The Best Worst Christmas Ever

It’s hard to believe December has rolled around yet again. As some of my friends are celebrating Christmas this year with their service member deployed, I’ve been reflecting on my experience of missed family moments due to military life.

Even though we have been through three deployments, they have fallen in such a way that, generally speaking, we have gotten to spend the holidays together.

My husband’s first deployment required us to celebrate Christmas about a week early, but the kids didn’t mind and it still felt like Christmas. He arrived home two days before Christmas the following year. His third deployment was only eight months long, so he left in April and came back in November, surprising the kids on Thanksgiving Day.

However, that deployment in the middle…

That one got us.

That second deployment, he left when our fourth child was just 8 weeks old, and he didn’t come home until the following year. This meant he would miss one year of every major holiday, plus one birthday of every person in our little family (including our little man’s first birthday).

This was insanely depressing to consider.

However, there is not much in this world more certain to steel a military spouse’s resolve to make lemonade out of lemons than to hand her a little bit of bad news. I decided almost immediately that we were going to have to do something to avoid sitting at home crying into our cocoa on Christmas Day. I had four little people who would be looking to me for guidance on how to get through this admittedly sad time, and I was the only one who could ensure deployment did not become equated with “ruined Christmas.”

I thought about it long and hard and felt there was no way to make Christmas “right” and “okay” without Daddy. Staying home and doing the usual things just wasn’t going to cut it for us. We had to get away.

I mulled over several ideas before finally finding our perfect solution: Harry Potter World.

It had just opened at Universal that year, and there were certainly no bigger fans in the world of Harry Potter than our two oldest boys. I ran the idea past my husband as there was a great package deal for hotel and park tickets. Plus, my mom lives in Georgia and was totally up for meeting us at the airport in Atlanta and road-tripping it down to Florida and back for our extra-special holiday adventure.

That is exactly what we did.

What could have been a Christmastime full of self-pity and wishing for next year was instead filled with:

Those few days just before Christmas in 2010 were spent having an epic time in a world of imagination, temporarily escaping the difficult reality of deployment, and making memories that I hoped would inspire my children to face future adversities with an attitude of, “Well, this may not be plan A, but let’s make plan B one heck of an awesome time!” We returned to Atlanta exhausted but happy beyond measure and spent Christmas Day with my mom.

Remembering that year and our grand adventure still fills me with such joy, even though it happened in the midst of a very trying time. It is one of my most treasured deployment memories.

It was the Best Worst Christmas Ever.

If you have a loved one deployed this holiday season, how does it affect your plans? Will you find comfort in keeping things the same or will you try something new and unexpected? For us, changing things up was the perfect solution but certainly it isn’t for everyone! Share how you will make the holidays special in your uniquely awesome military spouse way!