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.

The post A Little Blue Suit for the Serious Work Ahead appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This retreat was 100% necessary.

It is hard for me to even sit here and describe how desperate I was to get away two weeks ago because I returned fully restored, better than before. I am on the other side of that mental wall of misery now. Life is good and happy again, and I fully mean that.

When I packed my bags and left Alan with the boys, I did not even fully grasp why I need this so badly. I just knew that Alan works at home now, so he could handle the boys for the weekend just fine.

I did not realize how bad off my mental/emotional state truly was until I sat down on the airplane, buckled my seatbelt, was looking out the window, and heard a child cry. This was probably a preschool aged child. How many times have I flown with a child and had to quiet down a baby or a toddler on an airplane?

When I hear that sound, my heart always goes out to the parents. I have been that parent so many times. This time though the sound of the crying hit something deeper in my brain, down in my spirit, something I have pushed to the corners that comes overflowing out when I least expect it.

Tears.

No! No! I am not going to sit here and silently cry on this airplane. It is hard to explain why tears were so close to the surface, but I am going to try to explain myself anyway. All those memories of handling babies and toddlers on airplanes, they are all tied up in difficult memories I have of the hard work that I put in through all these years of being an Army wife.

I hear that crying, and instantly I am twenty-five years old, flying alone with my six-month-old to begin a new life in Texas. Alan will follow me in two weeks, but for now it is just me and the baby.

At the same time, I am twenty-eight years old, flying with a toddler and four-year-old alone because I wanted to visit Alabama longer than Alan had off from work. That day the flight was delayed two hours, and after hours of keeping the boys entertained in the airport, I was already on edge when I got on the airplane where I had to make sure Joshua did not come in contact with any peanuts, which seemed to be everywhere in those days.

The sound of the crying starts, and suddenly I was thirty-two, flying home with one-year-old John David to visit my parents who I do not get to see very often because we have lived in the D.C. area for five years. I remember that day there was a super kind lady on the plane who walked down the aisle and gave me a new and different toy for J.D. to play with so he would stop crying.

I am thirty-three years old, flying with all four of our boys to California. Mom flew with me because Alan is already in school.

There were so many moves, and there were so many airplane rides with small children and me. Somehow Alan usually was not there, and I cannot even remember all of them or why I took all of them. I just remember standing in the aisle, softly singing to my baby so he would not cry on the airplane.

I remember landing at BWI airport, with a baby, I don’t even remember which one, in tow, and completely unable to find my car in the parking garage at eleven p.m.

So all of this starts to flash through my head, and water is beginning to leak out of my eyes, while my nose fills up with the overflow of salty tears. I stiffen myself. NO! This is not the place. Every flight attendant on this airplane knows who I am because I am flying with Jennings. (I was alone in a three-person seat though, thanks to the rona.)

Instead, I focused my brain as hard as I could on praying that child to stop crying. He or she was asleep in like one minute. Thank you, Jesus!

Thankfully, I recovered, and Jennings soon joined me to talk all the way to Atlanta.

I had NO idea my brain was going to go in that direction from a simple airplane ride.

But the thing was that my head was already in that fragile place, from all the recent weeks of feeling trapped and homesick, so the airplane ride just kind of nudged me closer to the edge.

The first time this ever happened was the day I listened to a speech about the Combat Reboot program at my church. It just sort of lanced an emotional boil that had been festering for a while. Ew. Gross imagery. Sorry, guys.

Let me explain about that. Our church here in Maryland, back in the days when we all got to go to normal church, has a Combat Recovery program. One day the organizer for the Combat Recovery program spoke at a church business meeting. She was promoting the program and looking for new people to join and/or lead it. Alan has even been asked to lead the group, as it has to be lead by a combat veteran, but this is not Alan’s calling. I totally get that, as I feel that way about many things. Being a combat veteran does not automatically make you a good leader for veterans with PTSD.

I, of course, am not at all a combat veteran. Nor do I have combat PTSD. I have never seen war, lived with the daily threat of enemy fire, or had to watch friends die or be mutilated. Those are certainly not my issues.

