Sometimes I just want to SCREAM!!!

I really do try hard not to complain about this deployment too much. I don't try to feel sorry for myself or pity our family for what we endure. James chose this profession and I chose to marry into it. I don't like to dwell on the negatives. I accept that James will need to deploy in order to fulfill his job and I also accept that whatever we go through is because that is what God has planned for us. I try hard to live by the belief that "what will be will be" and "everything happens for a reason."

Now, I'm not saying I'm the most positive person in the world. Far from it. But I do try to keep it all in perspective and not fall into the "woe is me" attitude.

But days like today just make me want to scream out loud with angst. I'm fed up to here (motions towards forehead) with some of the things I've heard and read from other wives and I just need to voice my anger.

There is a particular message board I belong to for other military wives. It is a great group of women whom I have posted with for several years now. A few of them I've met in person, but most of them I only know online. Anyway, a few months ago one wife mentioned her husband needed to make a choice about his future (whether to reenlist or not) and she had lots of reservations about it, mostly pertaining to the possibility he might have to deploy. If he did reenlist, she said they were looking at particular duty stations where he wouldn't have to deploy.

This is not an isolated event. Countless other wives I run into talk the same kind of garbage. They and their husbands are constantly looking for ways to keep from having to deploy.

Now, I'm not saying I'm irritated with the wives whose husbands have already gone to Iraq once or twice and are now looking for a stateside tour that will keep them from another deployment. Far from it. They've done their time. I don't begrudge them wanting to keep their husbands home for a while.

What I'm complaining about are the soldiers who haven't yet gone to Iraq and are still searching for ways around EVER having to go.

On this particular message board there were a couple posts made in the last day or two that really, really got under my skin. One wife was dreading her husband's first deployment, and he's been in the service nearly TEN years!!!! Another was from a wife whose husband is getting ready to go on his first deployment to Iraq (his second deployment ever, if I read that right) in his 20+ years of service.

And then there's another wife whose husband got back from Iraq a year ago, spent nearly a year apart at a school in TX, and now is going right back to Iraq.

What kills me is that certain people skirt around deployments and finagle their way through the system so they never have to leave precious U.S. soil. Hell yeah, I wish James never had to leave U.S. soil, either, but how fair is it to send my husband 3 times in less than 5 years, with a fourth Iraq tour already written on the calendar? And how fair to the wife from my message board whose husband is having to go back so soon after coming back and being in a school?

It seems like a fraction of the military gets called upon to line up in the dump zone, while another portion (I'll call them weasels) get out of it smelling like roses. It's unfair and I'm having a hissy fit over it.

When I read or hear things like this, about avoiding deployments any way possible, you might as well be screaming at the top of your lungs that your husband is better than mine, yours is TOO GOOD for Iraq while mine deserves to get sent repeatedly. If you're actively trying to avoid ever going to Iraq, you're leaving the dirty work to others and you don't deserve to wear the uniform.

So tonight I'm screaming inside while I wish, instead, that I could be screaming THAT at them.

And another one...

...the news is always tragic no matter who, or what, or when, or where. It seems even more so when the guys are less than a month from leaving Iraq. May God watch over yet another Fort Benning soldier's family as they navigate the raw emotions of the grieving process.

And, again, I thank God for the Grace He has shown to James, his CSD platoon, our deployed friends (Mike and Kenny), the spouses of all the ladies I see daily in my classes, and the thousands of other troops anxious to return home to our arms.

Please say a prayer that no more tragedy comes to our precious troops.

Never get too Comfortable

No, it was not an April Fool's joke and that's the sad part.

I woke this morning to find an email from our unit saying that our brigade had suffered a casualty during the night. This is the first loss we've had since last October. I suppose with our soldiers' redeployment so close we've all become a little too comfortable in that knowledge, as if nothing bad can touch them now that they're this close to home.

But for one family the knock on the door they received was not a terrible April Fool's joke. It was tragically real and sad and painful. My prayers are with that family. How heart-breaking it must be to be nearing the end of a horrible 14 month deployment, feeling energized that it is almost over, anticipating the reunion, to have those dreams ripped away from you.

The worst can happen at anytime so live each day as if it is your last, always aware that it very well could be. And have faith that God will see you through.