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.

I know some of you are so tired of me writing about moving you could puke. Sorry, guys. It is such a big deal. The impact of moving cannot be stated generously enough. All these back-to-back moves have brought so much stress that I feel like if I could simply harness the stress, it could be a mighty power source. We could light up New York City with the stress of all the military wives, I am quite sure of it.

But I am not here to whine about moving today. Instead I want to talk about “settling in”, mainly because, for me, it is truly beginning to happen.

This morning I asked our boys if they felt settled in here yet, and 2/4 of them said, “No.” They do not feel settled. One boy said, “Yes,” and the other one said, “Yes and also no.” That made perfect sense to me. It has been seven months. I think it takes 1-2 years to truly settle in. Judging by the boys’ responses, they agree that it takes a while.

Settling in is not just unpacking boxes and organizing shelves. It is also knowing where you put everything, and yes, as a mom, by the time I leave a place, I do basically know where everything is. We still don’t have a clue at this house. When you are truly settled, life in general comes more naturally. Simple things are less of a struggle. Kids knock on your door. Your phone is full of local phone numbers. The drive-through people at Burger King recognize your face. Haha! Well, that last one probably should not be true, but it already is true for me.

It is hard to sustain relationships when moving every two years, as our family has been doing ever since 2002. I found this very discouraging report:

We know that children who move frequently are more likely to perform poorly in school and have more behavioral problems,” said the study’s lead author, Shigehiro Oishi, PhD, of the University of Virginia. “However, the long-term effects of moving on well-being in adulthood have been overlooked by researchers.”

American Psychological Association

Changing Schools Again and Again

Every single time our kids change schools, the new school underestimates our children because they do not do well on tests those first few weeks. They do not know how to accommodate the adjustment phase. When we first move, our children perform less efficiently than usual because they are using their brain space to remember how to work their school computer, remember their student ID #, remember what city we live in, what bus they ride, where to get off the bus, and all sorts of new information that students who have gone to the same school for years do not have to concentrate on at all.

Basically, in a new place, the kids are too busy figuring out the social atmosphere to remember the equation for area of a rectangle. New kids are wondering whether that boy with the freckles is a friend possibility and which kid it is that you have to steer clear of because they make fun of pretty much everybody. Plus, every single school has completely different procedures and expectations.

As an adult, I see a change with my social media.

I sort of cling to the old friends even though I have moved because they are still real to me. Everyone I know is in the past for a while, and then the cycle repeats itself. People from two duty stations ago are never forgotten, nor do I want to forget them. Sometimes they are all I have, but I do notice that most friends and acquaintances stop “liking” my Facebook posts once I have been gone a year. I am out of sight, out of mind. They figure they will never see me again anyway, or maybe I am annoying with how frequently I post. See, the funny thing about that is that if I had settled in and had real life friends I would probably go searching for friends online less too, and then I wouldn’t come off as so needy maybe.

Then there is the crazy side of me that (and I am ashamed to admit this is true) thinks things like, “Maybe they all had a lunch together and decided they don’t like me anymore after I moved away.”

With military wife friends, it is different.

With military wife friends, we don’t have to act less needy and pathetic because we already know that actually we ARE all in need, and we are happy to jump in and be like, “Me too!!!” Complain about the way the Army sent you only two moving men, or how they will not give you orders, and you are living in limbo. We get it!!! This stuff is hard. We will always support each other on social media no matter how many times we move. All of us know that our online friends are our ONLY friends for far too much of the time. We need each other!

Yes, moving repeatedly can be a serious problem, but I do have good news too. You know we always look for hope.

We have now been in this newest house for seven months. This past weekend we had our Sunday school class over for dinner on Saturday and had a large turnout. Hurray! We played games, ate, and talked. If everyone had as much fun as I did, then it was a success. I felt so uplifted.

Then on Sunday, our two youngest sons were baptized, right here at our new church by our new pastor.

I cried tears of the purest joy. My heart war near to bursting. THIS is what makes it all worth it.

Daniel led the way on the baptism thing. Daniel told Alan as they were leaving a church function a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to talk to the pastor about getting baptized. JD chimed in, “Me too!” The pastor dropped everything he was doing, handed off his baby he was holding to one of his family members, and talked to our boys to make sure they understood salvation and baptism. He agreed the boys are solid in their faith and ready to be baptized.