However, as she stood up there talking about military veterans and their spouses and the challenges that they face and how this group can help them, I became a complete and total WRECK. I sat there and silently bawled my eyes out for what felt like twenty minutes. It was so humiliating and unexpected.

“Why??” I kept wondering. Why am I crying so much, and why can’t I stop??? And I could. not. stop. crying. It was terrible.

It was like every time she said the word “military” my heart just poured out more grief. This is so hard to explain, but again, I will try. I literally was left wondering if military wife PTSD could possibly be a thing. Maybe this is because this could be our last duty station? Or because we are nearing our twenty year mark? I don’t know, but suddenly, here it is.

When I was at this meeting, we had only moved in three or four months past. I was fresh off two years of moving in a row, five moves in four years, and eleven moves in eighteen years. Then there were those year long, fifteen-month, and six-month long deployments where I juggled the kids.

So many nights of being new in town, and it is like all the emotions of all those hard things that we dealt with in the midst of all these years as a military family just piled on top of each other in a very untidy fashion. You know how you stack things that are not equal sizes, and if you stack big things on top of little things and crooked on top of straight, and after a while it all just starts to slide?

Well, that day we had a full on avalanche of pent up feelings. When you are tense and fighting through a move or a family separation or a war deployment or being new year after year after year after year, it catches up with you.

This had never happened to me before, crying over I was not even sure what! I think it is the eighteen years of it just catching up with me. We could retire in two years, and I am so extremely ready to do just that. Retire and buy a house in Alabama, land of my forefathers. Maybe the Army thing possibly being almost over is a whole other part of it. I don’t know.

All the feelings started to come out my eyes and my nose:

-hurt -disappointment -uncertainty -inadequacy -failure

-abandoned– So many times I felt abandoned to deal with raising the boys alone. It was not Alan’s fault. He was doing his job, and that meant he had to go overseas sometimes. I knew that with my head, but sometimes it felt an awful lot like plain old alone. Maybe it was wrong, but it was a feeling I had to deal with.

-exhaustion -confusion -worry -frustration -anger

Well, obviously, I could go on and on. That was when I realized that no, Alan was right, combat recovery was not a good program for us. He did not feel like he needed it, and I needed recovery too much to go. That would have been a whole lot more of facing all those emotions that busted out all suddenly on me, and I could not handle it. I really couldn’t.

That incident was late last fall, and I had not had another moment of raw emotion like that one at the church business meeting until this flight to Florida.

But I am happy to tell you that I held it together for another twenty-four hours.

Then I spilled it all out onto Jennings, and somehow I feel like I ACTUALLY worked through it, to the point that I am not even the same and I am able to sit here and type about it without coming apart at the seams. I cried it all out in Florida. Poor Jennings! She got an earful!

Do you know why it helped?

Maybe crying it out, facing your problems, and talking about it always helps. I am not sure, but there was an extra layer present at Jennings’ beach bungalow. That added factor was the way that she pointed me back to what matters, to Jesus. She kept pulling up her Church at the Highlands telecasts and Christian music playlists, and it was exactly what I needed.

With God on your side, you are not relying on your own inner strength alone to get you through hard things. With God there is a bigger comforter and help that goes further than you could get on your own.

Jennings and I talked about our current problems, and we laughingly discussed and debated our old foes too. Together, we even combed Facebook and successfully found one of our friends from college days who we thought we would never be able to find. It was so good just to see her smiling face, looking exactly the same.

Every morning we ate our eggs and walked on the beach. Ugh, I would rather have cereal or a pop tart like in my younger days. Why won’t my pant size cooperate with that??

Then every evening we would take one or two walks. Two different nights we went out around midnight to search the beach for sea turtles laying eggs in the dark. There were none to be found though.

We got sun burned, ate lunch on the beach under our umbrella, and even went souvenir shopping. You might be happy to know that even down in Florida, they took our temperatures at the store, and everyone was required to wear a mask.

I got the cutest souvenirs ever, and I bought every single one of my boys (even Alan) a new Melbourne Beach t-shirt.

