Dear Army

Thank you for all you have given us, experientially, monetarily, everything. You have expanded our borders.

However, you realized that you overpaid us and are now asking for that money back.

Really? From us, who have given so much to you in return? Can't we just keep it and call it good?

I know you're just trying to keep books straight and there needs to be integrity and all. But really. Ouch.

It's a good thing that we're responsible with our money and pretty much throw all of it into savings so we can handle a thing like this.

However, this hurts. Especially when it's to the tune of $3,000!

I know it's just money. We'll be fine. There are a lot worse things in life and there are so many people in this world who won't make that much in a year or maybe their entire lifetime. It's just money.

But still... that's painful.

Sincerely, respectfully, but also a little bit angry with you,

Sarah

Feeling excited and slightly guilty

I wasn't going to do a post today because... well, no reason. I just wasn't feeling brilliant.

BUT, one of the to-do's on my list today was take my big ol' box of clothes that has been sitting in our bedroom since the day we moved in (8 months ago!) over to Goodwill.

Let me rewind a little bit.

Anytime before Lane leaves for time away we ask each other what is something that we're most looking forward to about this next {enter time frame here} apart and something we're not excited about. For this 3 week stint. For 2 week trainings he used to have to do at Fort Campbell. For a weekend trip. And yes, even for deployments we would ask what is something good you anticipate and something that might not be so fun.

It might seem like a nerdy little exercise for any who are not external processors like myself, but it helps us (read: me) to process what's coming up, but also for us to acknowledge that we're going to miss each other like crazy but to recognize that life does go on without the other. I can't sit here pining away for him otherwise my days would be miserable and go so slowly, and he can't be moping around missing his wife otherwise he might not perform his job as well as he should. So we ask about sunshine/rainclouds aka highs/lows aka rose/thorns. I like it.

Anyway. The point of this post.

I couldn't admit this to Lane when we were talking, so it is still my little secret, but one of the main things that I was excited about doing while he's gone right now is going through his closet and getting rid of t-shirts that he has had for 10+ YEARS. Seriously. He's still wearing shirts he wore in high school. And he wears them with pride. Despite the faded colors. Despite the gaping holes. It kills me.

I've threatened to do this before but I never could just pull the trigger when he's been gone in the past.

Back to the Goodwill trip today.

I spent last night going through our closet one final time and added quite a few of his t-shirts. Don't feel too sorry for the boy. His t-shirt collection has now gone from 2,572 to 2,540. He has so many t-shirts. FROM HIGH SCHOOL. Any other husbands out there do this or just mine?

I was so excited pulling up to the Goodwill today. I felt lighter already. But then, when I put the bag containing his clothes in I felt this huge stab of guilt. It was done. I actually started laughing out loud at what I just did and probably looked pretty weird to anyone driving by. Crazy lady donating clothes again! Irreversible. I couldn't take them back; they had gone into the abyss of the huge clothing donation window.

Hmmm. I don't know if I'll tell him. Maybe I'll just let him figure it out on his own.

I do feel slightly guiltly.

But it was WORTH IT.

Bedtime buddies

I really never love any of the time that Lane is gone, but nights are the most not fun of it all. Once the sun goes down and it's dark sometimes gets me a little scared, especially when I'm in bed trying to fall asleep and hearing noises or seeing shadows of trees that I'm SURE weren't there just the night before!

To help me get enjoy these nights a little bit more, I always keep a handy arsenal of books and such in case I need them at a given moments' notice:

I sleep on the right side of the bed and L is on the left, so to take his place I have:

* The remote, in case I can't fall asleep and need Jerry Seinfeld or late-night infomercials to keep me company

* My bible; actually most nights I put my hand on it and fall asleep touching it. I'm a nerd. But it helps

* Relevant magazine; do you guys know Relevant? Very cool mag. Very witty, very thought-provoking, very... Relevant.

* A book called "We the People", a study on the political history of the U.S. Again: Me=Nerd. I love all things history.

* A book called Good News for those Trying Harder written by my pastor

* A book of Celtic prayers

and lastly

* The Catcher in the Rye because I'm trying to catch up on my classics.

This might be a weird thing that I do when the boy is gone, but every time, on that first night I'm walking back to the bedroom prepared with an armful of reading material and entertainment and it stays there until he walks back in the door. Maybe it's to fill space on the bed to it doesn't seem so empty. Maybe it's to keep my mind occupied in the quiet so I don't get lonely. Who knows? Weird coping mechanisms.

Happy Memorial Day?

Today is June 1st. 2010 is now almost half over. Is that weird to anyone else?

