I bet I know your reaction to my use of “best deployment.” I bet you scoffed or guffawed, saying, there is no such thing.
It’s like saying, “most enjoyable root canal ever” or “greatest day spent at the DMV ever.”
Because let’s be honest, the real “best deployment ever” is probably no deployment at all.
But when you’re married to a service member, we take what we can get. How about we compromise and say that this post is about the second best deployment ever, yes?
Sometimes the life of the military spouse flows like a gentle creek babbling along peacefully. You find yourself with content children, your service member isn’t deployed and is engaged at home, you’ve been sticking to your family budget, and the cat hasn’t thrown up on the carpet once this week.
Things are a-flowin’ quite nicely.
Unfortunately, life is rarely so smooth.
Do you know what time it is?
There are 168 hours in a week. It sounds like a lot—and it is—but it doesn’t always feel that way. Ten minutes felt like an hour when I was in school, watching the clock tick down to the dismissal bell. Today, an hour feels like ten minutes when it’s the last hour before my son leaves to go back to school. You probably feel the same when your spouse is leaving for deployment.
The importance of an hour is certainly impacted by what is happening and how I feel about it. To get the most out of my 168, I need to invest some time in figuring out how I spend those hours.
Early on in most courtships, compliments flow like honey:
Darling, your eyes sparkle like the stars in the heavens.
Honey, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Sweetheart, your voice is like an angel, and I dream about you every day.
And then we get married.
And we get all militarized.
I married my Army man almost two years ago and had so much fun planning it that I decided to try to get into event planning. I’m super excited to share that with you, so soon after writing this post last month, expressing my fears about my burgeoning career already stagnating. Turns out, I was offered a job as the Director of Catering and Events at a country club! This new experience has been amazing, and I’m learning new things constantly.
With the advent of new technology, many things have changed over time. The equipment our service members use is much more advanced. Our children learn in very different ways than we did. And our means of communication have drastically changed, no longer requiring handwritten letters of love.
On this week’s empowering episode of Army Wife Talk Radio, we’re chatting with guest, Hope Griffin about her book Finding Joy: The Year Apart that Made Me a Better Wife.
Dear Soldier,
I can’t say that I dreamed of you when I was little girl. I never paired my Barbies with any of my brothers G.I. Joes. In truth, I always wanted to marry a man who drove a convertible. But one day you came along in a truck that I had to climb to get into instead of a convertible, and eventually, you asked me to marry you.
On this week’s empowering episode of Army Wife Talk Radio, we’re chatting with Corie Weathers about building strong relationships.
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