So it's been a little over a month since my last post and for that I apologize. My life kind of took a turn for the insane, and I've been spending the last couple of weeks attempting to cope with not only pregnancy but the gravity of the situation my little family has abruptly found ourselves in.
About two weeks ago I came home from work, blissfully ignorant of the bomb that was about to be dropped on my head. As I chattered to LT about my day, I could tell something wasn't right. Besides that I had a weird feeling I hadn't been able to shake all day.
After asking LT what was wrong a couple of times, he finally asked me to come sit with him in the living room. As I sat on the couch beside him, he told me he had received a call that afternoon. He is being attached to a unit that is deploying to Afghanistan, and needed to report for training within thirty days.
I can't exactly describe what I felt in that moment. It felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me, and I promptly began to sob like a baby. LT held me and let me cry for several minutes. I guess you could say I didn't exactly handle the news like a big girl.
As my father, Major Dad, likes to say, "when you join the military deployment isn't a matter of 'if' but 'when'." The thing is, LT had recently joined a Reserve unit that had just got back from Afghanistan. I suppose we thought we were safe from the possibility of deployment, at least for a good while. This wasn't supposed to happen to us, now.
As I continued to soak LT's shirt, I felt my body shaking. All I could think about was delivering our first baby without LT by my side. I could literally feel my heart breaking. LT called in to work that night so I didn't have to be alone to deal with the news, and we spent the night talking and holding each other.
The last couple of weeks have literally been a whirlwind. While most families in the unit had months to prepare for the deployment, a few families (like ours)were literally given weeks. And while LT technically had 30 days to report, being the amazing soldier he is, he wanted to get there as soon as possible to meet the new troops he would be working with. So he reported this past Monday.
If you ever studied the cycle of grief, it's ridiculously similar to the emotional lifecyle of deployment. I felt angry that this was happening to us. I felt denial, like it was just a mean joke. I bargained, begging LT to see if there was any way the Army could pick someone else, or send him later after the baby was born. Then after a few days, I just accepted that this was our reality. It was happening, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I decided the only thing to do was give it up to God. I can honestly say I've never prayed so much in my whole life. I still have those bad days, where I can go from one emotion to another within minutes. But this whole thing has really forced me to put my life into perspective, to be thankful for things that I have.
We are so blessed to have an amazing support system in our friends and family. Both of our parents are within 20 minutes of us. All of my best friends live in DFW. Plus I'm already making friends with the other wives whose husbands are deploying from the unit. And probably the biggest blessing of all:
I'll have a beautiful baby girl to keep me company until Daddy comes home in October.
Much love to ya,
