Post 157: Reflecting

A few days ago, David & I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! It’s truly amazing that we’ve made it to this huge milestone. I feel truly blessed to say “we’ve been married for 10 years!” It also makes me feel rather old, but we all know I’m not.

If you read my previous post, you know that I wrote something special for my husband as I try to do every year. I don’t believe it as good as the vows I wrote last year – but I am my own worst critic, as most of us are.

I hated not being able to share our 10th anniversary together in person - it's such a huge accomplishment and for those of you that know our personal story - you probably understand why it means so much to me. 5 years ago, I would have never thought we'd be here. Of course I never planned to spend a 10th wedding anniversary alone either.

But, I have to stop and think of those military wives who had to get married in a hurry or whose husband was deployed during the birth of their child - and then I realize I am truly blessed. I've had my husband home for many wonderful occasions. The conclusion I have come to though - is that I'd rather he miss my birthday than our anniversary - is that weird?

However, as the day went on and I thought about our lives, the ups, the downs, the things we’ve been through, places we’ve seen, places we’ve lived, and so much more, I really got to thinking about family. Family and friends, because without them in our lives there is a very real chance we’d have never made it to that 10 year milestone. Without their support, their love, and their prayers I know getting to this point would have been much more difficult.

So as I’ve reflected these past few days – there is something else I want to say to you our Family & our Friends. THANK YOU. As our family & friends you mean a great deal to us, you have each touched and blessed our lives in one way or another and for that we are truly thankful.

We also have news – David is coming home soon! The exact date is a secret for safety reasons and of course it is always subject to change, but he will be home again soon and I can not wait to have him back home.

School will have started back up before he returns. However, we do believe he will be home in plenty of time on the day of his arrival to pick the kids up and surprise them. He loves doing that and their faces light up brighter than ever. It is a beautiful thing to witness.

I also look very forward to having my husband home again. It has been a long 4 months. I’ve truly missed him and he missed a beautiful English summer. I normally handle this pretty well and I think I did okay this time, but it has definitely been long and exhausting. I did not even blog as much as I intended to about what it’s like with him deployed. When you’re the only parent for a while – things get busy fast.

I think one of the things that made this deployment particularly difficult was not the fact that I am in England, rather than the states, but that our “communications” were not as often as in previous deployments. I’m used to talking to him every day in some form, email, chat, or phone…but this time it’s pretty much been all email. There are times I think if he called I would not recognize his voice and then the phone connection is so horrible you can barely hear him. He is constantly repeating himself, which makes it hard to have a decent conversation. The internet connection for chat/webcam has not been any better.

So other than email, I feel I really haven’t gotten to talk to my husband very much. I don’t know what I’d talk about of course, but I feel like he needs to come home so we can just talk and talk and talk. He’ll laugh when he reads this – because I don’t talk haha. Well, not to a major extent anyway. I have really missed him this time around and I am impatiently awaiting his return.

I would appreciate it very much if you would continue to pray for him & his unit as they finish their mission and return home.

Also, Thank you for keeping them all in your prayers over the summer.

Tonya