned to swim.  I told him that I took lessons but not until I was a little bit older, maybe seven or eight, and I was pretty sure my brother took lessons at our old house with one of his friends.  My dad hesitated, trying to remember, and then asked my mom if that was correct.  She affirmed it.  I knew my dad couldn’t remember much about our swimming lessons because he was always at work when we went to them.  They were usually during the day and my mom was the one to take us and see us develop our skills.  It wasn’t a big deal, and my brother and I didn’t feel bad that dad wasn’t there.  We knew that’s just how it was.  I didn’t think much more about it until a few days later when I realized something so evident, so eye-opening, that I was beside myself that I hadn’t seen it sooner. 

Being a stay-at-home mom is a difficult job.  I don’t think I need to list all of the tasks stay-at-home mothers have to complete, not to mention keeping their sanity when the kids are out of control.  I admit I am guilty of finding a way to complain about everything that is required of me as a stay-home mom and I get extremely frustrated and exhausted with the demands that are placed on me.  But there is something I have been failing to focus on, something that would send all those complaints right back into my mouth and zip it shut.  What I now see is that being a stay-home mom is one of the best gifts we can be given as moms because we don’t miss out on our children’s lives.  We are there for it all, every new accomplishment, every activity, every hug when they are sad or when they are proud of themselves and every smile on their faces when we pick them up from school.  We get to see their lives first-hand.  We are the ones they default to when they are truly upset.  More often than not, the dads don’t get those things.  They have to settle for a play-by-play story of these things.  They work all day to make money for the family at the expense that they miss out on seeing new things in their children’s lives.  They know that their kids can swim, but they don’t know how they learned to swim.

For military dads, the inability to experience their children’s lives is even greater.  Deployments take them away from their kids for many months at a time.  They have no choice but to learn about their kids accomplishments through phone calls and e-mails.  They won’t let you know it, but their hearts are breaking inside because they want to be there with their kids.  While us military wives and moms complain to them about how hard things are and how we hate doing it all by ourselves (I am regretfully guilty of this!), they are envying us because we get to see all that the kids do.  We get to hug them and kiss them.  We get to be the ones they come to.  We get the glory.

Sometimes the things we think are the hardest in life are really our greatest blessings.  I challenge you, when you are faced with obstacles, to take a step back and try to find the goodness in your circumstances.  Think about how you would feel if you had to work full time and could only see your kids in the evenings and on weekends, or if you had to be away from them for months.  When you are about ready to lock your kids in a closet for a few days, remember that you get to be there, you get to see their firsts, you are the ones they lean on.  Tell your husband thank you often and have mercy on him, because he so badly wants to switch places with you!

What Would Have Been

I often wonder, if I had known more about military life before entering into it would it have changed my decision to marry a soldier?  If I had understood more about the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make, would I have continued dating a military man?  Would I have been okay with knowing my life would be controlled by the military or the idea of taking on single parenthood for months at a time, several times over?  If I had known that life would be far from the example I had growing up, in which my dad worked regular hours and was home every night for dinner, my mom had the help of her parents and other family members with watching her kids, and we had the privilege of seeing close friends and loved ones often, would I still have chosen a life so unfamiliar? 

The truth is, these questions are impossible to answer.  I’d like to think that knowing the answers would not have made any difference because the love which was pouring out of my heart for this man was the only thing that mattered.  However, there is no way to know, no ability to go back in time and see what decision I might have made.

The funny thing is, even though my mind sometimes floats off into a daydream and I think about these things, I am so thankful I did not know how military life would be.  I cannot bear to think that if someone had told me the answers to these questions before I chose this life, before I knew how strong I could become or how important I would be to my husband and kids, I would have turned around and walked away.  I have come to believe that one of life’s blessings is not knowing the future which lies ahead of us.  If we had the ability to foresee our futures and make our own decisions based on them, how often would we choose a path which leads to discontent?  How often would we change our course for our own benefit, only to find that it is much worse than what would have been if nature took its course? 

I do not regret the life-choices I have made, nor do I think that things would have been better if I had done something different.  All of my trust rests in the fact that this is where I’m supposed to be.  This is God’s plan.  Every time I struggle with my circumstances, I try to remember how much good will come out of me being a stay-home mom and a military wife.  When I think about my desire to work, I remember that, when the time is right, God will guide me in the right direction.  I can see now how all the difficulties and frustrations I face are put in place so that I will learn to grow and persevere and to draw me closer to God.  I think about how it is not just my life in the equation, but my husband’s and kids’ too.  Everything I do affects them, and they in turn affect me.  We have formed an inseparable bond, a unit which will carry each other through thick and thin.  I may not have known what lied ahead before I embarked on this life, but by listening to the Spirit inside of me I have found the life that was chosen for me.  I can rest my mind knowing that even if I had been aware of the trials of this life before I embarked on it, my choice would have been the same.