Part 2...emotions.

I'm not even really sure how to broach the subject of emotions during deployments. First of all, you have to say goodbye. The goodbye seems to be one of the hardest parts...How do you say goodbye to the person you love more than anyone else in this world? How do you expect your children to say goodbye when they think that it is only for a short time...a trip to the grocery store for milk, a mid-day run, some time alone? How do you explain that night, as you put your beautiful, innocent children to sleep, that daddy isn't coming home tonight (or any night soon)? Just reading these thoughts as I type them brings up a well of emotions. I guess the best word to describe it is: heart-breaking. The other word that comes to mind is desperation. Desperate for one more hug, one more kiss, one more laugh, to hear him read one more night time story to the girls, to see him glance at me from across the room with those penetrating eyes, to hear him tell Kailee a "once upon a time" as she lays in bed at night...My heart literally hurts just thinking about it.

That is how we (military families) survive the emotional train wreck of deployments. We detach ourselves. We don't think about it. We just move...we just do. We do the dishes, we mow the lawn, we take our children for walks, we read the bedtime stories, we give them unconditional love, we let it slip (just this once...) when our children are misbehaving because, after all, how else do they show emotion? They miss daddy too. And when we hear the cry "I want daddy" during timeouts or after waking up from a bad dream, we just hold our little ones and cry with them saying, "I ,baby, Daddy loves you, and he'll be home soon".

I wish I could say that I am always strong in these situations. The truth is...I am weak. The worst deployment for me was only a 3 month tryst in Timbuktu, Mali, Africa. I longed for Seth...in every sense of the word. Kailee was young and I just felt like I was falling apart emotionally. I have heard people say that you should never tell your soldier about your emotional distress or if bad things are going on at home. I have heard that you should just deal with it because you shouldn't put your husband (in my case) in danger while he is deployed. "He needs to focus on his objective and nothing else -- He needs to stay alive." I will be the first to say that I think I am a strong person, but I couldn't bring myself to do this. During his short time in Mali, I can remember us both having complete meltdowns on the phone. It was hard. On one hand, I didn't want him to see this weakness in me but on the other hand, if I completely separated myself from the situation emotionally (which some people do -- to get through), I'm not sure our marriage would still be as strong as it is today. I can't just turn it on and off. Once you separate yourself like that, it is hard to get back...sometimes people never do. I truly believe this is one of the reasons divorce is so prevalent among the military.

This was the deployment that we decided Seth would get out of the Army. I NEEDED him. I wanted him to hug his daughter, to put his arms around me, to read her bedtime stories in person, not through a video he recorded before he left. Every night we would push play on the video to hear Seth repeating "In the great green room, there was a telephone..." My heart broke for Seth to have to be away from Kailee, and her from him. Will she remember it now? No. But he will. He will always know that he missed those times in her life. If I didn't love my husband, this would be easier to stomach, but I do. I love him with ever fiber of my being and it when he hurts, I hurt.

Are deployments hard? Yes. Do they sometimes feel like they are draining the life out of your family? Yes. Is God good? Yes. Does he have a plan? Yes.

Even after writing all of this and reliving the emotions that come along with it, I ask myself: Is being a military wife/mom worth it?

Yes. (Hindsight is 20/20)

(*more to come*)