This morning, our FRG received a letter from the battalion commander of Superman's unit about life in Afghanistan -- it's going well.
Remember that if all went "according to plan," Superman would have been several months into a deployment by now. But it didn't (depending on whose plan you're going by). So he isn't. Still, sometimes I do catch myself thinking, what if?
Instead, we're here in the Apple, enjoying our first year of married life and thinking about how good (and necessary) it was for us, for our relationship, that we are "together" during our first married year -- even though we didn't know it then.
Initially, when the letter dropped into my inbox, a quick thought ran through my head: how the heck was I ever 'okay' with Superman being gone for the first year of our marriage? But I guess that's the Army wife in me -- we just take what's handed to us and make the best of it.
Well that, and maybe because I'd never experienced year one of a marriage, I didn't conceptualize how life-changing it would be.
Of course, we think about his unit every day. We get updates from a couple of the soldiers every so often, and I make it a point to get involved in our FRG as much as possible. We've been through a deployment and we know what it's like. There's no explaining it. Until you experience it, you will never know what it's truly like. But I get it. I understand.
That's why I thank God that He gave us a shot at our first year of marriage. It has taught me, among other things, that it's a different kind of love to know that we would have been 'okay' to have spent it deployed.
