A Little Blue Suit for the Serious Work Ahead

I did promise that once the podcast that I participated in was live, I would let you all know. It went live last week, and I announced that on Facebook. It occurred to me I still needed to post about it here on my blog.

So here’s the link that will take you straight there:

Choosing Your Reflection

This podcast is all about wedding gowns and what goes into the decision of what you will wear for the big day. Before coming across this podcast channel, I had never given much thought as to WHY wedding dresses are so special or why I chose what I chose specifically. Yes, I love a beautiful wedding gown, but I had never thought about all the psychology behind that.

“Choosing Your Reflection” turned out to be a fun topic that crossed right over into my present day life.

The title of my episode was, quite fittingly, “White Gown, Blue Suit.” I think going into the show, you probably assume that I wore the white gown, and Alan wore the blue suit. But y’all, that is not the case. It’s more than that.

You see, on my wedding day, I wore both a white gown and a blue suit, and we decided the blue suit was more fitting to the life that I was preparing for as a military spouse. You can go here to hear the whole story.

Now here we are 19 years later.

….and ever so much older and wiser…also more wrinkly and several sizes larger on my part…Alan is amazingly enough still the same size.

But I feel like the blue suit ties back in to my current moment in time, and I find myself wishing I had a new one to wear. The thing is that at twenty years of Army service, you must make a decision. Either you will exit the Army in the form of retirement, or you stay in. We knew this was coming. I have felt the weight of it for the past year.

If you have followed this blog, you probably noticed my home sickness and longing to return to our homeland of Alabama. Maybe we could get a house with some land, some little wooden rocking chairs, and truly settle down. There is nothing settled down about moving every one to three years, as we have done for the past nineteen years. Really, that is our whole adult life.

But perhaps the year of corona gave me the restful quiet that I needed in order to face the future.

It really wasn’t all that restful, but with everything cancelled, we did get to be at home A LOT.

Alan’s career is going very well. Why would he jump ship just now? And this year has shown us like no other that virtual school is actually a thing that can be done for a high schooler, rather than making them go to multiple high schools.

No, I cannot home school small children. The stress of that is still agony to me. Square pegs do not fit in round holes, and I am very much a square peg when it comes to the round hole of home schooling children. The negative stress of it is still the reason I take heart pills everyday.

However, teenagers are easier for me. They know how to sit down, be quiet, and mostly do their work unassisted. I can manage that.

Also, this is the second summer in a row that we have not had to move, and what a relief that has been!

So anyway, I talked in the podcast about donning the blue suit for the serious work ahead. Well, this is me today, all over again. The world is gradually returning to normal. We have at least a year before we have to move again. Currently, there are no plans to retire from the Army.

So here am I. I’m putting on my new blue suit. Literally, I am totally going to order one. And I’m rolling up my proverbial sleeves and taking on the years ahead. We can do this; we are suited up and ready to go.

It will look different than the first nineteen years. The kids are older. My eye crinkles and laugh lines are deeper. That vision of a house of dreams in Alabama is now residing there in my brain. That desire to see the whole country and live in new and exciting places, well, it is pretty much gone. My heart yearns for familiar paths these days.

But that’s okay. We are all in. Come what may, God will take care of us.