The little black dress

When I was seventeen, my mom took me to Macy's and bought me a very beautiful, and expensive, black dress. It was a gift to me for my eighteenth birthday. My whole childhood, my parents struggled financially and for my mom to have spent as much as she did on a dress that made me feel the way that one did, meant a lot to me.

This dress has become a dress of meaning in my life. It was the dress I wore to my surprise 18th birthday party. That night was the first night I felt deeply special, and very treasured. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

The dress was also the first dress I ever wore in front of a boy that deeply held my heart. Back when I went to Bethel College, a boy came all the way from Kansas to meet me. We had met on the phone some few months earlier. He took a bus all night long up to Minnesota just so that we could meet in person. I will never forget the moment that soldier knocked on my dorm room door, and walked forever in to my heart. I still remember what I was wearing (no it wasn't the dress), an orange turtleneck (that I still have, and was my mom's when she was young) blue jeans, and a brown jacket. Anyway, he came back before he deployed to the middle east for the first time. This was the first boy I ever deeply loved. It was instantaneous. Honestly! I told my girlfriends when I met him on the phone, that I met the man I was going to marry. They all laughed at me...but...who was right!? haha.

The first night that he came to visit me, before our first deployment goodbye, he wanted to go to a fancy restaurant. So I did my hair, and put on that dress. The impression it had on him has never left my mind...Never have I ever felt as beautiful as he made me feel that night. To him, I was drop. dead. gorgeous.

The dress has not fit me since that night. And I have never worn it for another man. Only him. Something inside of me has always prevented me from giving it away. It has traveled with me across the nation, through many moves. For the last three years, it has been sitting in the back of my closet amongst the items that will NEVER fit me again, but are sentimental.

You see, when I was pregnant with the triplets, my doctor told me I needed to gain 150lbs. I didn't quite gain that much, but I came close. I think I was around 139 ish or so...I kind of forget now. Anyway, I gained a lot. My body completely changed after the triplet pregnancy. I have so much loose and hanging skin...that it has been emotional for me to even look at myself in the mirror. Literally, it's an ugly site.

I have been working hard, in the last year to lose weight. After the triplets were born, I automatically lost 60 lbs. I came home from the hospital with that much less weight. But the roughly 70 pounds or so have still been around. I have gained some, lost some, gained some more. In the past year, I have lost almost 60 pounds.

Today, my husband asked me to try on that dress...the one I wore for him so many, many, many nights ago. I said, it's not going to fit me. He said, "I think it will". I said, it's not going to. It will upset me to try it on, so I'm not going to. But I have to admit, he had awakened my curiosity, so when he left the room...I got it out.

IT FIT! It fit me! I couldn't believe it! I walked out into the living room, where he was out, with it on. I leaned against one of our chairs and I went, "ahem!". He looked up at me from across our living area...and his eyes lit up. He said, "IT FITS! You look hot!" And then he started following me around the house just touching me in it (no...not inappropriately). He was telling the kids that this was the first dress he had ever seen me wear.

This sparked even more courage in me...I started trying on other significant dresses: best friend's bridesmaid dress (so big, didn't even need to zip to pull it up), second oldest sister's bridesmaid dress (too big), oldest sister's bridesmaid dress (too big, but could be altered), high school prom dress (it fit), high school dress I always liked (it fit), and on and on and on... they all either fit or were too big! I was shocked. I curled up in a ball on my closet floor and started crying. I never in my wildest dreams would've believed I would ever be able to wear any clothes from back in the day, after delivering triplets (and before having some sort of reconstructive surgery). Of course, they don't look like they looked back when I had a six pack, and I was all toned and fit...but with some girdle support...I think you wouldn't be able to notice at all the hanging skin... :)

So this dress...this black dress that is now almost ten years old is here yet again at a significant moment in my life. It's a beautiful day. :)

I love Iraq.

I love Iraq. I REALLY do. It may sound completely weird and bizarre for an army wife to say that they LOVE the country that has played a major role in many many many family separations...but I really do love it! I love the people. I love the place.

Okay, before you get up and throw me out of your life forever, declare me a lunatic, and maybe punch me in the face...let me explain. Iraq has taken my husband away from me four times. Some of those times we weren't married, but you get what I mean. I have spent thousands of nights wondering, worrying, and waiting for that country to either take my husband's life, or to give him back to me. This is something that I have come to realize only recently...Iraq is beautiful. It isn't beautiful for its terrain or anything specific to itself...it is beautiful because it is where many people I have loved and cared for... lived. They LIVED there! My husband's DNA was coughed into its air, his DNA fell off his arms and joined its sand, his sweat dripped off, his body... He lived there. Has Iraq ever been his home? No. But people that we have loved dearly, and still do, died there. How can I hate the place where my dear friend's husband went to heaven from? How can I resent a country where he took his last breath?

