The Real Army Wife

Bible Verse of the Day:

"Arise, cry out in the night as the watches of the night begin. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him..."

written by the prophet Jeremiah , Lamentations 2:19

Being the wife of a soldier and the mother of his children is beyond a doubt, the most difficult job in the world.

Most people think that the soldier has it rough. I mean, he's out there in some God-forsaken country, sleeping on the cold, hard ground, getting shot at, risking his life every day for a people that hate him and a country that will most likely never know him. To add insult to inury, he doesn't get paid very much, especially if he's just starting out.

But what about the wives? Not many people stop to think about how rough they have it back home. They're the ones "left behind," with all the work and responsibilities that comes with being thrust into the world of single parenthood, at least for the length of this next deployment.

There are so many things that you worry about when your soldier leaves. Will he be safe? Will he make it back alive and in one piece? Then, as the days turn into weeks and the reality of your life at home smacks you in the face, you ask different questions. How will I get through this? How will my kids get through this? How did I ever get myself into this situation?

I was an Army wife for six years. The first four weren't so bad. My husband was National Guard and his deployments were all relatively safe and short. More importantly, I had my own life, with my own job, and I had no kids.

Then the Army decided they didn't have enough soldiers to fight the war in Iraq and everything changed.

My husband was deployed exactly four months after our first child was born. I was recovering from a difficult pregnancy and a terrible emergency C-section experience. I still had no clue what I was doing with my son and because he was colicky and fussy I was seriously sleep-deprived. It was hard enough to take care of things with the two of us. Now Uncle Sam decided that he needed my  husband more than I did. 

I won't get into the long details, but needless to say, I cried. A lot. Almost every night actually. (Except the nights I was probably too exhausted to feel much of anything.) My son did not sleep through the night until he was 15 months old so that should tell you something about how I was looking and feeling (visualize the zombies from Night of the Living Dead). I had no friends to help me. My mom helped some, but I didn't want to be a burden to anyone. I remember I used to pay a cousin of mine to cut the grass, but other than that, it was just me and my new baby. 

And I was pissed.

Oh, yeah. You get angry. At everyone and everything. I was angry at my husband for joining the Army.  ("This is not what I signed up for!" I used to rant. "This was not part of the plan!") Remember, he was NG and back in those days, the NG never got deployed for Active Duty. I was angry at my family for making me feel like it was a burden to ask for help. I was angry at my church for offering absolutely no support. I was angry at myself for being so physically weak. And yes, I was even angry at God. How could you do this me? I would ask as hot, angry tears streamed down my face. It's not supposed to be like this! 

After a few months I kind of become numb. I trudged through my daily life, focusing simply on keeping one foot in front of the other. I concentrated solely on keeping my head above water and tried not to think about my husband. I know, it sounds terrible, but ladies, I'm being truthful here. I couldn't think about him (except perhaps at night before I went to bed and cried some more) becuase I needed to function. I needed to keep going. I couldn't afford to lay in a puddle of self-pity because I now had a child that I was responsible for, a baby that needed me, that depended on me. Even if I had no one to depend on.

After almost a year, my  husband was sent back to Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, where he was scheduled to remain for at least 2-3 months. On a short, 2 day trip to see him I sized up the situation and made a decision: if you can't come back to me, then I'll pack my stuff and go to you. Now, remember: he was NG and the NG doesn't pay a soldier to move his family with him when he gets deployed. (You have to be regular Army for that.) But I didn't care. In two weeks I managed to pack up a house full of stuff, he got us an apartment off post, and I brought my one year old to North Carolina.

It was probably one of the most physically challenging things I've ever had to do in my life. My  husband was a Mechanic and he had tools and equipment in our garage that were bulky and heavy and almost impossible to move. I remember once actually going down on my knees in my garage and pleading with the Lord to give me the physical strength to continue packing. Except for a cousin of mine who helped take down a couple of ceiling fans for me, I had to do it all by myself. Add that to the fact that I had a now-walking toddler chasing after me and you can only imagine.

So we finally get to Ft. Bragg and of course, three short months later, my husband is deployed again. Now I'm in a strange city, with no friends, no family and a loneliness that threatened to consume me from the inside out. But I was no longer angry. And I wasn't as stressed as I used to be. My son was now sleeping through the night and living in an apartment meant less responsibility. It was during that quiet, lonely time that I believe I truly began my walk with the Lord.

I began to read my Bible more. I began to pray more. I spoke to God and asked Him to take care of me and my son. I asked Him to help me trust that He knew what He was doing in our lives because I sure as heck had no clue. I joined a church and became friends with a wonderful woman who had a child the same exact age as mine (to this day we are still friends). I bought a house and closed on it right before he was scheduled to return home. He eventually made it back, safe and in one piece, and praise the Lord for that.

