Addiction

Here we sit, again. Me verses the avalanches of emotions that come rushing down. Me verses the military, me verses the hurt. And it's the reality of this life. I get to constantly dive in to the depths of the angst I spent a good portion of my younger days pretending to avoid. It's what keeps me around, isn't it baby? Isn't this the reason I dove in to begin with? I needed the cuts that this life dishes out so smoothly, so addictively, so constantly.

Like a drug I married myself to it. I've always hated to be afraid of something. Maybe that's the reasoning behind it. I feared loneliness. I feared solitude. I feared losing control. And I married all of that. Maybe it was my brain's way of unwrapping the coils of those chains from my neck. Maybe this whole thing happened just so I could prove to myself that I was over it, undefeated. Unconquerable.

But damnit it you win every freaking time. I'm a puddle of tears and I'm a weepy, sappy, annoying as all get out chick. I'm whisked away every five seconds by sorrow. I'm becoming increasingly "female", increasingly fragile. Maybe it's my old age that's taking away all of my harshness. Maybe time has swept in and taken away my balls. Or maybe wisdom revealed the uselessness of armor.

I feel a thousand times like I'm drowning. I feel a million times more like the only times I know that I'm breathing, I know that I'm living, are when you are a part of my daily picture. I know on that day I will begin holding my breath, begin pretending. I'm fine. Doing well. SO supportive. One day down.... The drought will begin.

I told you tonight that I would hate you every single day of this. You told me that I already do. True story. But hate is just the lie that love tells itself over and over again so it doesn't have to feel the hurt of it. Hate is just love misdirected, like anger. And the truth is I don't think my brain has the capability of hating you. The reality is that you are my oxygen, as sick as that sounds. The constant is that soul mates are real because you're mine. The truth is that I've died too many times to keep score anymore, and I'll continue to because that's what this Love means as far as I know it.

I'm over here bracing for the storm about to come crashing in. I know what I'm facing. I know what's coming. And I'm angry. But mostly just sad.

You've always made me conquer my weaknesses. You've always made me find the deeper thresholds within myself that I never knew or believed were possible. You've forced me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And you've shown me that it won't take me down.

I've got to tell you Chief, we're going to be okay. I don't doubt it in the slightest. But I hate you for doing it. I really do.

Sidekicks and Heroes

Packing up what's been ours for over a decade. Dusting things off, ignoring the ugly parts, and wrapping them up to take to another building that will become a house, that will morph in to our home. The walls will transform from a shelter to a carrier of a million minutes of us. Its story will become another chapter of ours, and we will unify ourselves into a family, that lives in a home.

Somehow we'll untwist our minds from imagining this Cavalryman from being our home. Eventually we'll stop associating the walls we're in now, with our experiences.

The air will taste differently there. The scenery will be greener. The climate. humid. My heart... sad. It's inevitable. Because I've done this before, America. I've moved to a new place and had my husband leave. This isn't my first rodeo. Truth is I have no idea if it will be my last. 

Each experience scars me. Each moment leaves its distinct knife wound in my flesh. I carry them around, underneath my armor. I am battle weary, America. 

It's interesting how wrapping up this home, is in so many ways symbolic for wrapping up my home. Wrapping up the inner workings of my heart, packing them up, and shipping them off to a dark corner of my mind, until the days fade away. Until he and I can sit side by side, fingers entwined, and unwrap them together. 

Maybe that's the worst part of it, America. I know how I get when I'm alone. I know it because he's been gone so.many.times. I struggle with the heart aching, screaming match in my mind saying over and over again "I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS!" and "It's not fair!" But the "fair's" in August and the goodbyes just keep on coming, whether or not they crush me to a thousand little pieces.

This is what life is like as a sidekick. We give and we give, and we love and we love, and we get tossed to the side when the country comes calling, but we better be sure as hell strong enough to keep the home fires burning, the heart-lovin' filled up, and the emotional stability of our children potent. We are required to be resilient, and in a thousand ways I am. In a thousand ways every single one of these knife wounds have forced that bendability in to me. I can bend, morph, flex, and twist a thousand different ways. Truth is, I'm always surprised by my ability to "keep on truckin'" in the face of insanity. 

