What Do You Love about Military Life?

What do you love about military life? Think about it for a minute.

Think longer if you need to.

What do you specifically love about this very complex, often isolating, sometimes frustrating life? Sometimes, especially lately, it takes longer for an answer to spring to my mind, but it always does.

Today?

Today I am in love with that uniform. The look of it. The smell of it. The way it crinkles when my husband walks through a room. It always makes me think beyond his attire, to the path we’ve chosen.

Chosen.

A choice that, lately, has been waved proudly in the media, as the fight for pensions, and Tricare, and commissary access rages all around us. Important personal fights, but I question our choice in those fights.

Why do we have to fight?

My husband has done plenty of fighting.

I’m tired of fighting, but it seems fights are just beginning, and I grasp at those things I love even tighter; hoping they will completely justify the fighting.

Knowing that our choice has been made and is unwavering.

Knowing that I cannot ignore the fight, but also knowing I will not let the fight take away the love I have for this life.

This military family we have, this community we have built, filled with people who have made the choice to set themselves apart in a life of service to this nation.

I love them.

I love us.

I worry that we’re forgetting why we love this life.

I worry we’re fighting each other because we have to fight someone to have our voices heard.

I worry we’re forgetting what we’re fighting for.

What are we fighting for? Benefits, yes, but isn’t it something much more profound? I think we’re fighting so that the sacrifices of our service member and their families do not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

I worry that we feel like we are being forgotten.

I worry that we are being forgotten.

I have no answers to any of the mounting issues that encompass our lives right now. Instead of answers, I’ve decided to hold on tight to what I love about this life—hat my service member loves about this life—and trust that those things will carry us through to the other side.

Share with me what you love. Anything that you love. It may be seemingly mundane. Share it. Say it out loud to yourself. You may be surprised at what will carry you through: Through the deployment, through the transition into the civilian world, through the battle over budgets and benefits.

I feel ever certain that the things we love are what will bring us through the fights and noise and back to the heart of things.

What do you love about military life? What will you hold on to? Share with us!