If someone asked me what the hardest part of being a military spouse is, I would say the uncertainty. The uncertainty of EVERYTHING. I’ve never been one to have a, “what will happen, will happen” Zen outlook towards life. No, I like to have a plan. I’m that type-A annoyingly organized person who has a spreadsheet for everything. I have spreadsheets for grocery lists broken down by aisle and type of food, spreadsheets for our budget, spreadsheets for vacation ideas, and the list goes on. (You should have seen my wedding spreadsheets! Pages upon pages upon pages). So the question is, when you like to plan and map out everything, how do you process the fact that you can’t plan and map out the biggest thing of all, your life?
Right now we don’t know where we’re going to live in 6 months. We waited a year to get orders and after months of thinking we’d have to transfer out of state, we felt like we won the lottery when we got orders to another squadron in San Diego, where we’re currently stationed and where we have an amazing group of friends and support base. We were over the moon, like couch-jumping-a-la-Tom-Cruise happy. We sent goofy snapchats of our elated faces to our friends with the news and our friends responded with congratulations and enthusiastic relief that we’re staying.
Right away I started thinking baby. We’ve officially hit that age where all our friends are having babies and the pull of “baby fever” has been strong; we’ve been putting it off because the idea of ending up nine months pregnant and transferring sounds like a bad one. So, being the type-A person that I am, once we got orders I started my baby timeline in my head. In 4 months we’ll start trying so the baby is born around this month, etc.
Then, the day after our amazing news, we found out the squadron my husband got orders to was possibly going to be decommissioned. The next week it went up to the chopping block and the Navy officially ruled “off with its head.” So after a year of waiting and feeling like we won the “transfer lottery” it felt like the Navy laughed and said “haha, just kidding” and once again we have no idea what was going on again or where we were going. Now it looked like we may not even get the chance to pick.
I’d like to tell you I reacted to this with calm maturity, with meditative breaths, a few downward dogs and an outlook of “everything happens for a reason.”
That’s not what happened.
I reacted to the news with stressed out pacing across the floor, 500 questions my husband couldn’t answer, because of course everything is uncertain, and an urge to throw things at the wall. Which, thankfully, I was able to ignore….annnd now we’re back to waiting. Back to holding off the idea of baby for a while and to a feeling of general frustration at the uncertainty of it all. But, in the interest of not driving my husband nuts, I have been taking a few meditative breaths when I get frustrated. As a matter of fact, I’ve even thrown a few downward dogs in there to try to up my “zen-ness” while we wait to find out what’s happening with our lives. I’ve also been trying to do more focusing on the here and now without thinking about the future, something that’s very hard for a planner like me.
However, despite how frustrating being unable to plan and the “not knowing” is, I have realized there are some very important things I do know. I know that we have an amazing golden furbaby who I love and who has added so much joy to our lives. I know that even if we do end up moving, I have amazing friends who will continue to support me and be there for me, even at a distance. Most of all, I know that I have a truly amazing, wonderful husband that makes it all worth it and that we will handle whatever comes as a team. And when it comes down to it, I know that’s the only thing I really need to know.
If you like this, you’ll probably like: Impatiently Waiting for Patience.