Living the Crazy Military Spouse Life, One Day at a Time
I can’t help but look back over the years as a military spouse and think about the people I’ve met. How some of them have this military life down pat, and others struggle a little bit more. My heart is with the military community and will always be, no matter how many years take me away from my personal experience with this life.
From when their spouse first leaves for boot camp until they try to make their way through the transition back to civilian life, we military spouses have to go through situations that others do not.
We put our spouse on an airplane and send them off to one of the most dangerous places in the world. We do this, holding the hands of our children who don’t quite understand why Daddy or Mommy has to be away for so long. We do this knowing they have a dangerous job and they might not come back. We do this because deep down we know that support our spouse is what we must do, through this crazy military life.
We, military spouses, make friends with people from all over the country and the world. We might be coming from different places with different backgrounds but we have one thing in common, the love of our service member and the desire to support them throughout their career. I might have grown up in California and you might have grown up in Alaska but we can bond over our love of books and the craziness of raising children in the military world.
We, military spouses, might have to move to the middle of nowhere, away from anything we have ever known.
We might have to give up our own career, even if just for a few years. We might feel a bit lost not knowing what we should be focusing on during this time of our lives. But this just gives us a reason to think outside the box and figure out a way to make our dreams come true, even within the military lifestyle.
We, military spouses, have to learn how to adjust even when we really don’t want to. We might love where we are stationed and then one day our spouse comes home and tells us we are moving to the other side of the country, in a place we never wanted to go. We have to bloom where we are stationed but sometimes that is easier than others, especially if there is a beach nearby.
We, military spouses, get to go places and see things we would never have had our spouse never joined the military.
I have a child that was born in Germany! Another country! Sometimes I think about that and take a step back in this crazy life that we made just because of my husband enlisted one day in 2005.
We, military spouses, have seen hardships. We have seen friends lose their husbands, either to war or years later to something else. We have seen marriages that seemed so strong fall apart.
We, military spouses, have seen our own husbands act differently than we ever thought they would. The fact is, war changes people and when your husband has been to war, he will change. Some service members handle these changes better than others. Some don’t handle them at all.
And yet, the military spouse tries her best to support her spouse through everything, even as things do not go as planned.
When I meet new military spouses, I want to hug them. And I am not a big hugger. I want to let them know that this life they started is going to be a crazy one but in a lot of ways, it will also be a good one.
They might not be the same person five or ten years from now but because of this crazy military life they will grow and will most likely become a better person through everything they have to deal with. That this military life will not always be easy, that they might cry a lot and that friends will come and go. That their faith will be shaken and made stronger. That their ideas about marriage and even motherhood will be shaken to the core.
If you are a new military spouse, know that you are now a part of a strong community that wants to help you through what you will encounter in the years to come. If you are not such a new military spouse, know that what you have been through has made you stronger and will allow you to help others in the future. Don’t be afraid to share your stories and your experiences, they can help.
