Your friends were a little surprised when you got that ring – the one he bought at the PX at a serious discount, chose with the help of a clerk in a vest and a weary smile. You heard how young you were, how hard it would be, but you got approval and admiration nonetheless because you were doing something noble. You were joining the ranks of military families. Maybe you don’t feel so noble now in the brick house with hard tile floors and the Wal Mart printed wedding photos hanging on your walls with thumbtacks. You can still fit into those middle school jeans, but they feel a…
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9 Years In
We started this thing as kids. We were half-children guessing at adulthood. He had a paycheck and I had a diploma and together we were going to take the world – our chunk of it anyway. Everybody has their struggle story. Ours included being torn apart for a year and a quarter while we both grew up. We battled our demons and tried our best to connect breaking spirits over 7,000 miles and the “bad times” we vowed to stick through started there. So yeah, this hasn’t been easy. And within the first few years we questioned things. Our “honeymoon phase” ended abruptly with marching orders and by the end…
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Out of our Nightminds
This is kind of an older post, I wrote it on July 17, 2008 but I didn’t post it on here. 🙂 So here it is. So my person’s husband, Levi, is back from his 13 month deployment to Iraq. He’s home. It’s over. Through heart wrenching goodbyes, frustrating phone dates, sleepless nights Beth has been strong and been an absolutely incredible mother. She has done something that many women cannot do. She not only stayed faithful to her husband, but she constantly and increasingly adored him, all the while raising their young son. Today I had a few beautifully surreal moments. I was doing something on my computer with…
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More Than Survival
This is an essay I wrote for my English class. I think it could be helpful…. When a soldier leaves for war, his mind is filled with the stories he has heard from his contemporaries, images he may have seen on a previous tour that still haunt him, perhaps thoughts of how long until he will see his home again. When a married soldier leaves for war he is thinking about the wife he is saying goodbye to, making sure that he has left everything in order so that she will be able to take care of things, and hoping the days go by quickly until he is back in…
