I Am Still a Navy Reservist's Wife

We are a Navy Reserve family- in the middle of Indiana. My husband goes to a base to work with his unit one weekend a month. Two weeks a year he leaves for training. He's a First Class (MM1) and generally has leadership in his unit, so he's actively more involved in the military than his actual time on base. He deploys for a year about every 4 years, and may be called upon in the event of disaster. Last year his orders were unexpectedly cancelled a week before he was supposed to deploy for one year. When that happened, after many difficult months of deployment prep, I was so angry. I was more than angry, I was pissed and felt betrayed. This was very confusing to many people who saw this as a blessing. And in some ways, it was. We did not have to endure a difficult separation. However, we had planned our lives around that deployment. We had adjusted our careers and finances, as well as our relationship and daily life, to gear up for the difficult separation that was to finally bring us a future we wanted. Our orders were cancelled, and we found out we were going to have a baby. Finding out we were pregnant was amazing news. In 24 hours, everything changed. 

I put the Navy out of my mind and threw myself in to the pregnancy. I stopped writing my Navy blog about deployment. I stopped writing completely- despite my husband urging me to continue. I couldn't handle it, I didn't want to. My husband had to leave his job and take a job as an exterminator to make a bit more money to support us. I had to continue working instead of staying home after the birth of our daughter. We were both angry. That's just a part of what was effected. A year and a half later, this change is still effecting us daily. I am still angry at the Navy for how the whole situation was handled. 

My husband is currently gone for his 2 weeks of yearly training (called AT). It's his first AT since the cancelled deployment. I'm reminded again that I am a Navy Reservist's wife. While he works with the military daily and goes on base once a month, my life continues as normal for the most part. This is the big difference between Reserve and Active Duty- at least for us. I have immense respect for all military families, and I'm in awe of Active Duty soldiers and sailors and their families. My relationship with the military usually looks much different than theirs. 

I am married to a man in the military, serving our country. I am proud of him and the work he does. Whether I like it all the time or not, I am connected to the Navy and the Navy gets to make decisions about our lives, about my life. That's part of the deal, that's how this works. In serving the government, sometimes individuals get screwed over. Because it's not about us, it's about the work that the military is tasked to do. Someone has to do it. 

Holding on to my anger at the military anger isn't serving me, or changing anything. Being pissed will not change what the military does, or did. 

My husband is gone right now, and he sees our 8 month old when we Face Time at night. When we Face Time, my husband is wearing one of his brown cotton undershirts that he wears with his green camouflage uniform. He wears those shirts at home every night. Seeing him wear that shirt through a screen when he's gone is somehow very different, it reminds me of what that shirt means. That brown shirt means he wears a uniform. It means he's serving our country. It means one day soon we could be facing a deployment again. The sooner I let go of my anger, and reconnect to the fact that we are a military family, the easier all that will be to accept. 

My Navy Blog / Deployment Prep Information