Were we able to pick up where we had left off? Of course not. That's impossible. Too much happens during the life of a deployment. Tears are shed. Children grow up. You lose time that you will never, ever get back. The Army wife changes, too. She grows up. She travels through a spiraling tunnel of emotions and circumstances that will forever change her. Some make her stronger. Some don't. Some make her turn to things like other men or addictions, in order to fill their loneliness. Others make her turn to God.

Some Army wives question their relationships, whether or not they want to continue hacking it out on their own -- for truly, an Army wife of a soldier who is constantly deployed is equivalent to being a single parent. She's both Mom and Dad. She's a counselor to her children, a cheerleader to them, and a referree. She's the chauffer that racks up thousands of miles on the minivan, the soccer mom who drags Allison back and forth to practice, the 24 hour nurse when little BJ has strep throat, the counselor when Anita cries herself to sleep because she's afraid her Daddy might die, and a disciplinarian when 3-year old Carlos tells her he hates her in the middle of Wal-mart or has a melt-down at the Commissary because he saw a soldier that looks like his Daddy but wasn't. She's the one who goes to Parent Teacher Conferences and concerts and recitals -- alone. The one who juggles the groceries, mows the grass, vacuums the car, changes the flat tire, assembles the baby's furniture because he's due in two weeks, pays the bills, mails out the care packages, and filters the phone calls from his side of the family.

She's also the one that stares at the ceiling as she suffers from yet another sleepless night. The one who gets sick but is forced to suck it up, no matter how bad it is. The one who locks herself up in the bathroom to cry so that her children don't see her. The one who wants to drop everything and run away because she just can't take another minute, much less another deployment. The one that thinks about taking that bottle of pills. The one that overeats or undereats because it's the only way she can cope. The one who yells too much or says too little. The one who wonders what her husband over there in Afghanistan would say if he got word that she had packed her things -- and his kids -- and just left.

I've been there. I know what it's like and "tough" doesn't even begin to cover it. Being an Army wife is an unpaid, unglorified job. It's not like the show on TV where in one hour all of your problems just work themselves out because you have fabulous friends to count on and the Army is just one big, happy family. You have good moments, on ocassion, but a lot of bad ones, too. Especially when you have little ones. 

So how do you cope? This being the kind of blog that it is, of course, I'm going to tell you to do what I did: turn to God. Pray. Read your Bible and find some verses that you can apply to your life, verses that remind you that despite walking down that valley of the shadow of death, you are not alone, for God is with you. Every night I would drag out my little notebook and copy down some of these Bible verses, or parts of certain Psalms, that I felt spoke to me and the moments that I was living through. I would read them aloud, talk to God for a little while, and then pray that he'd help me sleep that night. I'd thank Him for giving me the strength to get through this day and to give me the same strength to get through tomorrow. I never asked for more than one day at a time. I just couldn't see that far ahead. It was too scary. 

So if you're reading this, know this: you are not alone. I know it feels like it, but you're not. Yeah, there are other women out there that are in your shoes. Other Army wives who have the same problems (or more) than you do. Like the one who just gave birth to her first child -- by herself. Or the one who doesn't have the minivan, but a beat-up old pick-up and lives in a trailer with her four kids because no, the Army doesn't really pay all that much. Or what about the Army wife who spent the night sleeping next to her husband's coffin? Yeah. Army wives (and their situations) come in all shapes and sizes. 

But you don't care about them. You know about them, but right now, you're just trying to do you. And that's okay.

But you don't have to do it alone. Cry out to God, like the prophet Jeremiah did in the book of Lamentations. Cry out to Him and pour out your heart. Lift up your hands and give it all up to Him. Even if you can't speak. Even if you don't know what to pray or how to do it. He knows. Psalm 44:21 says that God knows the secrets of your heart. He knows your fears and your pains, your doubts and your weaknesses. He knows what you need better than you do.

We're all weak. No matter how independent or strong you think you are, you will stind find yourself at some point feeling useless and utterly helpless. But when you do, remember what David said in Psalm 73: "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart."

Yes, God. The Creator of the Universe. The One who has everything under control, even when you don't. What? You haven't heard? The Lord is the everlasting God. He never grows tired or weary. Quite the opposite. The Bible says that "He gives strength to those that are weary and increases the power of the weak." That to those of us "who hope in the Lord" He will "renew our strength" and make it so that we will "soar on wings like eagles, run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint." (Isaiah 40:28-31)

So trust in God. In His strength, not yours. In His will, not yours. Accept that no, you are not superwoman. You can't do it all on your own. If you don't get help from anyone else in the world, at least know that you can seek help in the Lord. In fact, He wants you to. Peter tells us to cast our anxieties on Him. Why? Because He cares for you. He loves you.

Don't think about your husband. Not right now. (That's the subject for another post.) Right now you need to think about what you need to get through this deployment. You need God's strength. His wisdom. What you need is His love.

So turn to Him. Lift up your hands to Him. Right now.

Trust me... He's already waiting.

===============================================

  

"We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God..."

written by Paul, 2 Corinthians 1:8-9