Tests

At church on Sunday the sermon was about tests and trials that we face. It was interesting, because I had been thinking about that same thing, involving two different current issues in my life, all week.

Ray’s message was about how sometimes God lets us face difficulties to remind us to RELY on him. Basically, it is easy to say that you trust God when all is going swimmingly, but if things are tough, do we turn to Him or try to handle it ourselves?

So, here are my two issues. First, we found out that the owners of our house are moving back here this summer. They weren’t going to tell us, because they didn’t want us to move out now and leave them without the rental income for several months. They were just going to keep pretending that we were able to stay indefinitely, and then when summer came, give us 30 days notice to move out. When I finally forced the issue of a new lease, they admitted that they were coming back, but offered us a moving allowance if we would agree to stay until the summer. My biggest concern has been the idea of having to move while S is deployed, so their solution was that they would pay for the movers—hard to turn down (although the angry part of me wanted to just move now and tell them to you know what!!)

Now, several things go into this process. I wanted to be moved and settled before S left. And, I really want to keep the kids in the same elementary school, so my options would be limited if I wanted to move right now (there weren’t any available that I have found). I have a friend who is moving this summer, so then we WOULD be in the same school district and I wouldn’t have to find a place (and our current house’s owners would be paying…) Then, there is the possibility that the family WON’T move back here, but they won’t know for a few more months. So, I agreed to the 6 month lease extension, with the moving allowance. Two hours later, the house directly across the street from us had a “for rent” sign in front of it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I could move myself in laundry baskets (any Vilseck ladies remember THAT fun time??). That house has an amazing view of about 60 miles of coastline. I felt sick.

I thought about calling the property manager back and saying I had changed my mind, but I didn’t. I’ve decided that this is God’s way of helping me learn to wait for His plan. I am trying really hard to stop forcing things to happen the way I want them. If God wants me in that house, it will still be available in July (it’s possible—I’ve watched it sit empty for months before.) Otherwise, our friend’s house will be available or we’ll somehow get to stay here or SOMETHING. I decided that I had already given my word, and if God wanted me to move right now, that sign would have gone up a day earlier. So, it is actually taking physical force to convince myself not to worry about it—but so far I am doing a pretty good job of leaving it in God’s hands. (Although my pulse does quicken every time I see someone over there looking at the house, and I have several times considered stealing the For Rent sign!)

The second issue is in relation to the deployment itself. I have often heard the quote from Mother Theresa “God only gives us as much as we can handle—I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” Sometimes when I hear that, I think “Maybe God doesn’t trust me very much” since I have not had any really horrible things to deal with (not that I’m not very GRATEFUL). I have always felt like my childhood was training me to survive Army wife life. I’m really really bad at goodbyes—I’ll never be good at it, but I have learned MANY coping skills, and there are several other examples . . .

The other thing is that my “Army wife life” has been very gradual. S deployed right after we got married for 7 months, but we didn’t have kids and I was working so I was really busy. We had a couple of years off, and then he deployed while we were in Germany—I had N and R was on the way, but S got to come home for the birth and we had EXCELLENT friends and lots of support. The next deployment was hard on me…even though it was the shortest, we were in a very awkward spot and it was a difficult time for us. We got put into some unusual situations, which have given me a unique perspective on a lot of things. It also taught me a lot of lessons I might not have learned otherwise.

And here we are on the brink of the next deployment. It will be the longest we have ever faced. It will be the first of J’s life, and the first one that R will remember. We are not near any Army family or blood family, so that type of support is minimal. But, here’s the thing. We will be fine. I have honestly never felt that way before a deployment. I have always had such DREAD. (If you want to hear the workings of a truly disturbed mind, remind me to tell you the story of the day S went back to Kosovo after R was born or how I couldn’t be alone in a car right before Iraq or what happened when I thought S had menengitis. . .) I have changed a lot in the last 3 years. I think the pace of our lives has been slowed to the point that I could actually digest and LEARN from the craziness of the previous 9 years. I am even starting to write them down.

Also, I have seen MANY examples of how to handle deployments and the situations that they present (some good examples; some TRULY bad examples!!) And, here’s the thing…here’s how it all goes back to Ray’s sermon. I have LEARNED those lessons. I have. I might not have instantly recognized them for what they were, but in the last 3 years I have sifted through them all in my mind, and I am ready. I know that means I am not as strong as a lot of Army wives—many people got thrown straight into their first deployment right after getting married and moving to a foreign country—and it lasted 15 months. I have had a chance to ease into it.

God is going to be proud of me. I WILL not let Him down. I will set a good example for my kids and I will make my husband proud. Sometimes we talk about the “bigger picture” that God sees that we don’t. If that is true, then this is a pretty good illustration of it. Basically, 30 years in the making from divorced parents to immobilizing fear of college, to devastation at being “abandoned” during a deployment, to near divorce myself, to being “stabbed in the back” by so called friends, to being saved by leaders who truly cared about what was best for us, to getting a 3 year “break” to process it all. . .now is the time to put those lessons into action. I guess it is good that I had all that training, because I won’t have my Army family around for this one. . .maybe that was God’s reason for letting it happen this way. So I could be my own support.

After this deployment we will go to a school for a year, and then we’ll go back to a regular unit. I hope all of this, combined with what I learn DURING the deployment, means that at that next unit I will be able to be a good resource to younger wives. I had a lot of people to help me in the past, but I also had several people who said and did some BAD things to me, and it was all based on the fact that they had NO IDEA what I was going through. They assumed that they knew my story (and they assumed the worst!) I hope that I have learned to be more compassionate, to look for the deeper story, and to not judge as much as I might have before all of that happened.