Fighting for Our Dreams: My Journey Through the Battle and Beyond
My name is Sarah Hartley, and before I go any deeper into creating this blog, I feel it is important for you to know who I am and why I am here. I know this website has an about me page, but this is the beginning of my journey. I want us to start together. Right here.
I have been an Air Force wife for a little over three years. My husband and I met briefly before he left for OTS and we began dating shortly after he graduated. Right after his graduation, a hurricane destroyed the base he was supposed to be sent to, and since he wasn’t trained yet, the Air Force sent him home for three months. I was finishing up my final semester of college, and he came over often to help me pull the all-nighters that senior year brings. The rest is history.
We started dating and were lucky to have two months of dating before he moved 10 hours away, and our relationship became long-distance. I took every opportunity I could to drive down and see him. Any time I had at least three days off in a row, I was driving the 20 hours round trip. Long-distance will really make you do crazy things.
We got engaged after five months of dating. We married on October 5, 2019, eleven months after our first date. I know this timeline is a pretty standard military stereotype, but it worked for us. We welcomed our first child in November of 2022, and he is named Michael, after the hurricane that brought Jacob and me together.
Between graduation and getting married, I spent the summer feeling very lost. Like any 21-year- old, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I spent that time wrestling and researching. During that time, though, something magical happened. I had silently thought about writing a book for years and never told anyone this. But within two weeks of one another, my dad and my therapist both said word for word,
“I think you should write a book about dreams.”
They didn’t know each other, and they didn’t know that they had just affirmed the idea that I had carried with me for years, so I took that as my sign from above and started writing. Up until this point, my writing has happened entirely in a void. It has been unseen by nearly everyone in my life because, despite the assurance I received that this was the path I should follow, I felt like I had not earned the right to call myself a writer. Nevertheless, I wrote an entire book. It sits quietly on my desk, waiting for someone to come along, recognize its magic, and publish it.
I have done very little to put it out there because the fear of chasing this dream has always gripped me tightly. I think that’s the point, though. I think the fear matters (and I’ll talk more about it later), but military life was never what I imagined for myself, and I still have a hard time wrapping my head around everything that joining brings with it.
I know it may seem like I just took a left turn on the point but bear with me. I was not built to be a military spouse, not that anyone really is. I am far too clingy to handle the separations that deployments and TDY’s require. I am too close to my family to live halfway across the country. And I really don’t like people telling me what to do. It frustrates me on good days and infuriates me on bad days that the Air Force gets to decide so many things about our life.
There I was, though in Oklahoma with a finished(ish) book and a complete disdain for military life. I love my husband, and I accepted the fact that the military was a package deal, but I complained every step of the way. Esther 4:14 kept coming to me though, “...and who shall know if for a time like this thou camest to the kingdom.” It is often paraphrased as perhaps you were created for such a time as this.
I know that my husband is my soulmate, and he felt a call to join the military. Which means that, in some way, I was called to be a military spouse. And I could make the choice to continue bitching about the constraints of this life (and I still choose this plenty of times), or I could find a way to bloom where I was planted. Maybe my book could be for military spouses.
Before I joined this community of military spouses, I had dreams. I had aspirations and ambitions for my life. Joining my husband in military life did not change any of that. It did change how things looked when I sought to accomplish my dreams, though. And I know it changed many things for you, too.
The consequences of frequent moves, TDY’s, and deployments meant that my plans had to be adjusted frequently. I saw and heard stories from many military spouses where all these disruptions caused them to abandon their dreams. I have met plenty of women who gave up their careers so their husbands could follow theirs. I saw many women resign themselves to the overwhelming, daily mental load of carrying a household because of a husband who was constantly in and out. I got advice from so many people who had clearly been to the metaphorical war that happens when a spouse leaves for the real war and lost the spark of hope they once had.
I saw all this, and I was scared. It would be so easy for me to “abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Honestly, it felt like the safer option at times, and I was so inclined to dive into that hole, only planning to resurface when my husband returned. It would be easier to take the punches that life in the service throws and accept the wrenches in your plans with ease if you didn’t have any plans to begin with. Unfortunately, that’s not me. And no matter how hard I tried to give up all expectations and desires, and believe me, I tried (not that I would recommend that strategy), I just couldn’t. So, I’ve decided there must be a way. There must be a way to survive and thrive in military life while making all your dreams come true. I refuse to sit around for the next 16 years, waiting for my life to begin when my husband retires.
I have always been passionate about dreams and goal setting. I have always wanted to help people find and achieve the cries of their hearts. And I think military life is the perfect place to do this. Perhaps I am here for such a time as this.
I am starting in my own life, though. I am aware that I have only been a military spouse for three years. I have only made it through one deployment and four TDY’s. I only have a seven-week-old, so I am just at the beginning of figuring out all the constraints motherhood creates within military life. But I am here and fighting on this journey to find out who I am and what I am made of.
My advice won’t be for everyone. I will make plenty of mistakes. But I am not trying to hurt anyone. I have received plenty of bad advice in my time, and I hope I don’t dish out too much of that myself. Everyone is doing the best they can with the information they have. Everyone has learned their own way to survive, and I just want to share mine and the stories of other people I have met along the way.
This is my real-time confession. This is me trying and failing in real-time, and maybe, just maybe, I can find some insight that helps us both along the way. I am a firm believer in battle buddies. You need to have someone to fight with and someone to fight for in every journey. I am fighting for the me that I want to become. I am fighting for the life I want to live. I am fighting for the world I want to raise my son in.
I hope you’ll join me and fight alongside me so that we can see all our dreams come true.
