I wake up in the morning, early early, still dark, and hear something that sounds like a fire alarm. I immediately look up to my ceiling- nope, not that- but it’s that same ear-piercing, high-pitched wail and it’s not stopping.
I stumble downstairs, disheveled but determined to not let that sound wake up the girls, and follow the noise to the source: The coffee pot. When I had prepared the coffee the night before, I realize, I had set it to brew without any water, whoops.
I bang enough buttons to make the noise stop, my adrenaline firing so fierce through my body, I’m not sure I need caffeine any more. Whether it was the still-half-asleep-ness or the compounding stress of the deployment, who can say- but I start to cry and then I get mad that I’m crying over something so small.
Worse things have happened other times Lane’s been on a deployment, more catastrophic things have happened other times he’s been gone, but Lane’s the one who normally makes the coffee.
It makes me miss him more than just about anything else.
I can’t help but think this wouldn’t have happened had he been home.
—
Military work and military life and the world right now require that Lane leaves regularly, sometimes for awhile.
He leaves one day and then he comes back home another. It’s good and it’s hard to have him back home, in weird ways, in ways that are hard to admit and hard to talk about.
The good part is for all of the obvious reasons.
The hard part for all of the obvious but not-so-obvious reasons, too: Re-learning how to share space, how to share responsibilities and authority, how to share how we’re actually doing. Hard because of the need to address all of the unaddressed parts of the time spent apart and the very real trauma that we both experienced from deployment. Hard when he puts the spatula in the drawer instead of the utensil holder and I can’t find it when I need it and the eggs burn.
No time to talk about it though- kids are running all around, demanding his attention Look at this, Daddy! I have things to do too, life marches on.
All of that processing that we said we were going to do? It continues to be delayed, all of the unsaid things remain unsaid, we keep moving forward.
And then Mae becomes a train wreck and needs to go down for a nap- I’ll get her down, Lane says. Turns out he can’t, she’s too feisty, he lets her play in the playroom instead.
“Baby. You’re kidding me. She needed to sleep,” I say to him when he comes back downstairs.
“She was a monster, I don’t know how to calm her down when she reaches that point.”
“Well I do. These are things I know. You should have asked me.”
The air in the room is thick with tension, we both can feel it.
I’m abnormally frustrated about this, about how my kid is missing a nap today. Initially it seems to be about how she’s going to be a wreck tonight at dinner. But that’s not it, not really- it’s more about how re-integrating, re-adjusting, re-learning how to have my husband back home after deployment is clumsy and hard and I wish it wasn’t.
There’s still an ocean between us and he knows it and I know it, too.
I can’t help but think this wouldn’t have happened had he been home.
—
Reconnect, remember how to love well, restore those broken places- that’s what marriage requires, right?
We go out on a date and we end up going to one of our favorite downtown restaurants. We stay for awhile, and who knows- maybe it was a night kids-free or maybe it was that despite it all we’re still totally smitten with each other, but we’re having so much fun and laughing together so much that our waiter eventually comes over to us at one point and says “You guys don’t really get it… I’ve been working here for 15 years and I don’t see couples like you that often.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, couples that are still friends, marriages that genuinely enjoy life together. I don’t see that.”
We’ve befriended him by this point in the night and so we make some sort of wise crack and we all laugh and he sends us an extra dessert before snapping a picture with the sunset in the background.
We leave the restaurant and the sky is on fire with the setting sun and the ferry is just about to go across the river and Lane looks at me and we both know that we have to catch it, so we run and jump on right before it leaves.
The ache of the deployment is right beneath all of this, but also the night is so perfect and we seem to be doing so good that as we watch the sun set fire to the water, I ask Lane “How did we get here?
“On the boat?”
“No, babe. Like, how did our military marriage get to this point? 14 years in, handling all the military has thrown at us, but somehow stronger than we’ve ever been?”
We share some ideas but one that I settled on that has developed our military marriage the most?
The hard parts, the ones we wish we didn’t have to go through, the ones that felt like they were going to break us but didn’t.
I find myself grateful for the hard parts- the ones that demand we turn toward each other rather than away, the ones that force us to have brutally honest conversations, the ones that shake away our selfishness and fear and broken foundations and build us on love instead.
I can’t help but think this wouldn’t have happened had he been home.
—
Oh, I know God can use anything as a teacher to get us to become more like him: To love always and no matter what and first.
But this is where we find ourself in a military marriage: Faced with separation, transitions, deployments, reconnections, disruption. Also known as: A whole lot of hard.
I see it everywhere, how the hard of this life is like a rock dropped in the water, and out go the circles, rings of a ripple impacting even the distant places. How can it not, I wonder?
He has to leave, rock hits the water, ripples go out, life disrupted.
He comes back home, rock back in the water, ripples go out, life disrupted again.
I think of these rocks in the water, the ripple effect of all of the hard, and it all seems to come together at once-
What if these rocks don’t have to be a bad thing?
What if I begin to see these ripples not as the thing that threatens to capsize us, but as the places that we learn love? The love that doesn’t quit, the love that chooses to love anyway, the love that stays.
Because as hard as it is, I learn how to love like this when it’s hard to love like this.
Anyone can love when it’s easy, it’s hard to love when it’s hard.
And so what we do? We do the work and we don’t get scared off by the work, we see now it’s just a part of the process.
I think of all that we face in the military that demands our discomfort, our commitment to each other, our hard conversations to check in- hey, are we good right now?- and how they still feel like rocks in the water, ripples going out.
But now I see the ripples as evidence of a life well-lived, markers of a marriage that’s real.
Now I see that it’s all a teacher, training us how to love always and no matter what and first.
I think back to all of it and now I’m kinda grateful for the parts of our life that requires I learn that- it’s a good thing to learn, right by his side.
Because really? All of it makes us better, more committed, more loving, stronger together than we are apart,
Still causing ripples,
Impacting even the distant places.
Because of a love that’s real.
Struggling with the demands and depletion of military life? Maybe this will help: 5 Ways I Stay Sane in this Military Life. Click here and I will send it quietly to your inbox.
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