OJT
"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
There were times during both deployments that I felt all of the stress and chaos of my life up until that point had prepared me for those days. It was as if deployment and all of the hardship that comes with it justified any bad day that I had survived prior. A toughening up of sorts, emotionally and mentally.
That line of reasoning has been blown out of the water by the last ninety days of my life. The end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 was by far the hardest time I have ever experienced. I never thought I would see the day that I would refer to managing deployments as "On the Job Training".
The mornings of waking early to watch the news and search the internet for any sign of where my Soldier was, trained me for sleepless nights of learning everything I could about the cancer that would take my mom's life. The days of sheer grit when military spouse after military spouse of the Battalion that deployed would need someone to talk to and someone to lift them up would make way for understanding the way my multi generational family is grieving and how to help them through this process. The administrative paperwork of maintaining a successful Family Readiness Group at the onset of war would train me for the myriad of tasks that I now face in handling my mom's affairs. The countless days of wanting to stay in bed and succumb to depression instead of live life with the absence of my better half gave me a profound understanding of what I'd face with successive personal catastrophes in a short span of time.
I never thought I'd look back on those deployment's and be thankful for the rough times. Yet, here I am, halfway up a mountain that seems bigger than anything I've faced before, confident that this challenge too will be surmountable. As a military wife, especially from these last eight years, I've been tried under fire and come out a better person for it. Tomorrow will be no different. I'll get through the challenges that still lie ahead.I've been trained well.
There were times during both deployments that I felt all of the stress and chaos of my life up until that point had prepared me for those days. It was as if deployment and all of the hardship that comes with it justified any bad day that I had survived prior. A toughening up of sorts, emotionally and mentally.
That line of reasoning has been blown out of the water by the last ninety days of my life. The end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 was by far the hardest time I have ever experienced. I never thought I would see the day that I would refer to managing deployments as "On the Job Training".
The mornings of waking early to watch the news and search the internet for any sign of where my Soldier was, trained me for sleepless nights of learning everything I could about the cancer that would take my mom's life. The days of sheer grit when military spouse after military spouse of the Battalion that deployed would need someone to talk to and someone to lift them up would make way for understanding the way my multi generational family is grieving and how to help them through this process. The administrative paperwork of maintaining a successful Family Readiness Group at the onset of war would train me for the myriad of tasks that I now face in handling my mom's affairs. The countless days of wanting to stay in bed and succumb to depression instead of live life with the absence of my better half gave me a profound understanding of what I'd face with successive personal catastrophes in a short span of time.
I never thought I'd look back on those deployment's and be thankful for the rough times. Yet, here I am, halfway up a mountain that seems bigger than anything I've faced before, confident that this challenge too will be surmountable. As a military wife, especially from these last eight years, I've been tried under fire and come out a better person for it. Tomorrow will be no different. I'll get through the challenges that still lie ahead.I've been trained well.
Yes you have been trained well but I doubt you realize how much your words prepare others for battles ahead. You have a gift for touching the heart and helping expand our minds what a wonderful blessing and how proud your mother must be! Keep Climbing the top of the mountain will appear and hopefully it will be a long slow climb to the next valley! Love Ya, Lu
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