As soon as we arrived at church, I realized I had left my phone at home which meant I could not take pictures. The horror! But it was not the end of the world. Thankfully, I knew that I had a few different friends there that I could ask to borrow their phone to take the pictures with. I ended up not having to ask anyone, as Alan Hix, our adult Sunday school class teacher (who has a talent for making people feel welcome) freely offered up his phone to me. That was such a relief. You know how important photos are to me.

A Table to Sit at

Two Sundays ago, when I walked into the ladies’ fellowship after church for the cookie contest, I had a table of friends to sit with. I knew about six different ladies out of the thirty or so who were in attendance, and most of us sat at a table together in the back. This is exactly why we always join a Sunday school class at each new church we move to. It is such a helpful way to get connected.

Basically, I am beginning to feel like we belong, and I cannot stress enough to you what a relief that is.

Alan took Daniel to baseball tryouts Saturday too, and they also saw several familiar, friendly faces, a total change from the fall when we literally did not know a soul. They came back from try-outs in a happy mood. Daniel was able to perform much better because he was more comfortable there than he was back in the fall.

Overall, we are all doing better than we were, while some of us are still walking uphill in unsupportive flip-flops, if you know what I mean. So much of it is circumstance and age, in addition to personality, but I will not go into all of that here.

Saturday, my friend Shereen showed up half an hour before the party to help me set up, and I cannot tell you how very not-alone that made me feel.

Commitment!

I am pleased as punch to announce that I have my very first real commitment here. I am now co-teaching the high school girls’ Sunday school class at our church, and I am quite excited about it.

It is not us against the world or us trying to break into Maryland. This is just a regular old family trying to gradually settle in to yet another new town, our 11th time in a new town in eighteen years, to be exact. We are slower at it than we used to be because we are worn down and weary, but we will get there.

In two years, Alan will hit his twenty-year-mark. He is not currently planning to retire. I have no idea what will happen, really. However, I DO know, and am firmly resolved, that we cannot move these children between 11th and 12th grade. I would rather not move them before their 11th grade year either. With that said, we may be in Maryland for a long time, with our oldest boys being so close in age and our oldest about to enter high school. It may be that we stay here until the oldest graduates and then leave with Caleb between 10th and 11th. Who knows?

For now, just know that Maryland is becoming home. At least two or three of us are beginning to feel settled in, and things are looking up. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, right? It is supposed to be full of purpose, and that it is. We have more than our share to be grateful for.

The post “Settling in” 7 Months After Moving appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I had this big idea to make buck-eye balls like my mom always has..but it was much more work than I expected. Katherine and Elsie helped me finish them up.

***This post belongs to a series of posts detailing life as a 22-year-old military wife, back in the beginning of the War on Terrorism. To read it from the beginning, start here. To read the  chapter before this one, click here.***

Christmas arrived.

I could ignore it in my sadness over not having Alan with me, or I could embrace it for the fact that it was still Christmas.

Truthfully, it was not a sad time anymore. I had Elsie, Kayla, Sarah, and Cloe to hang out with all the time. Life was mostly downright fun.

I hung lighted garland around my duplex front door, and my friends and I gathered for a Christmas meal together. We made buck-eye balls in the kitchen and drank raspberry wine and sparkling white grape juice. It was my first year to ever play Christmas hostess in my own home, though it was actually still weeks before Christmas. I had a ball decorating and using my fancy glasses.

Table all set for Christmas with my friends. Never pass on an opportunity to use the fancy glasses!!

Some people keep their beautiful wedding china and crystal in boxes or cabinets, but that’s never been me. I am a firm believer in pulling out your best things for company or special events. What’s the point of owning things that no one ever sees or uses? Give yourself the blessing of eating off your most beautiful plates and drinking out of the glasses with the platinum rims is what I say!

It’s true that friends are the family you make for yourself, and we had built for ourselves such a delightful family. I wouldn’t trade them for all the stability, security, and never-changing zip codes in the world!

Katherine, Sarah, and Cloe

Christmas dinner 2003 made me proud to be an Army wife.

