The One Thing We Must Never Lose
I have spent the last week in limbo, waiting for my world to come crashing down. My husband and I waited on a departure date for an impending deployment. We waited on news that never came. It was an emotionally exhausting week.
I canceled my trip to Denver because while I was waiting for the plane to take off (thankfully, we never did due to weather issues), my husband got the call to come into work the next day even though he had taken leave. He responded, "Well, I'll have to bring my son because my wife is out of town." His commander called him directly and asked, "Can you get Sarah back home?" So we knew this was serious, and in all likelihood, my husband would be leaving that weekend.
So I got off the plane and came home. I was a mess of emotions, just as anyone would be after hearing about a last-minute deployment. I was heartbroken because I would miss my husband. I was angry because the tables had turned (in my post, there are still bad days I talked about, knowing that if my husband were put in a position where he needed to be somewhere for work, I would always be the one to compromise). I was devastated thinking about every moment my son and my husband would miss with each other. And in a lot of ways, I was hopeless.
I was ready to give up and resign my dreams to be chased in 16 years when the Air Force is a thing of our past. But I couldn't stay in that headspace for long. I still had a son who needed me to bring joy and giggles to his life. I still had a blog that I had committed to writing on three times a week (and I will keep that commitment even if the only person who ever reads it is me because that's part of what chasing a dream is all about, but we'll talk about that another day). I still had a host of people who loved and believed in my strength and ability to survive and thrive through anything the Air Force threw at me.
So I did my best to shake it off and regain hope. Because you see, in the chase for our dreams, we always stand a chance if there is a little bit of hope left. We cannot let the hope fire burn out completely. In Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (one of my favorite books series' and where the name of our future daughter comes from, which I am about to spoil, but it's a 20-year-old book, and it's worth the read even if you know this detail) there is this exchange on the matter of hope. For context, Gregor has just returned from a great quest where he was prophesized as a great warrior who would come to save the Underland and, in the process, found his father, who had been missing for many years. Vikus is looking for a gift to honor the sacrifice and journey that Gregor went on and initially offered him a sword that he rejected. The following conversation ensues.
"I pretended to be the warrior so I could get my dad. But I don't want to be a warrior," said Gregor. "I want to be like you."
"I have fought in many battles, Gregor," said Vikus cautiously.
"I know, but you don't go looking for them. You try to work things out every other way you can think of first. Even with the spiders. And Ripred,” said Gregor. "Even when people think you're wrong, you keep trying."
"Well, then, Gregor, I know the gift I would wish to give you, but you can only find it yourself," said Vikus.
"What is it?" Said Gregor.
"Hope," said Vikus. "There are times it will be very hard to find. Times when it will be much easier to choose hate instead. But if you want to find peace, you must first be able to hope it is possible."
How many of us have been waiting at home, merely pretending to be great warrior spouses who can thrive through deployments, TDYs, PCSs and any other acronym we encounter? How many of us have felt hatred for canceled plans, last-minute changes and sacrifices, both big and small? It is easy to let that hate consume us.
And I know that all too well. As I've shared previously, I usually get what I want, and I don't cope all that well when I don't. So having to cancel a trip that I have been looking forward to for months only to hop on the emotional rollercoaster of a spouse leaving Saturday, no Tuesday, no Friday, no not at all on a deployment of an undetermined amount of time was a lot to handle. There was anger. There were fights. There was hurt. And at the end of the day, I could have chosen to hate the Air Force. I could have chosen to hate my husband for signing that contract a year before he met me.
But when the choice is between hate and hope, it's not much of a choice. No matter how much it hurts or how hard it is, we must choose hope. A life of hate will never get us anywhere other than a pit of sadness and anger. And while we may end up digging that hole a few times with hope, we can always pull ourselves out of it.
That's why we have dreams. Our dreams are a hope that one day, in some way, something can and will be better. Our dreams are promises to hold on to in the darkest moments. I'm so glad that we've all found dreams to chase now. Maybe you don't have 100, but the list will keep growing, and I am sure you have at least one dream you want to chase. Now we move on to the hard part, actually achieving these dreams. It won't be easy. In fact, chasing a dream may be one of the hardest things you do, simply because striving for anything more in life is always an uphill battle. Beyond that, though, we live in a harsh environment with the military. Things are constantly in flux, and it can be hard to adapt our hearts to the changes that our plans will require. If you asked me last week, I was ready to resign my life to nothing more than surviving the next 16 years until my husband retires.
But dreams don't let you give up that easily. I took a few days to be sad and spent some quality time with my family. And now I'm back to work. I bet most of us have seen the diagram where it is "what we think success looks like" versus "what success actually looks like." The first is a straight line, and the second resembles the worst staircase you've ever seen, with steps that go up and down, big and small, forward and backward. Chasing a dream does not have to be linear. The point is that we keep getting back up.
We will all have days when the hope rushes out of us. And on those days especially, we need someone to hold us, say it'll all be okay, and gently (or forcefully if that's what we need) give us the nudge to rediscover why our dream was so important in the first place. From there, the dream takes over and will get you back to work. The important thing is not how many times we fall off track. It doesn't matter how long it takes to achieve our dreams. I don't care how quickly or slowly someone else completed the same dream. What matters is that the dream stays with us. It matters that even if the fire grows dim, the flames still flicker. Before we start achieving our dreams, I just wanted us to remember the importance of hope. As long as we have hope, our dreams will always have life. As long as we keep hope, they will keep their promise of coming true.
