Month: October 2019

The Liberating Realization That Nothing Is In Your Control

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This article first appeared on militaryspouse.com’s website on August 8, 2017.

She gave up!

It’s happened to us all, or it will. It’s the day you finally give up, the day you realize that nothing is in your control and you surrender to it all. It’s very liberating. And as a military spouse, I wish all of you the peace and happiness you will find when you throw in the towel.

When I was first married, I was as bright eyed and hungry for adventure as most are. How could I not be? My fiancé had promised me a life of travel and experiences. While he was still at the Air Force Academy, he filled in his dream sheet.

Ah, the intoxicating form that makes us all go crazy.

It is billed as a way to state your desires and have them fulfilled. And at this point in our lives, I believed it. We wrote down our wishes and fantasized about where we would start our Air Force career. Our top choices were, of course, overseas assignments. After that came locations on the East or West coast. We are New Englanders after all and the ocean calls to us.

Imagine our surprise when assignments dropped and we were relocating to Omaha, Neb.! That’s nowhere near an ocean OR anywhere exotic.

Let’s call this Disappointment No. 1.

Eek!

But as a good military spouse, I looked at it as a new adventure anyhow. Nevertheless, it was somewhere I’d never been.

We arrived at Offutt AFB in the middle of the summer and my husband began his life in the command post.

That job required shift work so our schedules very rarely meshed. Disappointment No. 2.

Our first Christmas had him working mids while I had the time off since I taught in public schools.

That would be Disappointment No. 3. I cried quite a few times that holiday season.

After a year, my spouse cross-trained into a new field and we were heading to Florida for training! Woohoo! I get my ocean!

But wait, Disappointment No. 4 is on the horizon.

We are at Tyndall AFB and located nearby is a papermill. So, every day the breeze would deliver that lovely smell. I tried to be positive since I got my coastal living but it was hard since I was pregnant and my senses were heightened.

I knew that after training, we would be heading to Oklahoma. Disappointment No. 5, but at least I was prepared.

Really?

Back in the early 1990s, there wasn’t much to brag about in Oklahoma City. But we bought our first house and found great friends. Life was good — for a while.

Around the three-year point into that assignment, our friends started getting new duty stations. My spouse and I began mapping out where we would like to go and how our lives would look at each new base. He would hear of new assignments and we would start dreaming.

“Saudi Arabia is available.  What do you think?”

“It’s not my first choice, but it could be fun.”

“They need someone in Hawaii.”

“Duh. You don’t need to ask, just put in for it.”

“How about Alaska?”

“It’s so cold there but I guess I could do two to three years. It would be different.”

You get the picture.

And here come Disappointments Nos. 6 to 25. 

Each time he would talk about a change of scenery and it didn’t happen, I was crushed. More disappointments came as our friends would go to new bases and we remained in Oklahoma.

After five and a half years, we moved to Georgia. I was beginning to think that I could surrender to the Air Force gods and go with the flow. But I would be sucked back in whenever my husband would pull out that carrot called the dream sheet and I would get my hopes up once again.

The final straw for me came when a higher-ranking officer told us that my husband was getting a remote so she could assign him to teach at Weapons School in Las Vegas.While I looked forward to Vegas, I dreaded the remote. It was that confirmation that we are pawns in the game of Air Force chess that I finally surrendered.

Peace out

Afterward, I no longer took stock in the dream sheet or my spouse’s charts that plotted what would happen if we got assignment X or Y. I gave myself permission to ride the wave without stress. My spouse would try to drag me back in but I couldn’t do it. And let me tell you, I was much happier this way. I never say that I “gave up;” I say that I retained my sanity.

So now as a seasoned spouse, I try to pass my knowledge off to others.

We can’t control much but we can abandon the hold that “what if” has on our lives.

For some people, that concession may never come. But for others, the release of that one area of our lives can be so freeing that everything else seems easier. It is a sweet surrender.

I’m free!

A Military Spouse Conference That Was Productive

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This last week my spouse and I attended the annual ACC Commander’s and Spouses conference in Langley, VA. I was excited to go! I was hoping to learn a few things about our role for the next few years.

We arrived on a Tuesday night so that we could go to the icebreaker social. They held it in a very cool location-an old armory. It was called The Vanguard and it is a multi-functional space. There was a trivia night going on while we were eating and drinking upstairs.

Wednesday was when the conference actually started. I was slightly nervous. Not only were there General Officer spouses there but you never know how these things are going.

My unrest was initially justified. Our principle leader started the conference with a question to us: “What do you bring to the table?” Talk about intimidation! The purpose of the question was to get us to open up and not only state our name and where we are from. Many times military spouses associate themselves with their husband’s or wives rank as opposed to their own identity.

That little nudge meant a lot. It reminded us that we are our own people. The week continued with similar boosts to our lives. We heard about creating communities, the new health system that is being implemented, as well as how to mobilize in a crisis.

We had speakers from all over but a special surprise was from a military spouse who had started her own business. Katelyn Tinsley began her non-profit, Homefront Room Revival, to fill a need. She wanted a way to give purpose to spouses as well as help them create their own home. The business helps E-5 and below Airmen and their families to furnish their homes by using cast-off furniture and simple DIY projects. She also does “Dec the Deployment” where she brightens up the lives of spouses by decorating their homes for the holidays.

Listening to Katelyn about her non-profit at the conference

We got a tutorial in reverse canvas art. Katelyn and some of her team brought a craft for us to do. We stenciled fall art onto the canvas and then we were able to take it home afterwards. I’m not usually that crafty but I was able to do it. It’s empowering to create something from nothing.

Fun before the craft

One of the best parts of the conference was when we toured NASA. We had a briefing on the newest trip to the moon called Artemis. Artemis is the female twin of Apollo and the new mission is woman-centric. Then the trajectory is to head to Mars. It sounds very exciting.

We went on to the Landing and Impact center where they initially practiced how Apollo would land on the moon. It is a huge structure with a landing pool and everything. Now they use it to test planes, the seats on them and other various vehicles. The videos alone were worth it!

Talk about a beast! Great side trip away from the conference room

We also spent time at the National Transonic Facility which houses a giant wind tunnel. Unfortunately, we couldn’t step inside of it since they were ready to do a test run later in the week. And then we saw a robot at work in another building. That robot, ISAAC, is working to standardize composites within structures. That brief was way over my head but the robot was cool.

This week gave me hope that these conferences are worth it. The planners just need to remember to save some time for chit-chatting with fellow attendees. That’s the real reason we go anyways!