For those of you who haven't heard, H has decided to join the Army. Surprisingly, I'm okay with it. Probably more than I ever thought I would be... Let's rewind:
-2007: H and I meet and he spends the next few months getting me acquainted with his "12-year-old dream" of becoming an Army sniper. At first, I thought it was such a typical boy thing that he wanted to play soldier for the rest of his life. I didn't have anyone close to me in the military besides my cousin Wendy who is in the Navy, and I didn't know much about any of it besides that soldiers die.
-2008: As we continue to date and get closer and more serious, I realize how serious he actually is about wanting to join the Army one day. Again, I still don't know very much about it at all, but I'm not too keen on the idea of him going. While we don't totally know how serious this relationship is headed, I still fear the idea of losing him in battle and believe that being a soldier is for everyone except my boyfriend. I totally support the troops, please don't get me wrong, but the idea of being with a soldier and having the Army-spouse life and the potential for him to die overseas scared the living daylights out of me! I told him that I didn't want him to join the Army because it scared me-- I know that's really selfish of me, to stifle a childhood dream like that, but it just scared me so much to think of him dying and losing him that I didn't want him to join. Plus, he was still in school so I didn't think I needed to worry about it too much.
-2009-Present: My brother JP (H's best friend) leaves for basic training and then OCS (officer candidate school) in June, and he begins to replant the Army-bug in H's ear. When H and I go through a break-up and then a make-up, I begin to realize that maybe the best thing for him is to finish college and join the Army, where he can not only follow his childhood dream but also find some financial help for after college and a real focus for his future. Of course JP has been feeding me massive amounts of information about the Army (both good and bad) and I begin to do some of my own research. As much as it kills me to admit that, I realize that maybe the Army would be good for him, and eventually good for our future together.
The Army is going to do a lot of good for him, and as much as it's going to be a really intense and hard at times for us, I fully support his choice to join. He'll be graduating from college first, and then heading down to basic as an enlisted soldier. He'll be leaving in January-ish 2012, so at least we have a lot of time together first. The discussion of everything from the Army to our future has been intense over the past 2 weeks, but it's bringing us closer together and making us do a lot of planning and realizing about everything. I'm finding a lot of support from my friends who are already Army wives/fiances/girlfriends, too, which has been so great. Maybe it seems silly that I'm starting to look at this kind of stuff now, but we realize that we plan to be married before he gets stationed on a post so that I can move with him, and that's roughly 2 years from this summer, so I want to know as much about it as I can before we go in. There are a lot of great resources out there, including his recruiting officer, Sgt Aubrey, and we're going to use them all to find out as much as we can about what we're getting into. While times will get rough, and there will be days that I question why I chose to support this choice, I will NEVER stop supporting H or the troops-- I am in this 110% for as long as he needs me.
We've got a long and interesting road ahead of us, but we're both trusting God to get us through this and keep us strong. If there was ever a need for blind faith, this is it!! So this blog has now become not only my ramblings on my journey of faith, but also on how that faith is involved in my new road to becoming an Army wife!
No comments:
Post a Comment