I hate it. But I need it. Maybe that's the most sickening truth of it all. I need this, America. Just as much as he does. I need the hurt, I need the solitude, I need the goodbyes. Because they force me to appreciate the unity, the hello's, and the comfort. They force me to not take a single moment of fingers entwined on the sofa or in the car, for granted. They force me to see how much he fills my little pink heart with laughter and love and encouragement. I need the hurts so that I can recognize the joys.

So it's coming at me, faster than a hurricane. No matter how many windows I have boarded up, or how much stuff I've got in my emergency kit, it's going to break me. It's going to force me to my knees, in a puddle of tears and rage. Then I'm going to pick myself up, like sidekicks often do, kick some ass, and then get back in the fight so that my hero can save the day. 

I will leave you with this lyric that speaks legions. "But after my dreaded beheading I tied that sucker back on with a string. And I guess I'm pretty different now, considering." -Ani DiFranco

Ehyeh

Ehyeh,

There are moments where You appear to be a thousand miles away. I get caught up in vanity and appearances and you seem distant and disconnected. It's hard to believe in a Father who rescues when I grew up in an environment of unending self sufficiency. No one would rescue me, I would have to do it myself.

We live in an atmosphere with salvation is an impossible concept. We live in a society that no longer rescues. So how do we transplant the idea of salvation and rescuing from this completely imaginary idea, to a real-life-true-story scenario.

I talked to You about the desire of my heart for the emotional experiences that I so often encountered in the Protestant church. I talked about how much I missed the mood lighting and the music that was purposefully chosen to create a romantic thought in my mind. I actually missed being manipulated. When I brought those feelings to You, You told me that you weren't make-up, you were razzle-dazzle, that you weren't a whore... dressed up and dolled up and shoved down my throat for my own amusement or distraction. You scolded me for desiring that. You then reminded me of your simplicity.

So I asked You to help me meet You. Not the falsified ideas that I believed to be You, but the real-carpenter-simple You. I asked You to help me fall in love with You.

It has been a gradual process. Erasing the dramatic experiences from my mind has been difficult. Finding elation in the quiet moments of sipping coffee together on the back porch has been new. Hearing You in the hymns, prayers, and sunlit church has been different.

After weeks of this new relationship, today You punched me in the face with You. Today you rocked me to my core with your Magnificent Glory, minus all of the falsified TV drama... Today it was all about us and it felt amazing. Everywhere my eyes looked, I saw Your Salvation. I saw Your Rescues. Today You rescued me. It was too magnificent to attempt to pacify it with "good luck" ideas. Today it brought me to tears. You brought me to tears. You did it with birds, and sunshine, and clouds, and golden mountains. Today You showed me a side of You I've never seen before. Today it was a love song, played out with music I've never heard, and with images I've never seen.

I'm sitting here trying to write it all down, because I don't want to ever forget it. I'm trying to figure out how to tell You what it meant to me, and I'm fresh out of ability. I don't have words, or a love song, or anything that I can offer. But I can whisper, from the depths of my soul, that I am desperate for you, my simple Beloved One. You are quite genuinely the most beautiful Beautiful I have ever seen. Being alone with You and lost with You is indefinable. I am in awe.

I just want to scream... You rescue! You rescue me when I call.

Today

Nuggets,

I hope you spend your entire lives looking for laughter, choosing to be happy, and celebrating joy. I hope that when grief arrives you recognize it as temporary, and bare the weight of it patiently. I hope that you know personally and passionately, the God who has carried us all through so many challenges that I can't name them all. I hope you know that Daddy and I, while vastly imperfect (something I anticipate you will cover greatly in your adult psychotherapy sessions), loved you with all that we had and absolutely gave you the best that we had to offer.

I hope you always have a sense of delight in adventure. I hope you spend time in nature (hiking, camping, etc). I hope you respect the earth and do your best to take care of it. I hope that you have insight to know what is good and what is not, and courage to act wisely in challenging situations. I hope you have self control.

Today, I hope you take time to notice the beautiful things around you, and the different forms that they come in. I love you!

Winding down

I showed up in this town with three babies. Three tiny human beings who were so frail and so... I don't even know. Their older sister was just over two. I honestly can't remember the road trip very much. I have a few random snippets of memories, but they aren't clear in my mind.