There we were, not fretting about the safety of our husbands or letting jealousy get to us. We were not licking wounds and building up bitterness. Instead, we were laughing and cooking and encouraging one another. This was our own family away from home. You don’t hear much about military spouse “battle buddies”, but it IS very much a thing. It was THE thing that saw us through that long, potentially lonely year. Only it wasn’t so lonely because we had each other.

I don’t remember if we all exchanged gifts, but I do remember this one gift I received from Kayla that Christmas. She said she knew I liked to decorate with pretty things, so she bought me this blue and yellow sewing box that matched my guest room colors. It’s funny the things that you remember, but that’s the only gift I remember from that whole Christmas year. It made me feel special that she’d thought enough about me to buy me a gift, and also that she said she knew I liked pretty things.

Believe it or not, I actually DID sew that year too. I was the designated hemmer of our group. I can’t sew a stitch without a machine, but with the machine, I could read the directions and hem up everyone’s pants just fine. It did seem like all of my friends had short legs.

And so with this feeling of love and hopefulness and the recent victory of our husbands in catching Saddam Hussein providing the optimism, we all headed our separate ways to home for Christmas.

a photo of Alan on Christmas or sometime close to Christmas, in Iraq

Home for Christmas

I made the rounds to all of our family gatherings, both on my side of the family and on Alan’s side. It was the right thing to do. Things should proceed forth as normally as possible. Even if I was still new to Alan’s side, I would forge on and provide plenty of smiles and warmth because I was the closest thing anyone had to Alan that year.

When I was a child, Christmas was always a BIG deal. First, we’d go to Dad’s family’s gathering on Christmas Eve. All the extended family would be there at Grandaddy and Granny’s house.

Then on Christmas day, we’d either go to Maw-maw’s house, Maw-Maw was mom’s mom, or we’d go to Granny Hyde’s house. Granny Hyde was Maw-maw’s mom. Both Granny Hyde and Maw-Maw loved hosting Christmas, so it was arranged that they took turns.

Christmas with my cousin and her baby

But just a few years prior to the Christmas of 2003, both sides of my family experienced profound loss. We lost Maw-Maw in ’97 and Granddaddy (Dad’s dad) in ’98.

Maw-maw died on Christmas Eve, leaving this gaping black hole in the lives of every single one of us. I had spent one week every summer of my childhood at Maw-maw’s house. She was one of my heroes and a true kindred spirit. We all loved her. This is still the hardest loss I’ve ever experienced.

Most people know when to go, or they depart when they are old and their calling has been fulfilled. With Maw-maw it felt more sudden, and as though we were all robbed. No, it should not have been her time to go, and yet it was. She left early, and the disappointing feeling of loss from that cut so deeply that even in 2003, six years later, we still all keenly felt her absence.

Maw-maw was fine. She was with God, but we weren’t quite fine. But we are resilient people if we are nothing else, so we still made the best of it. We still came together and followed all our traditions.

It’s amazing how comforting Christmas traditions are and how much you miss them once they’ve gone. How I’d love to have just one of those Christmas gatherings back.

I enjoyed seeing my family. I always found it comforting to get to see family, and we did still have Granny, who was 90 by then, and we were thankful. Everyone missed Alan, but no one on my side of the family was accustomed to having Alan there yet. He’d only been to 1 family Christmas, so his absence wasn’t nearly as impactful as it was at Alan’s family Christmas.

Alan’s Family Christmas

As comforting as participating in my own family’s Christmas traditions was, going to Alan’s family Christmas was….emotional. It’s like walking out of a movie theatre of childhood memories and back into the reality of your life, with people who are aching.

Me, with Alan’s cousins and his sister

Probably most people didn’t realize how sad they were that Alan wasn’t there, and everyone put on a happy face and enjoyed Christmas. Alan’s family is also a clan of successful, resilient people. I’m telling you, we come from excellent stock.

But sometimes our pain leaks through when we don’t mean for it to. It’s there in their eyes or their quiet or the way their smile doesn’t quite meet their eye crinkles.

Alan’s family doesn’t begin Christmas celebrations until Christmas day. For Christmas lunch, all of Alan’s mother’s family gathers, even to this day, at Alan’s grandfather and grandmother’s house, and eats and opens presents. These grandparents had four children, and each of their children had at least two children, so it is a ginormous family gathering.

Everyone seemed jovial enough, considering, and asked how Alan was doing in Iraq. Aunt Ellen had even sent Alan his own little Christmas tree.

