Today’s guest blogger is Beatrice Fishback.
After a week in my first duty assignment as a military spouse, I was ready to go back “home.” Home, at that time, meant my parents and siblings. It was the familiar, knowing the layout of our small town in upstate New York and seeing faces of those I knew growing up.
Some spouses are more venturous and don’t look back when they become a military dependent or active duty member. Although I had the streak of adventure in my spirit, I still longed for what I had left behind.
Another assignment came and went, our children were born and a PCS (permanent change of station) move to a Middle Eastern country was the latest in a long-string of new experiences. My yearning for home was never stronger than during that time.
However, I learned several valuable lessons moving from one duty station to the next:
- It’s okay to grieve what was left, even as you anticipate what’s coming up next.
- It’s important to teach your children the gift of grieving as they say goodbye to friends and begin again. In fact, it’s imperative to talk them about what they are feeling and why.
- There really is no place like the home you currently live in. What makes it that way is the comfort and love you put into the building—the house—while you’re there.
- Living as a military family is a season of life, not life itself. There is a future beyond the uniform and the moves, just as there is life after your children grow up. Every season is worth enjoying to the fullest. After all, you never know when God might move you next, even after the military experience is in the rearview mirror.
Beatrice Fishback is the author of Loving Your Military Man and co-author of Defending the Military Marriage and Family. Follow her on www.facebook.com/Beasattiudes.
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