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How to Save your Marriage When War Comes Home
When a soldier comes home, War comes home, too. When my husband came home last time, it was our hardest yet. He came home to a stressed-out wife starting her next school year and a toddler daughter he barely knew. Reintegration was going to be tougher than it had ever been on top of the extreme stress of cumulative deployments. Reintegration means readjusting, remembering things we took for granted: Where is my place? What is my role? How do we do this together? For me, a small positive of deployments is getting to organize my house to my little OCD heart’s content. I get to color code and label. And…
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The Devastating Agony of the Night Before Deployment
The nights before deployment were some of the most difficult of my married life. Every moment is full of the devastating agony of letting go. Each second is rich with longing and fear. Saying goodbye is a balancing act between saying enough and never being able to say enough. It’s the agony between he is still here and he is leaving that hangs like a sword over your head every minute. It’s trusting that God will bring him home. It’s fearing your children won’t remember their daddy if the worst happens. It’s taking a deep breath and holding it for a year. August 22, 2010, the night before his fourth…