With every ounce of seriousness inside of me, I am telling you that this trip was a gift from God. He knew I needed it, and I am so thankful I got to go. The Lord saw my exasperation with lockdown isolation and homesickness, and he blessed me with a ticket to get me through until we visit our family in August.

If you are feeling miserable, pray!! Pray for help. You never know what that help may look like or what form it may come in, but don’t turn it down when it arrives!! You never know what God may have in store for you.

Seize the day! And pray!

We cannot wait to see all of our dear family in August! You will be getting the most desperate-for-people and visiting version of us ever. Ha! I hope you are ready!

The post Weekend Retreat: Dealing with Military Wife PTSD. Is that a thing? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today, no that is not true, this whole year honestly, I have felt SO incredibly homesick. This is not a small pang that comes and goes. It is a longing much deeper than that.

I have always said that home can be anywhere, that it is where my people are. That is mostly true, but the thing is that a pandemic year is the worst year ever to be newly moved in. Plus, there is the whole problem of my not even trying to make a place home any longer. I have hardly tried at all.

Maryland is lovely. You could not ask for a better city, better neighborhood, or even better neighbors. Things are perfect here. We even follow pandemic guidelines better than the South, so we are all honestly much safer here. Our COVID numbers are down while at home they are up.

But it is not home, at least not yet.

I have not felt this homesick since the year we moved to California. Alabama is home. Virginia is a second home, so that was extremely comforting last year, but Maryland is still new, and it is just not home. It is not.

Last week Alan’s cousin Alyson, who is our age, was in the hospital for twelve days, fighting for her life after open heart surgery. All week our thoughts and prayers were in Birmingham. I am relieved to tell you she is at home now. Praise the Lord!

This week, as I was cleaning, I came across an old journal from my senior year of high school. One journal led to another, and now I have just read my way through my entire college experience. It was so entertaining because I always had at least one or two little melodramas going on, but it was also so sad because I miss those people, all of them.

I miss running to my parents’ house when I wanted to escape my problems for a weekend. What I would not give to go shopping with Mom, or Katie, or Leigh. How I would love to sneak in a beach trip with Jennings. I want to pick up the phone and call Heather, Nikki, and Ginny right over for a drama analysis of what I should do about this problem or that only to all end up laughing hysterically about who knows what.

I want to run down to Chrisynda’s room to watch movies with the group and eat her Little Debbie cakes. Then I want to jog around the campus of the University of Alabama without my back or feet hurting. I used to think those were the good ol’ days, but after reading these journals, I was reminded that those days were full of worries!

I want to go walking at Westgate Park, see an Alabama football game, and have Dad walk in the door at home to surprise us all with Goldfingers or donuts.

Usually by July fourteenth, we have all gone down to Alabama, visited all the family, and also squeezed in a beach weekend. This year I booked it all for August even before we knew about the ‘rona, but I know it is better this way. It is hard to wait though.

The past is a place best left undisturbed. Obviously, I cannot go back to my college days, but I would love to see my friends. And I do not want Alabama to be my past anymore. I want back in. With school out and all church happening at a distance, I am missing the ties that are needed to make this place feel like home. The boys are in that same boat with me. For Alan, it may not be as bad since he has his job.

The Army thing is a whole other part of it. We are eighteen years in to this Army gig. An escape to civilian life back down South near family and friends could be so close it feels reachable. It teases me constantly. I dream about what kind of house we will have and all the land I would like to live on.

But I don’t know that we are close to that Army retirement.

Alan is currently still on track to stay in. I do not see anything stopping him from getting promoted again. You have to have twenty-two years in to make colonel. Alan is currently a lieutenant colonel. A thousand times I have said it, and I still feel this way, but I cannot be the person who stops him from achieving that, if that is his goal.

My permanent return to Alabama could still be years away, but I try not to think about that. Even returning to the D.C. area would at least be a little closer to home.

