San Antonio, summer of 1994, what can I say? It was rough. It had been a rough year in fact. My husband and I had married nine years earlier, after he finished his second semester of college and he had joined the Air Force rather than enroll again. Eight years, five homes, and three little boys later he walked across the stage to receive his bachelor's degree. The week we learned he had been accepted to Officer's Training School we also discovered we were expecting our fourth baby.
While he was gone for training the boys and I muddled along as best we could. His commission would mean immediate relocation so we had to close up the house and move into temporary quarters before his return. I remember distinctly getting the house packed up, getting the keys to the temporary unit, and then being beset with (thankfully) false labor. He arrived soon after and I was well enough to travel though not drive. His mother helped us make the long trek from Ohio to Texas.
The heat arrived just as we did. The rental house introduced us to small garden lizards and large roaches. Our parapalegic son was hospitalized after injuring his foot at the new babysitter while I was at the obstetrician's office. Another son got a wicked gastrointestinal bug. The onset was swift and unmistakeable as we stood, with me very pregnant, at the checkout cashier one day. Our beautiful baby was born soon after and then? Husband got a temporary assignment. Where? Back in Ohio.
It was almost surreal.
We had signed the lease on the new house and had no option to accompany him back to Ohio, so I stayed in Texas with the children. In desperation one afternoon I pulled out the letter with the number scrawled in tidy cursive. My sweet neighbor Mabel from Ohio had written urging me to call another friend of hers who had also recently relocated to the same base. "You two need to meet!" she insisted. Truer words were never spoken.
Jen and I have always chattered non-stop with each other, our words tumbling over each other's like puppies. It was clear by the end of that first call that help was on the way. I remember walking up the cement pathway to her little rental house. Her oldest son was swinging a plastic bat at a tee and she was standing in the door all warm and bubbly. Jen's whole demeanor says, "Welcome."
It was blessed relief to finally meet her. We slipped into each other's lives readily, easily, permanently. Her boys slept on my living room floor the night their sister was born by emergency c-section. My children woke up to her in our kitchen the morning Moira was born. We threw baby showers and birthday parties. We had big cooking days, stocking freezers for deployments or medical needs. We occasionally got out together for 'mom time' catching a concert or conference.
When we left three years later it was every bit as hard as when I had left my own family years earlier. Our visits began to take place by phone and by email. We wouldn't see each other in person for several more years but we would talk and talk, challenging each other to hold fast and try harder and to never succomb to the despair that sometimes threatens the strongest of military spouses.
We still do that.
Twenty-one years later Jen has gathered her thoughts into a new book to share with other military spouses. It's solid. I know this because I have heard these words over many many, years when I needed to hear them. Today you can download the kindle version on Amazon here. (the hard copy is coming in February!) The format is fabulous for those in the trenches. Each section begins with a story followed by practical and spiritual applications: challenges, prayers, scripture, and reflection. She meets you where you are and comes up alongside offering sound counsel and encouragement.
If you are "married to the military" or just plain married, I truly encourage you to take that hand like I did.
You can find more from Jen at her website
(six years ago when we overlapped at the same base for two months)
Starry Sky Journal 