Places are not evil or good. They just are.

Iraq has also given me wonderful gifts. Many of you know that my husband came home from Iraq a long time ago...severely different. A part of him died in Iraq, when his friend died there. When he came home, he was horrible to be around. It was one of the most painful times in my life, and it has been one of the most horrible times in our marriage. It was exceptionally painful, damaging and traumatic... But this is what makes me love Iraq...through that hardship, through the horribleness that happened in my marriage as a result of my husband being there...the best relationship I have ever had, has emerged. I learned more, through that experience, about God, my husband, and myself than I ever thought possible. I have lived a true miracle. A complete and utter miracle. My husband has been cured from his PTSD and is now no longer on any medications, and WITHOUT any help from the Army. God literally spared him, and me, from that illness having hold any longer. Maybe one of these days I'll look back in to that time and write about what we actually went through. I honestly am not shy or unwilling to talk about it. Quite the contrary, both my husband and I tell people about it all the time. Not in any sort of bragging or "look at us" kind of way, but simply to show people that YOU CAN get through anything! You can survive! You can still love! You can still trust! And this CAN get better.

Okay, I think I got off topic somewhere, and I know I'm terrible about that. Don't judge me...yes...that is one of my token phrases on here! haha. Oh well. You're reading this so there must be something about it that you're enjoying. Back to why I love Iraq:

In addition to the PTSD experience that changed me, and showed me so many things...Iraq gave me the past year. My husband was deployed, yet again, to that beautiful country. This time things were remarkably different in our situations: we could talk on a webcam, and we had four chidlren. It was wonderful to see him. Sure it was hard to not be able to touch and hold and kiss...but it was SO wonderful to go through a deployment being able to look in his eyes, and cry together and have it be more than a sound. It was beautiful to have him just look at me, and know what I was thinking and feeling, without me having to explain it through a broken and damaged telephone signal.

In the past year, I learned even more about my capabilities than I learned with my husband's PTSD. I learned, that I CAN take care of four very young, and three very fragile, children all by myself. In the past year, my son coded (that's right I said coded... as in...stopped breathing) once, was hospitalized three times for breathing problems, and a intestinal disorder. My daughters were both hospitalized twice (once together and one time each, separately). This is also not including the NUMEROUS emergency room visits with all three of them. My oldest triplet was diagnosed with Autism and possible epilepsy in the past year. Through hard work, and much prayer, she finally learned to speak. My oldest child started pre school, and I home schooled her all by myself. We went through at least four throwing up illnesses that cycled through the entire family. We had swine flu (yes...ALL of us), regular seasonal flu, stomach flus, food poisoning, sinus infections, countless pink eyes, and a gazillion colds. Our pediatrician knows me by VOICE, that's how often my children and I have been to his office. I swear he sees me, and he sees dollar signs in his eyes! :) In addition to these things, I had surgery to remove tissue in me that had failed, and recuperated from that (my mom and aunt were here to help me...complete and utter life savers) sans husband. I managed the sicknesses, the ten thousand doses of medicine (when divided amongst the kids), the vitamins, the physical therapy, the social therapy, the speech therapy, the pulmonological therapy (that's lung stuff) times two, the intestinal treatments, the laundry, cooking, cleaning, working out, mental stimulation, church activities, and TWO dogs. I did all of this...without my husband here. I never in ten thousand years, would have imagined I would be capable of surviving or handling any of this.

Please do not misunderstand...I am not holding myself up on a pedestal or saying "look at me, I'm great" in any way... I was only able to stand because of my Lord and Savior through all of these experiences, and the blessing of support that has been poured out on me through many wonderful, wonderful church friends. I am only saying, none of these experiences would have happened, if my husband had NOT been in Iraq. Through him being in that country, I learned that I am capable. I CAN do it, and I can have fun and laugh through the whole experience. I learned that I am not as weak as I used to believe that I was. I learned that God is faithful through ANY and ALL situations. I learned more about loving my husband, and honoring him, through this past year than I have learned in the last almost six years we've been married.

