A Little Bit of Faith

If you talk to a military spouse, they’re likely to tell you the thing they hear most is "I don’t know how you do it". I personally find it hard to form the right response to that question. It’s hard to answer without sounding like you’re over confident, so I usually laugh it off. My typical response is "I don’t know either!" or something like that.

The fact is though, I know how I do it. It takes one word. Faith.

I’ve rarely if ever spoken about my beliefs in my blog. Not because I don’t have them, but because for me, personally, my beliefs are  something I hold quietly. However, I’m making an exception today.

I was born and raised in a little country Methodist church in a teeny town in Pennsylvania. Most Sundays you could find me sitting next to my Gram, quietly coloring on that week’s bulletin. My Mom, in the choir peeking my way to make sure I was still behaving. This wasn’t the town we lived in however. We lived about 30 minutes away. I was born there, but we moved when I was 3, after my parents divorced, to make my Mom’s commute to  work better in those nasty PA winters. But we still went to church with my gram. I was baptized there, married there, and my first child was baptized there.

Anyhow, i was raised basically with one belief. My mom basically shortened it to "everything happens for a reason". I’ll never remember every sermon given in my childhood, but I do remember the recurring theme that God has a plan for everyone, and we just don’t know what it is. But, everything happens for a reason, and my life thus far proves it.

I had a bad breakup with a guy in October of 1991. It was a serious relationship, we were engaged, and when it ended I was crushed. My Mom of course said if it was meant to be it would. Four days later…I met the man I am married to today.

A year and a half after that, I was married, and having my first child. We struggled for 9 years. The worst of it came in 1999, after we had moved across the state for a job and the owner fired Hubby’s entire shift. We returned home, and he opted to go for his CDL and try and land a job as a truck driver.

Sadly, the financing for the school fell through. At the time, we thought it was a terrible thing. But good came after.  He ended up with a job we could live with, and moved out where his Dad’s side of the family lived. Allowing him to form a relationship with his Dad and a whole "new" side of the family. My Dad had passed away shortly after we got married, and I was, and still am thrilled that he got this chance. Not everyone gets a second one.

He also, after 9/11 then joined the Army, being that his job wasn’t taking him anywhere, we were still struggling, and had zero health care, and he was good and TICKED off about the events that had happened on that day.

And has thus far had a very good career with it. We don’t struggle near as much these days. But I wouldn’t trade those years we did. I appreciate everything much more NOW having had next to nothing those years, than I would have otherwise. Had trucking school worked out…we would have missed out on alot.

When he delivered the news that we’d be moving next year, my first instinct was panic, and find a way out of it. But when I stopped to take a breath, I realized that maybe it was just what was supposed to be. What would we miss out on if we DID get out of it? Everything I have ever wanted to fight or change and haven’t been able to has brought with it a blessing of some kind.

I didn’t want to come to Ft Lewis just a few months after he returned from Iraq in 2006. I wanted to stay in Alaska with my friends, where I knew my way around, and where I wasn’t near a big city. But we moved. Shortly after we settled in here, his old unit deployed back to Iraq. Almost a year after the first deployment. We, however, wound up with just shy of 3 years between his last deployment and this one. I’d call that a blessing.

Deployments are hard. Especially on the spouse and kids. And of course I have bouts of panic, and worry, and frustration. Oh and impatience, I haven’t quite found THAT virtue just yet. But at the end of the day, I just have faith that he’ll be ok. WE will be ok. I don’t worry as much about how he’ll be when he comes home, or readjusting to living together again. I have faith in him, in our marriage and of course, in God. That’s how I do it.

A one word answer. Faith. I may have spent my time in that church coloring pictures in this week’s bulletin, but something sunk in.

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