2 more weeks and he's home!

I have been afforded some incredible opportunities in my life and with each passing year, I am better able to reflect, appreciate and learn from these experiences. And, with time, I look at the challenges as feats, the hardships as lessons and the happy times as treasures. As such, I can’t imagine ever not reflecting on my experiences as a military wife during a time of war.

I often think about the wives of veterans from previous wars and wonder if they, like I, think to their days as a military spouse with introspection. To say that I will remember this period of my life with profoundly complex emotions would be an understatement.

Being married to someone in the military over the course of the many years of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom has been life-changing.

It’s almost hard to find the words to properly define the emotions that I have felt: pride for the uniform that my husband wears that represents our great country. Fear for his deployments into combat; a combined fear of the unknown and of being misunderstood. Happiness for when I receive the call that he is back again on American soil and I can pick him up and bring him home. Sadness for the fact that he has seen far too much for his young age…for any age. Confusion for all of the politics and policies that many cannot seem to get past in order to simply support our troops.

When people ask me how I do it or where my strength comes from, I explain that I don’t have a choice; I married someone who believed in serving his country. He was, after all, in the Army when I married him. Did I fully understand all that entailed before becoming an Army wife? Definitely not. Has it been easy? Most certainly not. But, all said and done, I wouldn't change a thing because it has taught me to value life and cherish love in a way that I probably would have taken for granted had we just lived a "normal" life.

With two weeks left until his year-long deployment is over, I await his return with an enormous sense of relief. Yet, somehow, it still feels like an eternity away.