So I love Iraq. I love it for becoming a part of our story. I love it for allowing my husband to live there. I love it for the challenges that it has brought in to my life. I love it for NOT conquering my marriage and my sanity. I love it for being a tool from which I have learned so many things...

heaven

Have you ever wondered what God's laughter sounds like? Sometimes I try to picture it in my mind. Standing in the temple, with His BEAUTIFUL robe filling it up, angels crying out "HOLY HOLY HOLY!" and his body sparkling and glowing like jewels. Then I try to picture me standing there...in awe...maybe a little bit frightened...maybe a little excited...probably bawling my eyes out at the sight of such wonders...and then I picture his face breaking out in to a smile...and then laughter...and His arms outstretched beckoning me to come to Him. Have you ever pictured what it would actually feel like to run in to God's arms? To sit on His lap? To hold His hands, and feel His arms wrapped around you? I bet it feels like home. That's what I imagine.

the classics

I find classical music emotional. I know that in today's age, where we consider "music" to be whatever is playing on the local pop radio station, it is controversial for a "young adult" (yes, I still refer to myself as one) to say they actually listen to it. I think classical music is like a beautiful piece of art. How can you go by it, ignore it, not be challenged, moved, or driven to experience emotion by it? I have found myself time and time again, closing my eyes, absorbing the beauty that is displayed in my ears.

The famous classical artists are easy to talk about. Most of us are aware of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, or Fur Elise (one of those songs a gazillion piano players learn to play so they can seem like really hot shot piano players to all of their friends in high school. I know. I was one of them.). There are, however, pieces that might be equally famous, it's just that no one knows what they're called or who wrote them. An example of this, would be Adagio for Strings Op 11 by Samuel Barber. I am listening to it right now. And it incites and develops emotions in me...there are no words. Even now as I sit here and the music flows through my ears and deep in to my spirit... I am whisked away... My mind is drawn to a beautiful field, filled with daisies and a gentle breeze blowing over the top of them. The sun is bathing me in warmth, while I lay on my husband's chest amidst the flowers,listening to the sound of my children run and play, trying to catch grasshoppers. I can almost hear their giggling now. This is my heart's picture of heaven on earth. Just as easily as this beautiful piece of music can take me to such a beautiful place, it can also guide me away to a dark and depraved place. It can carry me back oh so many years to my beautiful triplets bedsides...It can send me back to the night they told me my youngest was not digesting food any more and her body was breaking down and she wasn't doing well. It can cause me to recall the panic I felt as the nurse, doctor, and social worker all came in to the room to "talk to" me. It can bring back the complete punch in the face that I felt as they told me that her large intestine was showing up as dark gray on the X rays (the beginning of bowel death, which leads to infant death), that she was no longer digesting food, and her O2 stats (which had always been immaculate) were dropping. It can reignite the panic I felt as I sat there holding her tiny hand and begged her to fight this, and begged God to not take her away from me, and begged God to make this moment go away... This is what classical music can do.

I have often wished that I would have been granted such a beautiful purpose. I wish that my heart could sore on to the pages of musical score and define and describe, through music, my emotions. I am finding myself less and less capable to put words to feelings. Maybe it's because as I get older, I find the silence more meaningful. Maybe it's because there is a comfort in just knowing, rather than hearing.

I wish I could write music so that I could describe for you what it felt like to run in to my husband's arms on the day he came home. There are not words. There are no synonyms for me to write on this page that could adequately describe the elation. They all marched in, they were released, and I was standing there looking around and I couldn't find him. There was a panic in my heart...where is he? Where is he? And then...just like a perfect pause, or the drums pounding away...the people parted, and there he was. There he was standing in front of me, maybe twenty feet away, and I just ran. I didn't think I would run at all...but there I was. Dead sprint. Running at him with all I had in me. All of a sudden, my flesh felt his flesh, and my arms wrapped around him, and his wrapped around me. My face was pressed against his, and my body was up against his...there were no more internet connections to deal with, or telephones connecting us. It was just a girl with her boy. Two hearts as one flesh. We stood there hugging for a while...he was saying things in my ear, which I will treasure in my heart always. But they're just for me. Sorry...no divulging of that information. I just remember starting to cry. It took me a couple of minutes...but then it just hit me...this is over. This is over. And I wept. I wept in the arms of my soldier, in the arms of my deep, deep love.

This is what I wish I could write music to convey. Those words...they can't convey them the way I wish they could. I can't make you experience the joy, the elation...

So I just sit here...with my iTunes and my classical music. I let it whisk me away, and explain what I can not find words to explain. I pour out my soul, through my ears, and I smile. Because God created someone with that kind of beauty, that kind of capability. I am in awe. I am eternally grateful. This is my sonata.