Today none of that matters though. At this moment, I am just homesick. I want to go home and see the people I love and miss so much. Being away is suffocating me now, especially seeing that my children are not settled in here either. They think they are happy, and they play their video games with their friends everyday. That is why I let them play video games so much. Minecraft time is friend time in our current environment.

Now I know we will be okay.

I will. The boys will. Eventually, we will all be out and about again. God is still in heaven. The sun still rises every morning. Sky appears to be fully in place, not falling down around us.

In three weeks, I am going home. I do not care what tries to stop me.

Pestilence, disease, tropical storms, whatever. I do not care. We are going home for two weeks. Alan’s leave has been approved, and I cannot wait.

I am even trying to lose a few pounds so I will look more like the April you know and love. The last four years, ever since I began taking beta blockers, I do realize I have steadily been packing on the weight. So far I have lost four whole pounds, but that just means I am about back down to last summer’s weight. I still have a ways to go, but I am working on it.

The boys have quizzed me ever since school finished on when we are going to Alabama and why we have not left yet. We are all very ready to see you all.

Allen and Emily, I will let you know when have our schedule figured out because we want to see you so much. Amy and Greg, you too. Alyson, we will be happy to bubble wrap ourselves before we come see you so we don’t give you any germs. We are just so happy you are back home.

Nonna and Mom, y’all cook or don’t cook whatever you want, we just want to see everyone! We’ll eat or sleep anywhere. I only wish it could be going home to stay, but I will take the two weeks we are given.

The post Indulging the Homesick Feeling appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

When we moved this past summer, it went differently than I thought it would. The vibe of the moving day exit of our beloved neighborhood was not at all the vibe that I expected, but in a good way.

Last time we left Virginia, in 2014, when we drove the boys away from this place so dear to our hearts, there was so much drama about it. One child was brave but sad, hugged everyone as expected and said his good-byes. Another hid in the car, refusing so much as to wave to anyone, to people he loved with all of his sweet almost-seven-year-old heart. Our pre-schooler hugged everyone and was a doll, and our baby had no idea what was going on. Everyone looked sad for a while in the car. No one wanted to leave. We had wonderful years ahead of us, exploring California, riding around on bicycles like feral children, and all sorts of exploring. The boys didn’t know that yet though. They only knew they were losing everything and everyone they held dear and trading it for the unknown.

This move, in 2019, was not like that. We had only stayed in Virginia one year, so lifting the boys back out was easier. The California and Georgia moves were still fresh on everyone’s minds. The funny thing is that we were still as attached to our Virginia community as ever, but this time the boys had something they didn’t have before.

They had trust. Their hearts rested in faith.

Our hearts and minds knew that moving was always hard and that there would be a phase where we would not have any friends. That phase may last a day, or it may last a year, but it would only be a phase. Eventually, each new place of the past had become home. Our boys knew this, and so they looked onto this move without the fear one has of something they have never done. Instead, they looked on this transition with wisdom, wisdom far beyond their years. This wisdom came at the price of four moves in five years, and it was fully earned. They trusted that everything would be okay. Not only did they trust God and each other, but they trusted us too. Sometimes, when the making friends part is coming too slowly, I feel like I have let them down.

On moving day, the boys said good-bye to their friends in the cul-de-sac, and they piled into the van. No one hid, cried, or resisted. We actually picked up Joshua on our drive out of the neighborhood because he was walking home from a friend’s house. He happily slid into the van with the rest of us.

Daniel spoke for everyone, when he said in a peppy voice, “All right! Where to next!”

He didn’t mean that question literally. We had shown the boys the new city and the house already, so he knew where we would go next. We were only moving two hours away. At the same time, we didn’t know anything about “what next” would actually be like. Such is the life of a nomad. Where to next? Will they welcome us there? Will we have anything in common with the people we meet there? How long will it take us to make friends and to feel at home again?

I was most amazed that Daniel, of all people, would take on such a happy attitude because he had the happiest year in Virginia. One of his best buddies lived next door and was in his class. I let him ride his bicycle to school with Caleb sometimes. Life had been insanely good for Daniel, with far more freedom than he had ever had before.