But around lunch, I started to notice their grief. Alan is a happy, hearty, talkative, laughing fellow, and his absence was extremely noticeable.

Alan’s grandfather said the prayer as usual before the meal, and his voice cracked. It wasn’t just a little crack. It was a heavy one, from a man who’d already lost a brother and who knows how many friends to the ravages of war.

By the end of Grandaddy Cunningham’s Christmas day blessing, there could not have been any dry eyes in the room.

The t.v. was going most of the day in the kitchen of Grandmother’s house because President George W. Bush showed up on a surprise visit to Baghdad and had lunch with the troops. Alan wasn’t actually in Baghdad, but it still made us feel more connected to him to see the President and the men and women in uniform eating with him. We knew they were all there in Iraq. They were having Christmas too, and it looked like everything was okay.

In the afternoon, once everyone had opened presents, I headed back to Alan’s parents’ house with his sister and his parents. We opened presents there that night, and in the morning we all took a 5 hour drive to a small town near Augusta, Georgia to be with Alan’s dad’s side of the family. They had a large extended family gathering too.

Pants! Thank you!

The biggest thing I remember about Christmas night was that we all wore our “ho ho hooah” 4th Infantry Division Christmas t-shirts while we opened presents. I also remember that Alan’s dad kept things light with some funny jokes. My favorite was when he opened a brand new pair of trousers and said, “Oh! Pants! Thank you!” and then proceeded to put the pants on his head and stick his arms in the pant legs.

We needed that laugh! I can still see it in my head!

Alan did get to call and talk to us all and wish us a merry Christmas. He did an amazing job of keeping upbeat.

Holding one another together

We all managed to have a pretty good time. Everyone was putting on a brave face for everyone else, and maybe it sounds stuffy, but the truth was it was helpful. We were all holding each other up from falling apart in this way. It worked. I can’t explain it to you, but it just works when humans get together and walk through life and hardship together.

Maybe it doesn’t even sound like hardship in the telling of it, and yet it was. I know that it was because I remember the point that I reached when I was done holding it together, and I just let myself fall all apart into a salty heap of tears. Sure, I’d shed a few tears over Christmas already, but then there comes that breaking point.

The airport.

That’s where I was when I let it all go. Christmas was finished. Visiting was done. I had been there for everyone. All that was required had been fulfilled. Now I had only to ride this airplane home, and Christmas would be over, and the new year would begin.

And this was one of my best new year’s yet because 2004 would bring Alan back home to us, and we could get started with regular life. We could finally be that newlywed couple that we’d been waiting to be.

I watched them all walking by, the soldiers in the airport, in uniform, going and coming on mid-tour leave, and there was news coverage of the sad military families apart for Christmas, and then there was this People magazine. I think it was People. It could have been anything, but that was the moment where the world started to spin.

Suddenly, I was acutely aware of sitting there all alone, and all of these articles and news stories might as well have been about me, and then I started to bawl. That’s always how it is with me. I can go on for ages and not think about any of my problems in a personal way. I can wear the stone face and be tough, until suddenly I’m not.

Unplugging the emotional stopper

I cried a river, quietly and trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Did anyone notice? Surely. No one bothered me, because that wasn’t what I needed anyway. What I needed was to get those tears out. It was time to unplug the emotional stopper.

Tears are just a part of the process. There’s a healing function in allowing yourself to feel, not wallow, but just be honest about your feelings, fill it up with tears, but then drain it before it soaks too much. Soaking is good for dirty dishes, but it’s not so good for self-pitying thoughts. Have your cry, then clean yourself up, and do something else.

When you know in your heart that you’ve done all the right things, there is a significant peace that comes with that. I had that peace. Sure, I’d made mistakes over the course of 2003, but at Christmas I had done what was right and good, and I felt as though I’d been an encouragement to both of our families.

Besides, this was 2004 just beginning, the year that would bring Alan home.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Proverbs 13:12

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The post The Real Army Wives Series: Merry Christmas To Iraq, 2003 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

These women + Pam and sometimes Sally, Suzy, Tegan, Amy, and Katie. These women are how I got through Operation Iraqi Freedom I, 2003-2004. We were the real “Army Wives,” long before cable had that t.v. show. And I know so many spouses just like us, all over the world, across all branches of service. We have this unique life, which is both good and bad, and our stories are worth hearing.

