Deployment

 

Dealing with the emotions of a deployment is no easy task to wrestle with, especially if the only practice you have really had with it has been from an ex boyfriend or two.  Nothing says reality like sending your husband off into a war zone.  I know that people mean well, but until it has affected them personally and in an immediate way, they really don’t have a clue what it means to be separated from somebody for months at a time.  My ability to just pick up the phone and call or text whenever I feel like it is no longer a viable option and you begin to realize just how meaningful everything in life is and how meaningless a lot of the other stuff really.

 

For safety’s sake I am not allowed to discuss really where he is going and for how long.  Do you blame me? Most people know that I want to become an expert in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and work directly with our combat veterans who are suffering from combat stress.  After the horrors of what transpired yesterday at Fort Hood with Major Hasan, I am even more convinced of my calling in life.  Without getting into the why of what happened yesterday, all I can say is that my heart is for reaching out to veterans, their families and their closest friends and help them walk the road to recovery.

 

Ben has my heart and soul.  Nobody knows the pain of sending somebody off into the unknown.  You are wracked with so many different emotions which oftentimes are confusing.  First there is the pain of separation, then the numbness, then the reality that you just sent off your warrior into a hostile area and there is a small chance that they may encounter the enemy or some other danger.

 

People have been telling me all sorts of things when they hear my husband is deployed.  Most mean well, but you would laugh if you heard the garbage that comes out of their mouth.  “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to send you husband off for15 months.” ….”My boss was a vietnam veteran and he almost died several times.” “What’s it like knowing you will be without your safety net for months at a time?”….the list goes on and on and on and on….

 

It’s been three weeks since he left with a lot more to go.  To be perfectly honest I cry often, but I am so proud of him.  Yes we have made a HUGE sacrifice for the sake of safety and protection of people all over the world, but God is in control and Ben is in His sovereign hands.