My Life as a Wife of a U.S. Army Soldier

When people find out that my husband is in the U.S. Army, they thank me for the sacrifices that I have made. I honestly don't feel that I have made any sacrifices. I love my husband with all of my heart, and to be here and support him on his journey and experience in the Army, whether it's five years or 25, is my job.

Strangers offer sympathy for my family, saying how hard it must be to move all the time, to have my husband gone a lot. Yes it is very hard to have to deal with the long separations, the missed birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas', and Thanksgivings, and to be so far away from family, but my husband is contributing a great service to this country by defending it and helping to enable other countries to be more like ours. Now, my husband, Christopher, isn't a gung-ho soldier, all about the Military all the time, but he recognizes that without his service, and a lot of sacrifices in our home life, the United States would be one less soldier, and he is willing doing his job.

There are a lot of pros and cons to being married to a soldier. My son is two years old, and when my husband returns from his deployment that begins in a couple of months, my husband will have missed close too two years of our then three year old sons life. Christopher missed Aidens entire pregnancy, and the first ten months of Aidens life. In some aspects, Aiden is still a stranger too Christopher.

Christopher and I just had another baby, a little girl named Alora, and although he was here this pregnancy, and will be here the first three months of her life, Chris will miss her first birthday, her first laugh, crawl, word, and many other firsts. It is heartbreaking to the both of us that he has to make these heartrending sacrifices in order to serve his country, but both him and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Another con is that there are some people who are ungrateful for my husbands service. I am speaking of those people who walk by a car that has a yellow support our troops magnet and rips it off, or rips it period. I eventually just stopped putting them on the back of our car. There are those ungrateful people who protest at the funerals of fallen soldiers, those haters of anything good that the military has done for this country and any other country. They say that we are blasphemers and gays, but without our troops, this country would be just as bad as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan.

Then there are those that say that with all of the benefits that we receive we shouldn't be on welfare. If they lived one month in my, or any other military wife's shoes, they would understand that we are not rich, we have to pay for our housing, our medical, our dental, our other bills. My family has been in debt so many times this past year, that we should be considered at the poverty level, which I am sure we are.

The pros of being married to a military man far out weigh the cons in my opinion. Every time my husband comes home from the field, a long mission, a tour of duty, I get to fall in love with him all over again. How many women get to say that? I still feel butterflies in my stomach every time I see him. I value our time together, I make every moment last, make it memorable, whether we are going out to dinner or staying in and watching reruns of Friends. I get to hear I love you from my husband every time he comes home or leaves, because he knows and values the fragility of life. He understands that in one second everything can change and that life and our love is a wonderful and miraculous thing to be cherished. Yes we get into arguments, a lot of them actually, but we always make up, and we still love each other, more than the day we first met.

I have met many wonderful people that I could only have met due to the fact that my soldier is in the army. I have a wonderful support system on line at www.armywives.com , as well as with the other military wives that I have met here on Fort Knox. They are my family. They are my support, and I don't know what I would do without them

Both my husband and I make sacrifices, as do our children, but they are sacrifices we willingly make so that this world can be a better place. We wouldn't have it any other way.