Yet there he was, ready and present for the next thing. That day they inspired me. I smiled, and I said, “Well, how about lunch next and then onto Maryland?”

Of course, all offers of food to cars full of males are always welcomed with open arms.

That morning I had felt sad and resistant. I lacked their faith and good attitude. Not a bit of me wanted to finish packing, cleaning, and loading, only to drive through two large metropolitan sprawls with a car full of children to a new town full of strangers. I felt old and tired of moving, but those children lifted my spirits. If they can do this, so can I.

Where are we going? Who knows? I am just going to have to trust God that it is good.

I am linking up today with Finish the Sentence Friday at FindingNinee.com. Today’s prompt is “Where are you going?” if you would like to join us.

The post Where to Next? The Trust of a Military Child appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

The Military life is a unique one for sure.

Sometimes I find myself saying things that are sort of ridiculous, so I took a few minutes to jot a few down. Maybe you can relate.

“I just can’t possibly sit through another church’s new member class. I won’t do it.”

–I said this with all the drama and emphasis you can imagine. Sitting for more than 30 minutes is agonizingly painful for my back, so new church member classes are both boring and torturous. I do not care about how many big theology school words you can throw around. You preach salvation by faith in Jesus. You stick to God’s word? I’m good. I’ve visited a few times, and everything seems to be right on. Add me to the roll. Do not put me through another one of those hours long classes.

“I moved the box of books to the basement, so really I’m done.”

When moving, “done” is definitely a relative term.

“I have 4 children, and the youngest is in 1st grade, but I know nothing more than a kindergarten parent here. Literally, I know nothing.”

New schools are each intimidatingly different from whatever their last school was, and they don’t go over the basics with 3rd grade classes the way they do for kindergarten parents, so you hang on to every word at Open House and read all the papers. Next year I can be more cool.

“We’ve moved 4 times in 5 years. Yes. 2014: Virginia to California. 2016: Cali to Georgia. 2018: Georgia to Virginia. 2019: Virginia to Maryland.”

This is what I said to Alan this week. He had asked, “4 times in 5 years? Is that really true?” So then I recited the list of moves.

“Yes, I know I have an Alabama driver’s license, Texas plates, and a Washington, D.C. insurance policy. I’m an Army wife. My husband is overseas in Afghanistan. They make us move a lot, and we are not required to get new licenses as part of a military exception. Can you please not give me a ticket?”

Okay. That one was actually 8 years ago I said that, and that Alabama state trooper did in fact still give me a speeding ticket. Oh well, I guess I was speeding, and you can’t win them all. I win almost none of them. If I get pulled over, you can be guaranteed I will also get a ticket.

“We haven’t decided whether or not to fool with curtains yet.”

“Maryland is the most expensive state in the union, and that is coming from someone who has lived in California, D.C. and northern Virginia.”

It’s the everyday costs more so than the housing costs I’m referring to, ya’ll. They charge you exorbitant fees to take your grass clippings, there are high HOA fees, and don’t even get Alan started on how expensive it was to register our vehicles. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that school lunch is only $2.50.

“You have got to see the Goodwill store here. It’s amazing.”

“I’m still getting up the nerve to go see my PCM because I don’t know if it will be a nice, helpful one or a mean, lazy one.”

You would not believe some of the experiences I’ve had, unless you’ve been a mil spouse or just a person for a long time too. Then you would definitely get it. Choosing a doctor blindly can be scary.

“We don’t have a dentist yet to put on this form, but they just had their check-ups 2 months ago, so we are not going quite yet.”

“I can’t pick a dentist blindly. How do you know the good ones from the ones who invent cavities to fill?”

I’m telling you, this happens.

“This place has the coolest library EVER!!”

“Where do people go here to eat BBQ?”

“I still can’t remember which day is trash and which day is recycling.”

Okay I know I said 14, but here are 2 more because they just keep coming to me…

“Honey! What is our zip code???”

“Wait. What state do I live in?”