Seven years... Seven years brought a plethora of jokes about being Moses'd and never leaving. Seven years has brought four post commander, Brigade commander, Battalion commander changes... Countless company leaders have come and gone. Soldiers, volunteers, friends... Beautiful friends have moved on and away. I began to feel like a concrete pillar. I felt cemented here. I felt resigned.

And then the Army came and changed the game plan (as the Army so often does). What was the plan, is no longer the plan, and now there is a new one.

I've got to be honest with you, America, my heart broke in that levee briefing. It seems so strange to write that. It is bizarre to feel heartbroken about leaving this place that in so many ways, felt like where happiness went to die. It is irritating that when I began to feel of it as home, was when it was taken away.

These walls watched my children learn to walk, read, write... These walls surrounded me while my husband deployed (a few times), my children grieved, and my heart ached. These walls have listened to seven years of laughter and love. These walls surrounded us as we mourned our beloved Jake, and the three babies that my body couldn't hold on to. This house stopped being a "house" and became my home.

And now I have to leave it. And it hurts like hell. It reduces me to tears and it makes my heart ache, to know that these days, these moments, are ticking away. They are on a countdown to done, and a new story will begin. I will turn in the keys and drive away and this house will hold someone else's memories.

I don't want to go.

I wonder if this is how Moses and the Israelites felt. Their wandering in the desert was over, and now the new chapter was about to begin. Did they grieve leaving the familiar? Did it hurt to move on? I think they were afraid. I'm guessing that because in the beginning of Moses' replacement, God keeps telling him to "be strong and courageous". Why would God tell him that if he did not feel weak and fearful? Maybe... grief?

I am excited for our next chapter. I am looking forward to the new memories and the new experiences that will come with it. I am hopeful for the next page.

But I am still aching. This place is worth that. These memories deserve it. The friends I leave behind... my great, great friend I leave behind, is worth it.

Hope

Nuggets,

I get accused of a lot of things. Some people think I'm mean. Others think I'm controlling. People tell me I'm too passive, or too much of a people pleaser. I also hear that I'm inconsiderate, and I don't care about the feelings of people other than myself. I'm too sarcastic, or too serious. I'm too sad or too cheerful. I'm too this or too that or too blue or too orange... yada yada yada yada. Why am I telling you this, my dear nuggets? Because even though I'm a "grown up" I'm still being criticized. I'm still being "picked on."

I know it hurts when people point out what they would like you to do differently. I've spent a lifetime having that pointed out to me. The truth is, it doesn't stop because you "grow up". It doesn't change because you become a parent. Human nature, it seems, is to be fixated on how to improve our opinions of ourselves, often times at the expense of others'. How does that manifest itself in real life? By telling everyone else what they're doing wrong, and very rarely saying what they're doing right.

I hope, with all my might, that you will not be like that. I hope you will choose to take off the ugly glasses with which so many people view themselves, or the world, or others. My hope is that you will instead looking around at those around you and choose to see what they're doing right. Of course this is not something that will be accomplished always. And absolutely we need to be able to communicate our wants, expectations and needs. But I hope you will not be the type of people who do so with a need to destroy. I hope you will learn to communicate in an edifying manner. I hope you will understand that no matter how hard you try, someone will always be dissatisfied, and that the fact of this will not destroy your sense of worth. I hope you will be stronger than me, and that you will learn from my mistakes.

I love you!

Fun

Nuggets,

Have fun. I think that's a sentence that is often times lost on the perfectionists of the world. We are constantly striving towards some greater element of success in ourselves. We work like crazy to achieve some unknown internal mental success bar that, truth be told, is not really achievable. We bombard our brains with requirements and we dig in and work ourselves to the bone, and at the end of the day, where do we stand. Have we actually enjoyed anything?

I struggle with having fun. I wonder if you will grow up understanding that to be true in me. I spend so much time laughing and making jokes, that I sometimes think it's impossible for people to see that. I struggle with being present in the moment. I give so much of myself to honor my commitments. Honor, integrity, loyalty... these are big deals to me. But fun...? It's not so much on my radar. I am trying to change that.

You see, Nuggets, I want to learn to be more like you. I want to wake up and find wonder is silly things. I want to awaken my imagination and sense of awe. I want to be present in each moment that we are together.

So have fun. I'm trying to. :)