I don’t know if you remember, but before I gave birth to JD, I was writing a book. Yes, that was over three years ago now. I haven’t touched it that whole time.

I can’t write that particular book anymore. It’s not the book I want to write at this time.

Each morning I open my inbox in hope of seeing a blog job offer that I will want to take on. This week I had opportunities to review a security system, a bidet, and coconut oil that costs $20 a jar…..when you can buy it for $8 a jar at any grocery store, yes, even organic. I was a little less than enthused. I passed on those.

(####As a blogger, it is my promise to you, my reader, to only review products I’m excited about or truly believe in.####)

I’m still happy blogging, and I’m constantly trying to learn how to be better at it and grow my audience. But for the past two years, I kept thinking about the book. (The first year I had JD the book wasn’t even on the radar. I was just happy to accomplish teeth brushing.)

I kept thinking, “Maybe once the move is done, I’ll work on my book again.”

And sometimes I mention it, and people ask me, “What is your book about?”

“Ummmmmm..uhhhh…” Cue the crickets….

“I don’t actually know what I’m going to write a book about, but for some reason, I’d really like to write one.” I actually feel this pressure to do it. I can’t explain it.

Then three nights ago, I had just gotten out of the shower, and BAM! It hit me! I knew what to write about.

Don’t you get your best ideas while showering? I mean I do, normally, unless there is a toddler beating on the shower door whispering, “Mom, get out. Mom get out.”

Sometimes JD just whispers. It’s cute, not creepy though. Well, sometimes it’s creepy.

Sorry. I’m rambling. So what am I going to write about?

I think it’s time for me to tell my war stories and how God and some wonderful friends brought us through them.

It’s been 15 years now since Sept. 11. It was the war of my generation. And it’s still a gigantic problem. I was 20 back then, and I sent my husband overseas to take part in the War on Terrorism three times already, as did many of my friends. We’ve spent a cumulative total of three plus years of our marriage apart. 

’03 or ’04, with my sister military spouses

There are so many stories to tell! Some hilarious, like times spent with my 4 best friends back in Texas in ’03, before any of us had children. Some sad, like when Caleb ran to a random dude instead of Alan at Alan’s 2010 home-coming. Some heartbreaking, as when we lost friends and bosses as casualties to the war.

It’s been so long now that people are beginning to forget. I’ve actually had someone ask me why I should get a military discount. And Congress is constantly threatening our benefits. Then there was that whole VA healthcare debacle.

So many things happened. And while you often hear of books about “letters from war”, you seldom hear about letters TO war. Well, who wants to read about that? There’s no shooting or convoy attacks in letters from home, right? Well, there are our reactions to them. Then there are the hilarious and sometimes gut-wrenching adventures that an Army wife takes on with her family while she’s left behind.

My sweet military kids during their first deployment experience. At this point,in 2010, Alan had returned from a 15 month tour. Caleb was still calling MY dad “Dad.”

Things like walking your son through EEGs and MRIs because he’s suddenly having seizures and trying to explain it all to your husband in Iraq, while your son’s pre-school teacher calls your son their “little class mascot” as they support him through his medical trials.

Things like getting over-the-moon-I-just-won-the-lottery kind of excited watching the train traveling back into town, loaded down with tanks and Humvees, and wondering what day that they will send your husband too, but knowing that they are finally, after the longest year ever, actually going to come home!!!

And oh, sharing deployment with four close friends who saved each other’s lives that year. Okay. Not literally, but we’ve seen how stress can kill a person, so maybe literally! Yes, definitely literally. Yes, we saved each other’s lives.

I had no idea what I was getting into, but I couldn’t wait to start!

There are so many things I want to tell. Military wives, I know you have stories just like mine and worse and better and then some. I’d love to hear your tales. Maybe after I tell my story I can tell yours too. Hopefully, by telling mine, I will also be telling a lot of yours too. But it’s beautiful how each one us has a slightly different story to tell.

Okay. JD is here, and his nap is apparently over, and he needs me to put his pants back on him, so I’m outta here. Tell me what you think about my book idea. Don’t worry. I’ll change the names, and I’ve already gotten Alan’s buy-in.

We wish you all a fabulous Labor Day weekend!

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