I usually ask myself this at the grocery store for some reason. The sad thing is that it’s not just a freshly-moved problem. It’s a frequent-mover thing. It could be a year since our last move, and I will ask myself this in the store, usually wondering if I will be able to find certain regional foods, like Dale’s meat tenderizer.

Hope you enjoyed the list! Feel free to add to it in the comments section! Maybe I can make a Part 2.

Okay…Just one more!

“I rescheduled my heart procedure for 2 months out because that way Alan should definitely be in town. Hopefully.”

The post 14 Crazy Things I Said this Week that Make Perfect Sense for a Military Wife appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Yesterday I caught myself wallowing in the overwhelm of life. This is something I do for at least 15 minutes/day. Ha!

The boys and I have officially been in our new house for exactly 2 weeks now. There are still around 10 cardboard boxes scattered around the house, the hard ones, the ones you save for last. All of 3 or 4 things are hung on the walls, and the counter tops aren’t cleared off yet, not even to the manageable level, because we haven’t figured out where everything goes.

I just returned home from the grocery shopping with John David, so the kitchen is covered in food to be put away.

This was not grocery day. Grocery day looked much worse than this.

It is so easy to dwell on your problems.

Staying positive while staring at the seemingly 1 million things we still need to do doesn’t really come naturally.

I caught myself moping yesterday, as I sat down on my screened-in back porch, at this old glass porch table we’ve moved along with us at least 4 different times, maybe more. We’ve owned this porch table and chairs so long I have no memory of buying it! Thank God for things that last! Look! There’s a positive thought!

Sitting out there watching the two youngest boys jump on the trampoline and the little dog run around the yard, suddenly things didn’t seem so bad. It was even nice weather out! Cloudy and cool, a welcome change after 95 degrees.

Looking at your life in a positive life takes thought until it becomes a habit. Positive thinking is the OPPOSITE of unrealistic expectations, which are perhaps the biggest enemy of my lifetime. Unrealistic, idealistic expectations–ugh–make it so easy to think negatively because up against the ideal, everything is a disappointment, even when it shouldn’t be.

Thinking positively requires actual effort to flip the way you look at a situation, a person, or anything. It’s a learned skill, even.

I think it’s most important in your head, in the way that you think to yourself.

For example:

My usual pattern is this–

I can say what I said in my first paragraph.  10+ boxes are left to unpack. The closet broke today. The house looks untidy still. There’s nothing on the walls, and I haven’t even decided on a color scheme for the front room (which everyone will see). I’ve failed at this. Why can’t I do a better job?

See my broken closet? It’s so bad, I had to prop it all against the wall, or it would all be laying in the floor. Everything on the upper shelf crashed down around me too.

See.

When you put a successful spin on that thought process, you are allowing yourself to be happy.

“We are rocking this move. Only a few boxes are left. I know where almost everything is. Alan can fix the closet himself, I’m sure. It will be fun to decorate the front room. Besides all that, we’ve already met most of our neighbors, found a church that we like, been invited to someone’s house, and put together a swing set and the trampoline. Anyway, this screened-in back porch is AWESOME! Everything is going to be okay.”

I know you all can relate to this. No way am I the only person who beats myself up.

But another thing has to go too: Comparing yourself to others.

Comparison is TOTALLY the thief of joy. No other way around it. Life isn’t supposed to be about competing with your friends and strangers. We’re all different people with different circumstances, so it doesn’t make any sense anyway.

I think it’s more productive to compete with ourselves. Trying to beat your best time on a run, learning a better way to do something, accepting constructive criticism, and improving on anything that you do to compete with yesterday you, that’s a healthier way to live. I can’t control how fast this friend, according to her Facebook posts, is at unpacking. I can only focus on my own boxes.

I found this adorable heart, from Valentine’s Day, in one of John David’s boxes. There are positive things about moving.

**********

By the way, John David was absolutely adorable at the grocery store. That boy sang contentedly as he walked right in my way through the whole store. “B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o.”

Did I shush him? No! It was precious and not too loud. I felt like everyone should be thanking me or buying tickets. Sounds funny, but I’m serious! You’re welcome, Target, for the happy little entertainment we provided today.