I hope you all had a great Memorial Day yesterday. Lane and I spent the day (which was B-E-A-utiful) at a park with my whole family:

I have two great older sisters who married awesome guys and they have awesome kids. L and I are the only ones who have not procreated yet which we sometimes feel sad and left out about. Just kidding. But seriously. Maybe we'll have to do something about that one of these days. Or months.

It was a beautiful, great day.

But after devoting so much of our life and our marriage to the military, it definitely was not lost on Lane & I what the true meaning of the day was. We have countless friends who are overseas right now, and we were home laughing, running, and playing with our family.

In fact, Lane spent our last Memorial Day in Afghanistan.

We know the significance of Memorial Day.

We got in the car and L told me that it was hard for him to hear people at the park exclaim 'Happy Memorial Day!' It's not like Christmas, Easter, or the 4th of July. We celebrate today because of the people who have gone before us, and given their lives on our behalf.

Lane's life was rocked last summer, much like it had been on previous deployments, when one of his buddies lost his life because of a combat mission. He has since exchanged some very meaningful e-mails and face-to-face conversations with that soldiers' mother who has handled that life-changing blow with such grace and dignity. Lane thinks of Ben's mom on Memorial Day... it's not a 'Happy' day for her.

I listened to Lane share his heart... and then I had to confess what I put as my facebook status update yesterday morning:

Happy Memorial Day friends! As we're enjoying family, parks, and bbqs, let us not forget the purpose behind this day and the sacrifices of so many. Thank You!

My heart behind it was right. I didn't want the significance and the purpose of the day to be lost in the ice cream, the hamburgers, and the day off of work. But, hearing a soldier's perspective on the day, my own husband's perspective on the day, helped open my eyes to how easy it is to throw around words without thinking of their impact.

With all of that said, I do hope you all enjoyed your day yesterday. If the meaning was lost in the chaos, that's okay. Take a moment today to recognize the gift that we have been given. It's just like Valentine's Day- showing love isn't limited to only that one day a year. So it is with Memorial Day. Recognize our country, the military, the families, the pride and the sacrifice any moment of any day.

525,600 minutes

What a difference a year makes.

This last year has been a blur. It has been a blink of an eye. It has been life changing.

I find myself staring at the date and getting lost in thoughts. May 6th of last year was a significant date.

It was the day that my husband deployed to Afghanistan for his third and final time. Those days, the days that he left to go overseas, are the worst in my life up to this point. They are days where every sense is heightened yet you are numb at the same time. They are overflowing in emotional significance. They are days where you physically, emotionally, spiritually try to be all-in; be engaged with your husband, and just be in the moment yet are in the thickest of fogs.

May 6th of last year was also spent in the ER.

Not the ideal place to be spending my final hours with L. As things go, when it rains it pours and if something can go wrong, it will. The weekend before he deployed we decided to take a spur-of-the-moment 2 day trip down to Destin, FL to spend some time on the beach.

Well. Something went horribly wrong. We were only out in the sun for 2 hours. We applied sun screen! And yet we both got the worst burns we ever have had, or hope to have, in our whole lives. I got sun poisoning and spent the evening throwing up at the 4 star steak restaurant where we were eating dinner.

And L. Poor, poor L. He got 2nd degree burns over his entire back. Well, fast-forward a few days to Tuesday of that week he was still in the worst pain I had ever seen him in, but he kept trying to tough it out. Wednesday morning, May 6th, we woke up for our final day together (he was deploying that evening) and knew that he had go get medical help. He couldn't sit on a plane for 10 hours heading to the Middle East in the situation he was in. So, we spent our final day in the ER; he got steroid shots, burn cream rubbed on him, and was instructed to find his closest buddy that was going over with him to rub the burn cream on his back for the next 10 days.

That's male bonding if I've ever seen it. Thanks, Dan. You're a true friend.

And all of that led up to the hardest deployment we experienced. It was a doozy.

So I see May 6th and I am catapulted back to those memories. To the ER. To those awful goodbyes where you kiss one final time and watch them walk away not knowing when, or if, you're going to see them again. To news releases detailing offensives and accounts of how our friends died. To phone calls from my husband and hearing how broken he and his guys were but knowing they couldn't deal with it because they had to go back out on a mission to the same area in a few hours. To questioning God, battling doubt and fear. To finding hope even in the dark. To reunion and knowing we made it through.

And now, those are memories. We see each other in the mornings. I normally see L in clothes that don't have the letters A, C, or U in the title.

We pray for all of the soldiers that are over there right now and I am in awe of their sacrifice.

What a difference a year makes.

