I saw this article in the 3rd Marine Division Newsletter, I read it and smiled through the beginning, but it didn't take long for tears to fall, just thinking about the fact that we're not even two months into this deployment. I've not even hit the 1/3 mark, I'm still over a month away for that. For those who are not married to the Military, this will give a little insight to what life is like for us, for the wives who have gone through deployments, this is a great reminder that we're never completely alone, though all to often it feels like we are.

The Spouse’s Scoop

In a time when the only certain thing is uncertainty, where the family life is torn and shattered and a spouse, parent, brother, or sister is taken and put into a war zone. Where the only chance you get to talk to your loved one is for a few minutes on a choppy line that might go out at any minute. Form all of this there is a strength, a bond that is formed not only between and within the family but within the friends, with the community that would in any other situation not have meant more than just an acquaintance you see every now and then when you get the groceries.
Form these events we get extraordinary people, people that with all of live against them they find a way to overcome and come out on top. This is one of their stories:
“Has it really been three months already? Wow, it’s going really fast!” exclaimed an exuberant relative over the long distance line. I held the receiver away from my face for a moment and took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to repeatedly bang the phone against my forehead. At least she hadn’t uttered the dreaded, “I don’t know how you do it. I could never be away from my husband for so long.” There simply is no response to such a statement because the irony is; I can’t be away from my husband for that long either. Yet I have to be.
Of course, I knew my relative meant well. But such comments, truly meant as encouragement from well-intentioned family and friends, can often lead to increased frustration. That’s why, when deployment time rolls around, I find myself leaning more and more on two of the best resources around: my fellow deployed spouses and my faith.
As a group, we deployed spouses are easy to spot. We’re the lone moms or dads you see at church on Sunday managing to keep our little ones from wandering the aisles and our older ones focused. We’re the ones flashing our Deployed Spouse Benefit Cards when we get our oil changed. We’re the ones taking mini-vacations together or trading babysitting favors. We’re either out in the yard mowing or offering active employment to half the teenage population on base. And, yes, that was one of us wives you saw standing in as a Boy Scout leader, too.
But above all, we’re relating to each other in our own unique way. On Friday nights, when our other friends are spending some well-earned time with their husbands and wives who are thankfully at home, we Deployed Spouses can get together. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we laugh so hard we cry. And sometimes, well, we just cry. In between we simply share the time in the hope that by splitting it, it will somehow pass by more pleasantly and quickly.
Inevitably though, there are times when we find ourselves alone. The weight of worry presses on us. The house feels lonely despite the presence of our children who, perhaps even while they sleep, are dreaming up inventive ways to challenge the new One Parent Discipline program.
It’s times like this that we’re given the opportunity to practice our faith, whatever brand, faithfully. To remember that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. Faith reminds us that we’re never truly alone, even when we start to feel that way. Faith offers sustenance to fill the void through the long months of separation and lone parenting. And faith, at its best, can even bring us joy during times of hardship.
Deployments are hard. They don’t pass by quickly, no matter how much our loving and well-meaning relatives try to convince us otherwise. But by relying on faith and leaning on each other, maybe we can resist the urge to bang telephones against our foreheads when our spouse comes home and Aunt Polly declares, “See? I told you the time would fly.”


This article was written by Teresa S., she and her boy’s are happily reunited with her husband, who returned from deployment last month.