A Decade With You

I recently hit a big milestone. The United States Army has now owned a piece of my heart for 10 years, a whole decade—and I never even signed the papers to join. Well, actually, I did sign a paper. I signed my wedding certificate.

My husband and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We commemorated it with a small but delicious meal he cooked us at 9 p.m. when he was back from one of many days of training exercises. And, I offered him some new treats I attempted to create, where my skill level was that of our children.

I put the treats in a cookie tin since tin is the traditional gift item associated with year 10. But, the only cookie tin I could round up had the words “Merry Christmas” printed on the top. Oh well, I did my best, and my understanding husband accepted it kindly. It’s the thought that counts, right?

My prince charming commissioned in the Army seven years before we married, so we had a military wedding, and our life together has been nothing but the military. By marrying him, I married into the Army family, and this family has had a say in most of what we do.

We were preparing to celebrate this milestone of an anniversary apart, as my husband had orders to deploy. Solid, hardcopy, official orders in his hands for the last four months.

The kids and I planned to remain at our current duty station for this next year and began making big plans for our summer, school, and extracurricular activities. Three weeks before my other half was scheduled to leave, a phone call forced a one-eighty on us.

He was no longer needed to deploy; instead, he was more importantly needed for a CONUS assignment.

After a week of phone calls, meetings, and ups and downs regarding his timeline and what this meant for the rest of our family, we were all instructed to PCS together three months from then.

(How coincidental, that in one of my recent blogs, I even made a note about being frustrated by last minute changes).

So it goes with military life! It’s bittersweet at times.

In moments, the military can feel strict, inflexible, unkind, and unforgiving. The ups and downs are confusing and exhausting. The process of a PCS is overwhelming; the transitions are daunting.

Nevertheless, I can’t imagine a life without the military!

So, I want to say thanks to my husband and to the United States Army, in which the kids and I serve with him. Thank you for an amazing decade together, especially for these things:

Thank you for the traveling. Oh, the traveling…

Thank you for an awesome honeymoon to Hawaii and to the military’s Information, Tickets, and Travel office who provided us discounted tickets on all our excursions.

Thank you for access to USOs in airports, where we feel safe and at home with other members of our military family. How nice it is to eat, rest, and allow the kids to play before embarking on the next leg of our journey.

Thank you for allowing me to expand my world travel. To use Space A and fly to different parts of the world—for free! And for the servicemembers who permitted me to ride in the cockpit of a C-130 during take-off on one of those flights (my biggest highlight)!

Thank you, so much, for the amusement parks that offer military discounts, and for the Army who has stationed us near them (Disney being our children’s biggest highlight)!

Thank you for allowing our kids to experience all the fun ways to journey: by bus, subway, bullet train, taxi cab, boat, commercial and military planes, and more!

Thank you for the opportunity to stay at all the military lodges while adventuring and dor the chance to meet up with old military friends while doing so.

Thank you for the humbling experience to have my feet in both North Korea and South Korea at the same time. Visiting the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) was an eye-opening venture and helped me to better understand how our service members serve.

Thank you, to my service member and to the Army, for the opportunity to serve in SFRGs and PWOCs where I’ve met some amazing ladies who will remain my forever friends.

For the leadership positions graciously granted to me in these organizations and the training provided to me.

Thank you for showing me how to become family with the strangers I met yesterday. To instantly adapt, plug in, and live life hard and fast with these special individuals who so quickly rotate in and out of our lives.

Thank you for the unique experience to have the best of both worlds at the same time: living a civilian life while still being active duty. Learning how to balance them together broadened our knowledge and stretched us in good ways. It made us even more grateful for what each has to offer.

Thank you for throwing us into an array of cultural experiences, and for forcing us to fully live them. It has opened my eyes and allowed me to appreciate the beauty in the uniqueness of each.

Thank you for challenging me to learn new things while you are away for long work hours, class hours and homework, or TDYs. My skills are getting pretty sharp when it comes to maneuvering your Dodge Ram into small parking spaces, getting through monsoons and power outages alone, installing household appliances, killing scary bugs, and chasing creepy-crawly lizards out of the house.

Most of all, thank you for bending me in directions I didn’t want to go and stretching me in ways I never thought possible. I know at some point during every PCS I have a meltdown, muttering craziness about your job, dear husband, or about why you’re doing this to us again, Army.

But, it’s allowed me to see things differently, to have more compassion toward others, and to become a better person.

Sure, I kind of did sign my life away to the United States Army when I married my husband a decade ago, but I believe I signed my life away to the two absolute best things that could have happened to me. In a year I thought we would be celebrating more milestones apart, I will now relish the time given back to me with my servicemember…

…as we pack our home together. Again. And we precede to move into our seventh house in ten years of marriage.

It hasn’t always been a dream with my prince charming. But it’s sure been an everlasting adventure.

To the two absolute best things that have ever happened to me, Merry Christmas, happy tin-aversary, and thanks for this decade with you!

If you enjoyed this, you may also like Military Marriage: 10 Years Later and Lucky 13 Marriage Tips.