She Who Waits

I haven’t done much of anything the past 2 weeks. My last blog was about my husband leaving on his first deployment. I found out 3 weeks before he left that I was pregnant with our second child. This was a very planned pregnancy, and we were both ecstatic. The day after he left I lost the baby. I was only 9 weeks along. I am so grateful to the strong military wives that helped me through this awful time. Not only was I dealing with the stress and heartache of sending my husband away on his first deployment, I was coping with the loss of a much-wanted baby.

I have never felt like I needed my husband’s support more than I do now. And yet I know that generations of strong women before me went through much more pain and trauma, without the support is their husbands, than I have. They dealt with loss of children, loss of home, and lack of food all without their husband. They went months between letters, while hearing of battles like The Battle of Gettysburg where hundreds of thousands of good men were slaughtered in just a matter of days, or a handful of hours. Wives and mothers waited in crowded dusty streets for casualty lists. Those women were truly strong women. They sent their men to war for years at a time. My husband will be home in 3 months. I know how blessed I am to be living in a time where modern technology makes the size of the world seem much less than it really is. I get to see my husband via Skype several times a week. I know my emails get to him instantly, and sometimes he even has time to write me a quick email several times a day. I am able to take a photograph of our son, and within 5 minutes my husband can see it on his computer on the other side of the world.

Many people have told me that I am coping amazingly well, all things considered. I want to be a strong woman. I cannot focus on the negative. If I did, I would crumble. I want to be a “the glass it half full” kind of person. My husband will come home. My husband will come home before Christmas. My husband will come home before Christmas, and we can try again to have another baby.