The closest piece I have ever heard to describe my husband's coming home would be: Berceuse in D-Flat Major, Op. 57: Lullaby by Peter Schmalfuss. This is my heart's love. Go listen to it. It's amazing!

emotional me.

Here it is. The end. I have survived this deployment. Okay, well technically I have fifteen hours and forty seven minutes left, but I think when we're down to hours...it counts as the end. The kids and I made it. At the beginning of this past year (by year I am meaning when my husband deployed) the entire endeavor was very overwhelming. In fact, after we had said our goodbyes and I left him at Fort Bliss, and after everyone had gone home...the overwhelmingness of the entire situation hit me. I remember the moment like it was yesterday. My son (one of the triplets) needed his diaper changed. I felt (up to this point) quite calm...sad...but not having anywhere near to an emotional breakdown. I walked in to his bedroom, laid him down to change him, and it hit me...I would be changing three two year olds diapers, caring for sicknesses, cleaning up vomit, taking hospital trips, countless hospital stays, breathing treatments to do, medications to give, bed tucking ins to do...feedings, cleanings, bathings, bed time story readings, cuddlings, dealing with tantrums, and on and on and on all by myself for four toddlers...for a year. It honestly hit me like a punch in the face. And I lost it. I did the "ugly cry". It was UGLY. I don't even really remember the cry so much as gasping for air and dialing phone numbers because I needed someone to talk to. I called my best friend, Koria. I don't even remember saying hello, I just remember sobbing uncontrollably, and her saying something along the lines of, "You can do this. I know it's hard." And my mom called and then bawling my eyes out with her and her saying similar things.

I remember when we were at the gym (this was our final goodbye place) and they announced that it was time to go. Michael and I were crying, he put on his sunglasses so as to show me a brave face. We hugged and kissed and he walked off. And I stood there watching him walk away, and I just kept thinking to myself, breathe...if you don't breathe you're going to pass out and that won't go well. Breathe...Breathe... I think I blocked everything out because the next thing I knew he grabbed me and whispered in my ear, "Will you come outside with me?" and I said, "Of course!" Then we walked hand in hand outside for him to line up in his formation. When we were finally out in the sunlight, we hugged one last time, and I was crying and we said what we have always said at partings, "I'll be seeing you." Then he walked off. I remember as I stood there, watching them load up on the buses, I thought to myself that this would be the hardest part. The first day is the worst. Get through this moment, and then you'll do better.

When I had gotten home and I was alone with the kids...I have to say I was surprised by my emotional breakdown. I thought I would be stronger. I had, after all, done this before and I was not new to this process. I guess, the truth was, in that moment with my son...I panicked. It hit me like a wave...and I honestly felt lost.

It's easy for me to recount all of this to you now, because it's over. I can tell you with complete certainty, that I have remembered EVERY SINGLE time he and I have parted ways for these endeavors. I remember them with a clarity...that I can easily describe to you. I remember it from his first deployment all the way to this last one. I remember what I was wearing for each of them, what the weather was, the times of day...all of them. I can recount them to you vividly...as if they had happened a moment ago.

You might say that me remembering them that well is a little morbid. I honestly don't think they are. I remember them because they are beautiful gifts to me. In every single one of those moments, I wasn't a college student, or a fiance, or a wife, or a mother, or an ex girlfriend, or a daughter...I was just a girl saying goodbye to the love of her life, and a girl being said goodbye to. I have never questioned that my husband adores me. I know this with a certainty in my soul. He and I truly are one, not just in that sappy cheesy way...but in the kind of way that really only comes around once in a lifetime way. But on those days...in those moments...everything else faded away and it was just me and him.

Now, just as I can recall to you every single one of those goodbyes, I can also recount with the same clarity, the hellos too. Those moments are the sweetest moments, when his arms finally wrap around me, and my whole body justs...relaxes. It's sort of like...okay...we made it...I can let go now... I don't know if anyone can understand this situation other than fellow army wives. The army really does in a lot of ways leave you out to dry, and when your soldier comes home...that safety returns. Even though I have a strong faith in Christ...and I have tremendous peace about what my husband does...it's difficult to explain.

