I Want To Be A Military Grade Wife

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Today I have to pass along a link to this fantastic article from SpouseBuzz yesterday by Kim Kapacziewski titled What I Learned About True Love From A Wounded Warrior. Her story is pretty amazing.

The article is a fantastic primer on being a good wife, on being a good military wife. The lessons she talks about are what make a marriage last and survive tough times - and create amazing people. Of all the fantastic inspiration in the article, one thing really stood out to me as a military wife.

Her husband Joe gave her the best compliments when he described her. He said of his wife, "The girl was long-haul material. She had the 'right stuff'. Kim was Ranger quality." Now these are not the most romantic, flowery words a man could say about a woman, but they speak volumes about the kind of woman his wife is and the kind of woman who makes a good military wife.

It got me thinking, Am I military grade? Am I Ranger quality? (My husband actually was a Ranger before switching branches before I met him). When I think of military grade equipment I recognize it as tougher, stronger, more durable than every day stuff. Think of the laptop and phone cases that are military grade. They can be dropped, banged up and knocked over and they stay in one piece and protect the important stuff.

Am I the kind of woman who does not fall apart when I get bounced around and banged up by life? Do I put fear aside and do the right thing anyway? Am I willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish our family's missions? Do I do everything I can to protect the important, breakable stuff like my marriage, my family and my husband's feelings? I want to be military grade. My husband is and I want to be his partner in every way. So I'm taking this to heart and thinking about things that I can do to be a "military grade wife".

I can already see that in some areas I have done a great job, others I have done acceptably and in a couple I need serious improvement. I'm setting this as my new mantra "I am a military grade wife" and I am going to start thinking of it in those terms. I'm taking myself to my own little Military Wife Boot Camp and breaking down my weak spots so I can build myself up better, faster and stronger. I want to show my husband that he can trust me in ever way and that I am indeed "Military Grade Quality."

Have you ever thought about being "military grade"? What does that mean to you and how do you put it into play in your relationship and family?

My Husband & I: The New Terminator Team

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Long story short, my husband and I found ourselves at an arcade on a very rainy night recently. It had been a super stressful day and there had been a lot of tension, even though we were both really trying hard to get through it with some grace.

This was a pretty small arcade. We weren't up for attempting to grab a stuffed animal out of a rigged machine. Some of the games didn't even work. So we somehow ended up at a two-player Terminator game.

We ripped it UP! I don't know what it was but that plastic arcade game gun felt good in my hands and it felt good to blow away some bad robots from the future. We worked really well together and were blowing things up left and right. My husband is an expert ranked marksman, which I am only now really beginning to appreciate. I had no idea that military qualification could be so much fun in an arcade.

There was an excitement and sense of power to reload and start shooting again. To cover for each other when one ran out of ammunition and to occasionally get a chance to launch a grenade. Looking back now I see a very real allegory in our experience about how we work together to defend our marriage, our family and push forward to our future. But at the time it was pure fun to burn off pent up stress and energy. And I did pretty well for a girl who knows very little about guns. I aimed, I shot, I blew up bad guys. All the while my husband was yelling instructions to me. "Go for the heads, go for the heads!....You have a grenade, use it....Okay, right now you only have a shotgun."

At the end my husband mentioned, somewhat humbly (I say that laughing) that he really had my back and helped me out a lot. While I think I held my own pretty darn well for the girl that I am, all I could think was, "Of course you did, you big stud. And I wouldn't have it any other way!"

I could have played that game with him for hours. But at arcade rates, after a few "continue playing" extravagances we stopped and forced out way back to the real world. But it was so much fun, such a great stress relief, kinda hot and looking back a great lesson about what a dynamic duo we are in the game world and even better in the real world.

No One Is Sailing Through Reintegration Babe

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The Reintegration journey we are on surely has been interesting. So many awesome highs and a few pretty depressing lows. It's unbelievable how much work it takes to put your entire life on hold to leave for deployment. Undoing it all and even just being able to remember what you did a year ago to set everything up to leave, even if you kept good records, is mind-blowing. Then there are never-ending decisions to be made about the future, the exhaustion and the emotions all over the place.

I have to say I am so proud of my husband. He has impressed the socks off me in his efforts the past few weeks. Has everything been perfect and easy, hell no. Has he gotten frustrated, been exhausted and struggled? Sure, or course he has. But he has amazed me at how hard he tries, how loving, patient and forgiving he has been and how he's tried to put the principles he learned in the post deployment/reintegration training to use in his life and with our family.

He on the other hand is not so impressed. He thinks he should be accomplishing tons more, full of energy, and perfect at every turn. Last night we had a talk about that and I felt strongly that I needed to remind him that no one is sailing through reintegration easily. Everyone is having their struggles. I imagine there are some who came home to find out one of the spouses was cheating or planning to leave the marriage. Others came home to other hardships we can only imagine and thank our lucky stars are not happening to us. I am sure no one is finding reintegration and recovery to be as easy as they believed they could make it if they just tried hard enough.

I can say that our relationship has really grown due to reintegration. We work together better than we ever have, our communication is more open and generous. We seem to take a lot less for granted, enjoy our friendship more and we are kinder and gentler with each other than we even were before. That is awesome, because we are a good team. We are really enjoying each other. Early this morning, with the sun glaring in my eyes, waking me up, I looked over at him sleeping peacefully next to me and just got the biggest smile on my face. I find him ridiculously cute, which is funny considering I went totally against type when I started dating him. As I lay there in bed I  jubilantly thought - He is here. He's with me. I love him! He loves me. Hooray!

It's good to remind our loved ones that reintegration takes a certain pace, it can't be rushed. And that everyone is having to find their new normal. No one came home to easy street with everything just as they left it and no challenges. I was grateful to have the chance to remind my dear husband that this is a marathon, it is not a sprint. You can't sprint a marathon and there is no way possible that he could ever have his entire life reconstituted in a mere 30 days. Just as pre-deployment takes a long, long time, reintegration requires a similar amount of time to move through. When it comes to reintegration the phrase "Slow and steady wins the race" seems like a pretty great motto.