The Backstory

This past fall, L was still Active Duty in the Army serving with an incredible unit and was finishing up his final deployment in Afghanistan. We had already done two other deployments to Iraq along with a doozy of a 3-month training school, and too many other training trips I couldn’t even count. All of that to say, we have said a lot of goodbyes. The deployment goodbyes were the most gut-wrenching moments I have ever had to experience in my entire life. They’re awful. Absolutely heartbreakingly awful.

So, last August I knew that L would be coming home soon, thus beginning our transition out of Active Duty and into the National Guard. Out of Super Crazy Army Life into Minimally Crazy Army Life.

And I started thinking. And wrestling. And processing what happens to a marriage when the first four years of that beautiful relationship coincide with four years of military and war. Figuring out how my faith had been transformed because of the battles I fought with God when my husband had to leave to go fight physical battles of his own.

So I wrote. And kept writing, using those words and my laptop as my own personal counselor as I debriefed the previous four years of my life. Initially, it was simply a really long journal.

Our marriage had been rocked because of the burdens we were having to bear. It is a difficult, difficult life to sustain and we absolutely learned the meaning of having to fight for your marriage. My faith was rocked as I had to learn the true meaning of trust. I had to come to terms with the fact that there are some things in this world that just simply don’t make sense and learned that having hope despite suffering is the definition of faith. Believing that there is more to this world than meets the eye.

Our relationship developed an unshakable strength despite the struggles and as I wrote down our story, I had the feeling that this story is much greater than us. It is the story of a marriage that went through hard times and emerged stronger. It’s the story of today’s military and what deployments are like through the eyes of a soldier’s wife.

So now I have this document on my computer that I’m hoping will eventually leave this laptop and make it onto the shelves of your local bookstore. I’m hoping that our story will resonate with other couples, military or not. I’m hoping that it will give people hope despite the heartache.

It was because of this book that I got my contract to write for CincHouse so if my opportunities end there, I am forever happy. However, I would love for it to go further and am going to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I say tomato, you say Roger That

I was talking a little earlier with L about a project that needed to get done around the house. He told me that he has a pretty crazy week & probably won’t be able to get to it so if I want it done I will just have to do it ‘Sua Sponte.’ Literally. Those were the words he used. For those non-military speakers out there, Sua Sponte means of one’s own accord. That you can do something without another’s prompting or help.

The military is weird. It changes how you speak and L just can’t shake it so I still continually have to ask him to translate 5 years in.

Last week I got lost while driving in our new town (forgot our Garmin at home, thus defeating the whole purpose of buying the thing!) so I had to call L to look up directions on the internet.

He told me he found it, so be prepared because he’s going to ‘talk me on to our target.’

Oh, Army.

If I was ever goin' somewhere, I was RUNNIN'

The boy is off playing Army this weekend. It's starting to feel like most weekends have become 'go play Army' weekends. Life just goes so quickly that they're always coming around again. We're having to re-adjust to this life again which has been interesting... and by 'this life' I mean seeing the husband in uniforms and saying goodbyes because of training. It comes nowhere near close to what the Army life used to be for us and what it still is to so many of our dear friends. We were just spoiled though by some time having a simple, non-military life in our in-between time of Active Duty and National Guard Duty and it's back. I'm just really not a big fan of goodbyes; we've done them too many times. So what if it's only for a weekend! I know I get to see him soon, but I'm still allowed to miss him, right?

What keeps me laughing while keeping the house occupied by myself though is one of my final images of him right before he left. Oh, how I DEEPLY wish I had an actual picture of it to put up here and not just one in my mind. You would love it! Our trash gets picked up on Friday mornings and we have developed an irritating knack of forgetting to take out the trash. And it comes early compared to our last trash pick up time and we're just never ready for it. So, it's about 7:30 a.m. yesterday, and we were eating breakfast before Lane had to get ready and take off for his weekend away. We hear the familiar sounds of the garbage truck and Lane looks at me and says "Oh, CRAP!" and without one more word takes off outside. He grabs our giant green garbage can mid-stride and races down our driveway and out to the cul-de-sac pushing it, hoping to get the garbage man's attention. They had already passed our house and were on their way out of the street, but Lane is apparently not one to give up so easily.

I'll paint a mental picture for ya: One man in sweat pants, a sweat shirt with the hoodie up over his head because it was cold, and slippers SPRINTING down a street pushing a green garbage can which isn't staying on it's wheels as it hits the bumps in the road so he's half pushing, half dragging, yelling at the man driving the truck to stop for our trash. He eventually gets in their line of sight and, in between panting breaths asks them to get our trash. They really were not happy at all about this crazy guy running by their truck, but they must live by 'The Customer is Always Right' philosophy.

You would think we had a dead body stored in there or something with the passion he had to getting our trash OUTTA THERE! He is a man dedicated to the cause, I can say that.