Overcome with Emotion

This week has been an emotional rollercoaster. One night I received an awesome phone call from Jared saying that he would be home within two weeks! His boss had suggested his name as someone who could be trusted to receive all the equipment that would soon be returned back to Germany. And besides, work would be a little slow and he may have extra time to spend with me before everyone else came back. As excited as I was with this news, I had just torn my house apart to begin a deep Spring cleaning before he was due to arrive home in June. What was I going to do?? And on top of that, Jared was in the middle of taking a Govt. college class in Kandahar. Would he be able to finish the class back in Germany and still receive full points??? Oh, and don't forget about the Norway cruise that I had purchased two months ago for our R&R in June that we would no longer be able to take since his R&R would now be in April. GRRR!

Leave it to the ARMY though. Within 24 hours, I received another phone call from Jared saying that his early return was no longer going to take place. Geez, I had just spent the last 24 hours being so excited and worried to being upset and relieved? Can those two emotions even go together??? I was upset about not getting him home earlier, but relieved that everything else would now work itself out. As much as I wanted him HOME in GERMANY, I knew that it wasn't meant to be yet.

Then as I was leaving post this morning to drive to church, I started bawling uncontrollably!! I was rereading the hundreds of welcome home signs that are hung along the main road for all the soldiers to see as they come home. The tears of joy started streaming. At that moment I was suddenly grateful for each individual soldier that was serving our country and offering their life as a sacrifice if that was what was required to keep their country and family safe. Don't get me wrong, I have always been grateful for the service of our service men and women, but until YOU actually are directly affected by it, it is almost impossible to understand what individual families go through during a deployment. I was also soooo excited for the upcoming reunions that would be taking place and tried to imagine how great that moment for be will be to see Jared again! While I'm very excited that this deployment is coming to a close, I'm trying not to think about it too much because Jared is in one of the last groups to come back. I don't want to start being bitter or jealous towards other friends whose spouses are back.

Tammy