Okay...so I suppose trying to round out these random thoughts and get to the heart of why it is I'm writing this post would be helpful. :) Today, when the rear detachment soldier called me (and the rear detachment first sergeant jumped on the phone, which I'm only noting for the benefit of my husband who might read this one day :) )... the "official" end had come. My husband will most likely, never again step foot in Iraq. It's actually kind of emotional for me on a lot of levels...That place...it has affected my life more than you could ever know. It has done things to me, personally, more than I have time, or the emotional fortitude, to explain. So to have it be done. To be completely done with ever having to say, "he's in Iraq", or even the word "Iraq" ever again... I can't begin to tell you what that feels like. Even as I sit here now...tears are pouring out of my eyes. It is so emotional for me. That place nearly killed me, literally and emotionally, and to have this place in my life where it will not have us anymore...I just don't know how to describe it.

The last time my husband came home, I was excited. I was elated. I was restless. This time? I almost feel like I am mourning. It's not mourning for him to come home, about that I am completely elated (beyond words). It's mourning about this finally being finished. It's sort of the reality that this is done. Forever.

I suppose in a nutshell, the purpose of this post is that I can not wait to write to you tomorrow and tell you with the greatest joy in my heart that my friends...it is finished! :) Goodbye Iraq! Hello my beloved. :)

hm.

It is almost over. I am almost finished enduring a very large trial. But it's strange to be rounding the bend with the finish line in sight...and feeling the way that I do. My mom asked me if when my husband left Iraq, if I felt a sense of peace that he was finally "safe" and I had to honestly say, no. The reason I answered "no" was because I never had anxiety that his life was in danger in Iraq. I genuinely believed (and still do) that his life was and is in God's hands and regardless of his physical location...when it's his time to go, he will go.

I feel...peaceful. I feel eager. I am extremely excited, but I also am wondering how this next transition will go. Of course, I hope that all will go smoothly and everything will fall in to place quickly and simply...but I also know that there are beautiful lessons in challenging adjustments, and I am excited either way. I am excited if it goes smoothly, and I am excited if it doesn't.

I love my husband deeply. I admire him with an intensity and a passion I have not known myself to be capable of. He truly is my best friend. He is my warrior, my lover, my companion...my beautiful, beautiful gift. I am eager to sleep next to him in our bed, and to watch him play with our children. I am eager to delight in being his bride. I am eager to be once again with my beloved.

I guess what I have wanted to say, and what I believe is the most important is that my life does not end, nor begin again with his absence or his presence. I know that my husband loves me, deeply, passionately, whether he is home or whether he is far away. My value as a woman, a mother, his wife... is not dependent on his physical presence. I have seen time and time again, woman who practically cease to exist in the absence of their spouse. I have seen women who disintegrate emotionally while their husbands are gone. I have BEEN that woman. I have been the woman who lived or died daily on whether or not my husband called or wrote or whatevered... I spent countless nights worrying, fearing, fighting, crying, and falling to pieces... My God has promised me that my peace comes from Him and HIM alone. It does not come because my husband kisses me goodnight, or cuddles me in the morning, or thinks I'm beautiful, or compliments me enough. It does not stop coming because my husband is mean or rude or insensitive. God tells me that my value comes from HIM.

I love my husband. Deeply, freely, intensely. But I honestly believe that I am more free to love him the way he needs me to and wants me to, because my value comes from Christ.

goodbye TV, you were expensive for us

I am getting rid of cable. Before you have a heart attack in shock...let me explain myself. To be perfectly honest...we just don't really watch it. The television is RARELY on in my household. We are just too busy doing other things. So today, my husband and I had a discussion about it. This is sort of how it went.

me: Want to hear something crazy?

him: What?

me: The television hasn't been on in our house for over a month.

him: You know, I have been wanting to talk to you about this for a while. We rarely watch TV, so why are we paying for it.

me: I don't know.

him: We should get rid of it.

me: Okay.

So that's it...We are cutting the ties with cable television. I am surprised to find myself very reluctant to do so. I think there is a strange comfort in knowing that if I turn my TV on, there will be something there to instantly entertain me. Is my reluctance seriously only because of the possibility that ONE DAY I Might want to watch it? I know that my lack of eagerness is not going to prevent this change from happening. I will be going down to my cable office tomorrow and dropping off my cable box and all of the trappings that it came with. Still, I am surprised by my heart's sadness. I honestly am not sure what I think I'm going to be missing.... Is it commercials? The news? Movies? We almost entirely watch television programs on hulu.com now anyways. We don't really enjoy the idea of having to be in front of the TV at some certain time like it's an appointment.

Okay, this blog feels preachy. I think it's because I am trying to have a certainty in my thoughts. No more TV=save money. Yeah! That I like. Okay...I'm ready to go! Kids! Let's pack up that cable box and get driving! Oh wait...it's the night time. Okay! Tomorrow, it will happen! :)