There are advantages to everything. We choose one school because it has excellent sports programs, and we choose another because they offer the best education in our field of study. But having these advantages doesn’t do us any good if we don’t take advantage of them. Going to a school because it has a great business program and then studying English doesn’t really make sense. Now, if we go to that school because it is all around great and just excels in and is known for business, then English is a fine route to go. And it may very well be the best program that we can afford to get into. But if we join something for its advantages and then don’t take advantage of them, we are missing out.

This post is purely self serving because I need your help. I am currently on a whirlwind trip trying to find our next house. We are moving to Robins AFB in January, and right now is the best window for me to look for a house. I am fortunate enough that I was able to see these places in person since I know so many families buy sight unseen and not by choice. After seeing some of the houses I loved online in person, I am grateful that I didn't have to do that for this PCS because, man, some of those houses were weird.

When we start anything new, we have to understand that we will probably be terrible at it. That’s not always the case at the beginning, but it is almost always true that we will hit a point when we realize how much we don’t know. I’ll be honest; school was generally pretty easy for me. I got the concepts pretty quickly and did well on tests without studying. That was until I took a Biology 201 course in my junior year of high school.

I had another post planned for today, and I have gone back and forth on writing this one. I know many of us have seen the news. We’ve been monitoring what is happening in Israel and are holding our breath to find out what will happen next. This will not be a political post. I certainly have biases from being raised half-Jewish and remaining very much in touch with those roots.

In this life, it is easy to get caught up in the grind. It is easy to stay in countdown mode for the next TDY, deployment, or move. It is easy to lose the magic. Once we lose the magic, though, that is when things get complicated. This applies to all aspects of our life. When we lose the magic in our marriage, parenting, or careers, things go downhill.

Since I’m just coming off of this conference, I want to share some of what I learned. It’s all fresh, and I got a lot out of this event, so I want to write about it. This is a space where I do a lot of processing, and being able to put what I learned into my own words can keep those lessons in front of me. It’s definitely a strategy that I recommend to everyone who has gone through an impactful event. So allow me these next couple of days to cover these points. Then, I promise we will move on to the third biggest issue affecting military members and their families (we definitely spent so long on separations that even I forgot that’s what we were originally doing).

Monday’s blog post did not go up this week. I’ve got three pretty solid excuses that I can give for why that happened, but it’s not really worth it. While they are all valid reasons as to why I pushed off writing, they aren’t enough to justify, at least in my mind. The reality is that I did not prioritize my dream enough to make sure that I stayed consistent. That’s on me to recognize and correct.

People change over a deployment. My husband and I were both different people at the end. In so many ways, this was better. Our marriage was stronger on the other side of the deployment. Our communication was smoother. We had grown and were ready for the next step of our lives, which was parenthood (I know, very cliche again). We were very fortunate that my husband didn't come home with any sort of PTSD from his deployment. If you or your spouse did, please get help sooner than later. There are so many options for anonymous treatment, at least starting out, for those who are worried about something ending up on their military record.

Service members, I'm begging you, please set your spouses up for success before you leave in whatever way you can. We all know that a happy spouse can create a happy house. Our spouse's stress can quickly become our stress. In the case of our household, stress has certainly been ever-present during the past few weeks.

Eventually, the honeymoon phase comes to an end. This doesn't mean that things are bad or worse in any sense. All it means is that the real world has come crashing back in. The kids have to return to school, everyone has to go back to work, and life returns to normal. That being said, it doesn't have to go back to the old normal.

One thing that people across the world crave deeply is community. In military life, this can either be easy to find or quite difficult. People often share that it is easy to make friends in the military because we are all going through the same issues together. We all move frequently, so we know that friendships need to form quickly. We all go through separations and need local people to lean on. The longer we are in, the smaller the military gets, so we often find old friends or acquaintances at our new bases. All that is great and true, but the ease of finding community often comes down to our personality and life stage.  

I want to share two homecoming stories to reiterate why Monday's post was so important. I will pull these examples directly from season five of Army Wives because I think these stories encapsulate everything I discussed in a best versus worst-case scenario. I'm keeping this in the fictional world to protect the anonymity of people who would certainly relate to one story more than the other.

We won’t spend too much time on the redeployment phase because the reality is that it lasts a short amount of time. We can focus on our dreams or let them go by the wayside. The choice is always ours. It is also true that during this time, we are one month out from a dream come true.

Here’s what is so tricky about the redeployment stage: it can make chasing a dream incredibly easy or downright impossible. As always, we have a choice in how we handle this time. But it starts with knowing where we are at and what our natural tendencies are.

I think we covered the sustainment stage pretty well. So, let's move on to the redeployment phase. I had never heard the term redeployment until watching Army Wives. So, I don't know if this is a standard term across the board, only applies to the Army, or is just a term used by military officials. Regardless, it is defined as the month before the service member is scheduled to return home.

While scrolling through one of the base's Facebook groups, I came across a post from a woman struggling to find a job. I cannot find this post now because I am in so many groups between the base we are currently at and the one we are going to. I also wouldn't link directly to it because this was this woman's personal story, and the group was private anyway. But I think the gist of the story is important to talk about and something that many military spouses have experienced.

If the sustainment phase feels like everyday life, at least as much as possible, then we can treat our dreams similarly to how we would if our spouses were home. I'm talking about the usual three steps to achieve a dream and adding the two steps before that process. Whether we find ourselves in the sustainment stage or living a "normal" life with our spouse at home, this is where we always begin and end when it comes to our dreams.

Happy Labor Day! I hope you are enjoying the long weekend and you're getting to spend this time with your service member. I am separated from mine at the moment because I went to Charleston to celebrate the bachelorette weekend of my future sister-in-law. My husband is still in a deployment window, so taking leave is difficult, and even if it wasn't, we don't have enough leave to spare with our upcoming trips. But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.