The Defining Wait

It seems that I come to a crossroads periodically where I feel a need to leave some of my thoughts here. We are now well into the second year since I started this blog and I am still waiting. I had no idea that I would wait this long or that my life would change as much as it has. Nathan is still in Iraq, still working to change things there. He is ever focused on his mission and I am more and more proud of him as each day passes. He has been deployed for 20 months now and we're down to the 60 day mark. The countdown has begun one more time and yet, this time things feel different. This will be the final countdown for this deployment. In 60 days, there will be no more counting, no more waiting. Oddly enough, the waiting has been my defining characteristic for the past 20 months. Being a military wife, waiting for my husband to return to me, that has been my purpose, my focus, my stress, really, my everything for nearly two years. Soon, Nathan will return and life will change dramatically. It will be amazing and wonderful and new. I am thrilled to begin my marriage and to spend every day with my best friend. It isn't that I don't look forward to his return. It is more that I have spent two years looking forward and in 60 days, time will stop. For a single solitary moment, everything on earth will stand still and Nathan will be back at home. He will be normal; we will be normal. It will be time to redefine who we are as individuals and as a couple. It will be hard and it will be perfectly easy. There won't be anymore looks of pity and stupid comments. I won't have to kill my own spiders and unclog my own drains. I won't wake up alone again. Nathan won't live in a trailer in the middle of the desert. He won't eat food he hates and work ridiculous hours in 140 degree heat. The part of all of this transition that most people don't see is the part where we both grieve. There is a part of both of us that will have to say goodbye to who we've been for two years. We will have to become something new and a beginning always marks an end. At one point Nathan told me that his little trailer in Iraq is the one place in nearly 10 years that he has lived the longest. There are so many people who think that he will just step off the plane and be thrilled to be home and Iraq, for both he and I, will just fade into the past. The truth is, Iraq will come home with Nathan. He won't be the man I married and I'm not the woman he married. We will fight new battles in 60 days. There won't be any mortars or rockets but the enemy is ever present. The enemy will attempt to drive his wedge of distance and isolation in between us and we will fight him. We will win the battles that are about to ensue. We will call upon the name of our Lord to see us through this period in our lives. There will be so much joy and celebration but I am also strikingly aware of the dull ache that we will both have from all the waiting we've done. The waiting changes people and it has changed us. So, I look forward to the movement of time and the arrival of my soldier, my hero, my Nathan. I also know that it won't be easy. Once everyone has forgotten us and no one cares what Nathan has done for our country, we will still be left with the scars of time, the scars of the wait. If you know a soldier be sensitive to his scars, to his pain, to his longing for the one place you assume he ought to hate. Be sensitive to his wife as well, to her scars, her pain, her defining wait. Remember that their battle doesn't stop when he steps off the plane. Remember also that their commitment to the cause hasn't changed and when the next set of orders comes and the next wait begins, he will stand and fight and she will stand and wait. Remember to honor him when you speak to her. Tell her that you appreciate what he does and most importantly, never tell her that you're sorry he's gone and she's waiting. She isn't sorry. She is proud. She is dedicated. And she will wait.