Right now my life has taken on a kind of suspended animation.  My husband of five years has left for his second deployment to Afghanistan.  I miss him more than words can say.  Some people have asked me how I feel about it.  I just smile and say, “It’s his job, I’ll deal with it as it comes.”  But there is a part of me that just wants to shrivel up and hide.  That will do me no favors, nor will it help my children.  I must push through the loneliness and pain to make sure they will at least come away from this deployment emotionally unscathed.

I, on the other hand, will not.  These periods of being away from him make me realize how good I really had it, even when we were at each others throats over stupid things.  A very dear friend of mine commented on more than one occasion that my husband and I were the best example of true love she had ever seen.  She always makes me smile when she says things like that about my marriage.  So many people have such a hard time with relationships and marriage, it makes one almost lose faith in romance and love.

I’m not saying that my marriage is perfect.  No, it is so far from perfect.  We fight, we have money issues, we sometimes don’t like one another.  There are times I tell him, “Babe, I love you, but I don’t like you right now!”  But behind all of that I know we’re still as much in love as we were the first few weeks after we met.  It’s grown into a deeper love, a respect and a bond that these deployments only strengthen.  I truly believe that with us, absence makes the heart grow fonder.  🙂

My husband is no romantic.  He’s a realist, a doer and a fixer.  He doesn’t write love poetry to me.  He doesn’t make grand romantic gestures.  But it’s the little things he does that let me know he thinks of me often and loves me truly.  He knows the color roses I love.  He gives me the time away from the kids to encourage my passion for writing.  He bought me a horse even though he knew it wasn’t a wise investment for us at the time because he knows how much horses mean to me.  It is always the little things that let me know he still cares.  And that is why I love my husband more and more with each passing day.

Every day with him is a surprise and a joy, and that to me is romantic!

I cannot wait to see him again and get back into the groove of our life together.  Until then…I’ll keep myself busy with my kids and pray for some love letters from Afghanistan.  🙂