If you have been with me this far, then you know my family and I have been on a roller coaster for the last few years. I was tasked to deploy two different times, each time getting canceled for a variety of reasons. During this same time, David and I were brought together, then apart with TDY’s and his deployment, we lived through a miscarriage, then the birth of our rainbow baby, and then finally another deployment and cancelation.
What was weird about the last tasking was that I truly felt God had prepared my heart to leave.
He told me to be strong and courageous, for the Lord my God would be with me wherever I went.
For reasons I cannot elaborate on, deployment 3 was canceled as quickly as I had accepted it. After a short amount of time basking in the cancellation (and trying to figure out what God really had in store for me), another deployment tasking came down – Deployment tasking #4.
Deployment tasking #3 and #4 were essentially the same tasking, just a few weeks apart and a little bit longer.
At this point, my mind was going a million miles an hour trying to decipher how I was truly feeling. I still believed this was what God wanted of me. He told me to be strong and courageous and somehow I just knew in my gut that I would be leaving my little family behind.
When I mentally accepted this tasking, I stopped telling people I was sad to leave and instead, I embraced this opportunity with excitement.
Why? Well, because God was sending me on a mission. His mission.
Be Strong and Courageous
Once the world around me became still, I began to wonder…
Am I in denial?
Am I trying to hide the fact that this deployment is going to be hard?
Am I naïve to think I am capable of deploying?
Is the enemy trying to confuse me?
Am I feeling ‘okay’ because I trust God or because I’m delusional?
To say I was all over the place is an understatement.
I still don't know the answer to any of those questions. I hope I trusted God. I hope that I felt excited about this deployment because God had a mission for me rather than being selfish about the positives of this deployment because there were definitely positives.
Glass Half Full
Let's be real for a second. This deployment had a lot of perks. It would mean I could sleep by myself with no kid hogging the bed. I could read an actual book, not a kindle version (have you tried reading an actual paper/hardback book near a 1-year-old?).
I could workout and get sexy! Or, as one of my coworkers say "redefine sexy".
And I could make some decent tax free money.
Eventually, whenever my mind would wonder to all the things I would miss, I would think of all of the positives instead. It may seem selfish, but it was the only way I could survive. I had to see the glass as half full.
Two weeks after the official tasking came down, I was saying “see you later” to my family and hopping into a black passenger van for the airport.
It was time.