17 weeks down

At least twice a week I get told, "I don't know how you do it" or "you are such a strong women, I couldn't do that". I don't know about all of that. I get emotional and moody. I cry, stress out, want my husband home, have pity parties, etc. I don't feel all that strong a lot of the time. But, I do know where people are coming from. It is difficult to be in this lifestyle (yes, I call it a lifestyle, not just my husbands job. That is how we roll). But, it isn't too difficult for me. Most of the time, I actually love being an Army wife! Deployments are tough, much tougher than you can even imagine, but depedning on the job your husband has, you can get used to some smaller seperations, and it can help.

My kids, to me, are the strong ones. They miss their dad, don't quite understand, act out sometimes because of it (and that results in getting in trouble), and they just want to do things with their dad. But, for the past 17 weeks, they have been pretty normal! Our oldest has his moments of sadness and longing for his dad, and our youngest talks about daddy all of the time and wants to know why work never ends, but they continue on. We talk about dad just about all of the time, but I don't mind, I could talk about him forever! ;)

I just want to say this. It is tough, but if you are a military spouse, family member or just a friend you can get through this, and it will result in a great ending, homecoming... Don't dwell on the fact that your loved one is gone, stay busy and keep your life going.

Just a quick though...

When I was growing up, I imagined being married! I knew I would be married to a wonderful man, we would both have great careers and that was the extent of my thinking... I never imagined that I would be an Army wife, and that my career would be that of a stay at home mom and wife, and that we would be in wars with other countries. I never thought that I would spend days, weeks, months apart from my spouse and he from our family.... I never imagined that I would be as happy as I am right one. My husband in another country, but still happy and loved and blessed as ever... I never knew I was made to be an Army wife until I became one!

God bless

P.S. If you are reading this, keep your chin up. The only way to get through this in one piece is to stop thinking so much, relax, think about the future, and know that your spouse is doing a great job, a job that only 1% of people are doing...

Time...

How is it that time can fly by quickly and at the same time it slows down and feels like it is going too slow? I feel like this a lot since Matthew has been gone. It was been 12.5 weeks now. Some days, that feels like a great accomplishment, but other days I feel like we are barely anywhere with it!

These past 5 days are a blur, I hardly remember the small details, but when I hear from him everyday, they seem to go more slowly, and of course they seem to go slowly when I don't get to talk to him either, until it is over and I see him online!

"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". This helps me get through when I am feeling down. I know that he will be home again before I know it, just some days I feel like it will never come and others I feel like it will be here in a drop.

God Bless

Fear and the unknowns

Proverbs 3:5, 6 ” Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (NIV)

When I am feeling down and I don't know what is going on with my husband or the Army or anything, this verse always makes me feel better. I just remember to put my trust and faith in God that things will work out how they are supposed to! So far, in the past almost 9 weeks of this deployment I have had bad weeks, good weeks, great days, fun times, sad times, confusing times, you name it and I have probably felt it. But, this verse really makes me feel like things will be ok!


God Bless

It is a cycle...

Life is full of cycles. Each year is a cycle of 12 months, 52 weeks and 365(6) days; each hour is a cycle of 60 minutes and so many seconds and every year has 4 seasons, just as a few examples. Every person has a cycle of moods, it doesn't have to be consistent, but your mood is always changing, and sometimes more or less than others.

My mood has a tendancy to stay up; happy, content, joyous, grateful, well, excited, optimisitc, etc. I do have anger, sadness, confusion, hurt, and so fourth but the happiness out weighs the other emotions about 98% of the time for me. If you know me, you know that I am uplifting and usually see the positive in every situation. I was like this last week for the most part, but it was an extremely difficult week either way. I explained in my last post the things that went wrong, but I kept my head held high. That is until Sunday night at church.

Levi gets to go to the nursery on Sunday nights, because he is under 5. Bruce however is 6 years old (6.5 as he always reminds me) and he has to sit with me in "big church" on sunday nights. The service lasts for an hour, and that includes, group prayer time, praise and worship and Pastor Sean preaching. It isn't too long and he is usually great about sitting still for long periods. This was the second time coming to our church on sunday night and I had convinced myself that he acted up last time, but he will do great this time. That was not the case. They had all of the men gathered around praying and he kept talking to me because he didn't want to pray, I held his hand to let him know it was prayer time (he prays at home for food and at night, he knows what prayer is) and he jerked away, screamed that I was hurting him and started to bawl his eyes out very loudly (something he can do on que by the way). As soon as the prayer was over I grabbed his hand and we walked out to leave, I was embarrassed and couldn't deal with how was acting, after the horrible last week and the emotions of the deployment built up...

That is when this nice lady that I usually sit by on sunday mornings came in (they were running late) and saw us leave. She chased after me, and then I started to cry. She prayed with me in the hall, and talked to Bruce. She told me that she almost didn't come to church that night because she herself was having an awful week as well and wasn't coping well. She said that she felt that God sent us both there to help each other.

That was 2 nights ago, and I have felt better ever since! I do believe that God was working with us both and answered our prayers for help. Also, that sunday morning Pastor preached on Isaiah and Job. I never realized how good of a man Job was before, but his story really related to me, and it is also what I needed to hear to realize that my positivness, even in a bad time, is needed and I should keep my chin up and keep doing what I do.

I wanted to share my story because even with an awful week, good things came out of it. A lot of people forget about the good things because they are often small and far between during rough times, but the good and simple things in life make it all better.

Here is a Bible verse that helped me:
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." Isaiah 45:7 KJV

God Bless whoever is reading this. I hope your day/night/week is a good one!