Our poor first 2 children would’ve probably been shushed, but we are not the same people we were back then. Parenting has begun to wear away our sharp edges. We are only 13 years in. Imagine how soft we’ll be by 20 years in!

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Or is it really just the same ol’ us in a new place? Well, anyway, we’ll try to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.

It is time for me to start writing again. I had my year off, and it was needed, but we have arrived to Maryland with a fresh set of orders to stay for 3 years, and that gives me a sense of purpose. It might sound coo-coo that 3 years is a long assignment for us, but by golly we can get a lot done in 1095 days! (And that’s quick calendar math that I just did in my head at 11:35 pm, so think of it as an estimate…)

One of our boys said the other day, “We are new here. No one knows us. We can have whatever personality we want to have.”

Ha! I can remember thinking that way when my parents moved our family at the beginning of 1st grade and the middle of 2nd grade. I believed it too, and did my best to follow through. For kindergarten, I had been rather bossy and had gotten in trouble for it too. In 1st grade, I decided to take a different approach at life. Here I would be the class clown, That worked pretty well for me. I had 4 boyfriends that year, which I probably bragged about to the annoyance of others.

Then in 2nd grade, we moved again, so I tried to just “be normal.” No clowning, and as little bossing as I could manage, though that part was harder. A little of the bossy seems to be my actual ingrained personality, and you can only polish who you are, not totally squash it.

So I guess the point is…

Try as we may, we can improve our behavior, but our personality will always shine through eventually. That’s why the people we live with see the worst of us. One can only keep up public niceties and pleasant behavior for so long. There is a limit. Eventually you’re going to get tired. Then you will want to get comfortable and be left alone. That’s when your true colors start to shine through. You are in fact who you are. No one can keep up an act that isn’t real for very long.

The neat-os will fuss at the rest of us for using 4 drinking cups today, creating an unnecessary amount of dirty dishes.

The slobs will leave a trail to find their way back to their chair, which we will trip over, and then fuss at them some more.

The conscientious will torture themselves about the things they wish they had or hadn’t said in public.

The video game addicts will play video games, and the phone addicts will look at their phones.

They say that during hard times, when life starts to squeeze us, what’s really inside comes pouring out.

I keep hoping that’s not quite true because what comes out of me is stress and tears, along with a desire to run, which I will (thankfully) talk myself out of.

Stress and Tears

Yep. Moving and traveling with the kids without Alan along was a squeeze. It still is. Being new over and over again has gotten old, and I don’t want to do it. And what keeps coming out of me has been stress and tears. I cried during every movie we watched lately.

But God is with us.

Even when we are not impressive, God is still with us. When I say I’ve leaned on my faith to get me through the 10 moves, the deployments, and the trials of life, it is no cliche. God is the real deal. When I was 4, and didn’t know about Him, only knew He was there, He swooped down and drew me to Him. In middle school, when I decided I was going to be an “all in” Christian, He lit the way for me.

One of my favorite God memories was another move.

It was my freshman year of college. My parents had just dropped me off at my dorm room at the University of Alabama, 14th floor, and my roommate was out for the weekend. It was just me, alone in my room. The only 2 souls I knew at this new school, 4 hours from home, were 2 boys from my high school, one a first string Alabama football player, and the other a super-smart engineering student. But I was living in an all-girl dorm, and there were moments where I could have felt alone.

Instead, I remember standing at my dorm room window that day my parents drove away, overlooking Bryant-Denny stadium, a graveyard, and a parking lot. I knew God was with me. God brought me to that school, and He would take care of me. There was that swelling of knowing you’re loved and cared for, not truly alone, where you are filled with hope.

I was so full of hope then. Just now I have to work harder for it. It’s not that I believe less. I actually believe more, but it’s as though as I’ve aged, I’ve found myself in need of reminding of hope. There is so much to do that I’ve been busy and have forgotten to hope.

Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. 

Matthew 13:22

God took care of me before, and he will continue to do so. He always has. So here we are again. New place. New home. New us, but never alone.

19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with youalways, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20

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