At least I found something I feel like posting, anyway. I wrote this about 3 years ago. At the time, Dan was nearing the end of his 7 month deployment to Iraq and I was doing a little "soul searching". This is the result.
What am I made of? What am I capable of? How much can I handle before I fall apart?
These are questions I have been forced to ask myself over the past 6 months. More to the point, they are questions I have been forced to answer. Some of the answers have surprised me. Others have left me speechless and still others have left me shaking my head and hoping THAT never happens again.
I have spent the past 11 years preparing, and being prepared, for the past 6 months. I started out with a 10 day separation, so that I could get used to him coming home. Then, because I thought I knew how to be “on my own”, there were several short times apart: a weekend here, a few weeks there – all to teach me to live and continue to function by myself; on my own.
Then I had children. Whereas in the beginning, I learned how to be alone with me, now I was to learn how to keep myself going at the same time I was giving; my body to pregnancy, (and some of my mind to its’ fog), my heart to the tiny souls entrusted to me, my time, day and night, to the care and nurture of others. I thought that I had to give everything I had to these small task masters – that there was no time left for me. When he was gone during these times, I learned that I had to take time, indeed MAKE time, to take care of myself. The children wouldn’t, my husband couldn’t – I would have to do it for myself. The separations and limited communications made these lessons the most difficult to learn.
Time passed and opportunities came. While he was in school, I learned how to let go a little bit and how to trust him. I learned how to hold him up at the same time I cleaned up and helped children keep up. I learned how to have joy in HIS accomplishments and successes and that sometimes, the best way to hold him up was to let him go. He does amazing things when he’s free to do them.
We moved again and I learned how to drive long distances with children in the car. I learned how to move and how NOT to move and which of us is better at being in charge of that process. I learned patience with him and the things he asked and required of me, more to the point, with the way he asked me. Then I realized that this was one of the times I needed to let him go. I had to let him leave me: first, for a week at a time, then for a month at a time, then for a few weeks at a time – stretched out over a whole year. So, he went – and he did amazing things. I learned then that there are times when he leans on me and relies on me; that those are usually the times when he has to be gone and can’t take care of everything. I “hold down the fort” and “keep it together” – in my home, with my children and in my heart – until he can return and take up his part again.
After that, I found that there will be times when I will have to revisit places I don’t want to return to because it’s time to learn again: more patience, more love for him and my children, more self reliance. Now I know that there will be times that I am lovingly transported and carefully placed so that I can bloom where I’m planted. And that there will be other times when I am unceremoniously yanked from the ground only to be brought inside by a chubby, grubby little hand and placed in a cup of water on the window sill. With effort, I will bloom where I’m planted – but only with GREAT effort.
I pause for a moment in this place, looking back over the past 11 years and see the Hand that has moved me from place to place; the careful preparation that was undertaken to make sure that I would be able face myself and answer those questions I asked.
What am I made of? Curious stuff. Strength and weakness, happiness and misery, obedience and mutiny, hope and despair, light and dark, love and hate, peace and confusion, serenity and upheaval – and I need them all to learn. I can’t learn, know or understand any of those things without the antithesis of them.
What am I capable of? Amazing things – sometimes wonderful, sometimes stupid. Things I never thought I could do. Situations I thought I would never face. Calm in the face of a tempest, love greater than I ever imagined, more gratitude than I could ever express or repay. Appreciation, understanding, wisdom, charity, faith, compassion, empathy, humility...I have talents I never knew of. Talents I never considered talents until someone’s life was touched. ( I’m capable of surprise at this.) Am I perfect? No. But I can do so much more than I ever gave myself credit for.
How much can I handle before I fall apart? Unknown. Since I have faced situations I was sure I never could, I have learned more faith. I have come to truly believe that I will never fall apart unless I try to learn without a Teacher; a friend to guide me. Sometimes that teacher will be a sister, other times a child, still other times, my husband. But always guided by Someone…and with their help, I will never fall apart.
