Skip to main content

Being a Mom in a new war

In January of 2003, I was a 22-year-old college student who was looking forward to my last semester at college.  I had my plans lined up, and goals worked out.  But I got a call that changed my life forever! Oh! I was in the Army Reserve also; did I forget to mention that? Yes, so I got a call that said you have 24 hours to report to the reserve center with all your Army things and whatever else you think you might need for an indeterminate amount of time. What? 

I cried all the way home, grieving the life I was leaving behind, having no idea if I would ever return or how life would be, if I returned. I dutifully packed my things and reported like a good soldier, and began my journey to Iraq.  A journey that would end up being a year and a half before returning home.  Life looked a lot different when I returned. A lot of my family and friends seemed very much the same, but I felt very different.  I was looking at life through a different lens, a lens shaded by my experiences the previous year.

That initial shock of having to turn our life around is where we are now mommas.  We have to keep walking through life, with added responsibilities. While also grieving the life we lost, or were planning to have.  Seniors are giving up prom, graduation, and all the honors and fun that come with their last year of high school.  The little elementary kiddos are losing the end of their first years of school, and some are small enough that they think this is normal. Bless their hearts! And moms, we are giving up what we thought life would look a few weeks ago.

Moms, you are walking through the trenches of life right now, you have been deployed to fight for your family against our new enemy Covid-19.  You have been tasked with keeping up the house, and helping kids with school work, and maybe even working at your regular job too. Also, you have to keep up with all the changes that happen daily with regards to grocery shopping, and how to protect your family from the virus.

Please, please give yourself the grace of grieving the loss of the life you had, of what you thought life was going to look like in the future.  Give the control of the uncontrollable over to the One who knows what the future has in store for us.

When I was deployed, I thought it was the end of my life, and it was, in one way.  But it also opened the door to a new life, a life where I wanted something different for my life. I wanted a simpler life, one with a husband and kids if that was God’s will.  I came home with the idea of never saying no to reasonable suggestions, to live life to the fullest. 

Moms after we have defeated this enemy, we will live life to the fullest!  We will hug a little longer, enjoy getting invites to see friends or go out for a night with our spouse. Hopefully, we never dread our busy schedules again because deep down we know what it was like to lose our busy schedules overnight, and take on unimaginable tasks in our own house.  
While we wait for that time to come don’t forget to look around and realize what you have done, and overcome.  Your deployment has begun, there are no u-turns, and you are the roadside assistant for your family.  Let’s go! There are great things to come Mom!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where is my Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Where is my Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Warning : Politics and religion will be discussed, if this will offend you, please stop reading now.  If you are still with me, grab a cup of coffee and let’s go. I don’t know about you, but I really do not like this presidential campaign.  There are very few candidates that I like, depending on the poll that you look at, I don’t like the top three.  Social media has been on fire with this lately, of course, with people campaigning for their favorite candidate and their ideas to save the world. And this is perfectly fine, even though I strongly disagree with most of them. The world to me seems so divisive, and angry.  Even though I’m a news junkie I occasionally think about living in a cave until November.  But this is not an option.  I was really feeling down, when I heard the news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, and the fight over his vacant seat didn’t help.   I almost got lost ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A spin around the garden with Big Beasty

Every time Farmer Brown is in the field for planting, harvesting, or any other task that needs to be done for crops, it is inevitable that I will have to learn something new.  Today it was running the big tiller, or as I like to call it “Big Beasty.”  If unfamiliar with a roto-tiller, it is a piece of gardening equipment that has blades that break up the earth to help with planting and weed control.  Big Beasty is big, and heavy, we are talking most of my weight and almost as tall as I am!  I have done my best to avoid learning how to start and run this tiller, but today was the day to learn.  F.B. had tilled the garden earlier in the Spring but due to heavy rains, the soil had crusted over.  I needed to take care of some weeds, replant a couple plants, and finally finish planting the rest of the garden since it is the middle of May already.  I tried our small tiller but realized it was not big enough to break through the thick crust of soil in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thank You President Obama

In November 2008, a new first-time mom was watching election results.  She was horrified with the results, how could the country have betrayed her so, why would they vote this man into office, a man who wanted to change her country.  She was scared not only was she trying to figure out how to be a wife, and new mother but now the country she felt safe in was changing.  That new mother was me, I didn’t like President Obama winning the 2008 and 2012 elections, I felt that our country was going to hell in a hand basket, and frankly am too young to feel that way.  Shortly after the election we moved to a farm, and I was still scared about what the direction of the country was going with President Obama.  And I decided I wanted to find a way to help my family in case a major event occurred that disrupted life as we knew it.  Seems a little irrational doesn’t it?  Maybe, but people that I respected and trusted told me this was going to happen and immine...
Post a Comment
Read more