Military Monday

I just got a book I ordered called Military Love Loving You From A Distance. I read the first paragraph and I loved it... so I thought I would share...

The love of my life is a hero. He doesn't wear a cape but he models cammies every day. He doesn't rock the newest designer shoes but instead he laces up his combat boots no matter how uncomfortable they are. He doesn't have the newest hair style because he has regulations he has to abide by daily. He has to wake up before sunrise so he could go to PT than he endures a long day at work. He signed up to ensure that freedom of speech never gets belittled. Sometimes with that freedom he is protecting, people speak words of disrespect towards him. He has to leave home to fight a war he was not sure if he believed in. ...

I just thought it was touching and beautiful as well as the rest of the introduction. The book is entries of different military love stories. I am on love story #4.  Not every story is for me but so far I like this book. I belong to a Facebook group called Military Love. Thats how I found out the book. Aparently when she started the group, she started a traveling notebook.. one got stolen, they were worn out and beaten so she decided the best way to do was virtually through an email address and she compiled all the stories into this book. Again the book is called Military Love: Loving You From A Distance and its by Samantha Rehder and the rest of the wives who submitted their stories. The book is available at Lulu.com and she also now has calendars out too!.

What's your military love story? Would you share it in a book?

My Military Love story is...Rick my husband was stationed in Korea and he was pretty bored so he was looking for blogs to read on Yahoo 360. He found my blog and started reading. I was writing about life, my bad relationship, my struggles with my ex and parent hood. He finally started leaving comments and so I read his blog too! The first comments came in December of 05. By the summer of 2006 it was time for him to leave Korea and he was being stationed in Alabama just 3/4 hours away! We begun to talk more in IM just platonic since I was in a relationship and he was trying to find his own love for a lifetime time of love. He was having problems with it and he would admit himself that he was in a destructive downward spiral. I wasn't handling things too well either. In December of 2006 he told he heard rumors he might deploy but not to worry too much because it would probably be to the green zone. I DID worry. I have friends and family that have deployed and I have never worried so much as I did this stranger... I only knew Rick virtually. I spoke to my two best friends Kristin and Olenka about what was going on and showed them the emails and I was at the point of ending my relationship. I asked for my mother for a loan to help me get my own place with my daughter and help me out. She told me to wait till after the holidays. My boyfriend was abusing xanax and alcohol. It was becoming more and more abusive and controlling. I wasn't getting hours at either of my two jobs. Things weren't well. I went to stay with my sister for a few days just to get my head on things. This was about Martin Luther King Weekend. Rick had a four day weekend and decided we should meet. He thought maybe I could just house sit while he was deployed and get back on my own feet with no strings attached. No relationship.. I wasn't looking for anything but standing on my own two feet. Again I pleaded with Olenka and Kristin and they could tell I had already fallen even if I denied it. They said it was Kismet and I had to meet him or I would forever regret it.

We met that weekend and we planned on having dinner and just talking about the possiblity of me moving to Redstone with Skylar and house sitting. At the time he knew he had to leave his boys who were 19 & 20 alone but he thought htey could handle themselves and I would just be making sure that everything was okay while he was deployed. Crazy things happened that weekend that weren't what I planned dealing with police, my adopted mother, my ex boyfriend (we broke up before New Years Eve), and my sister. Things got out of hand and my daughter was in danger. I literally packed what I could carry and Rick called James and Alex and told them I was in a bad situation and he was bringing us home. Everything seemed meant to be and it was so wonderful we got married on Feburary 5th of the same year. Alex his oldest son left for boot camp a few days later and Rick left for training to join his MiTT Team in Kansas by July 22, 2007. He deployed to Taji Iraq October of 2007. Alex left for Korea for a year a few weeks later. He came back to Alabama to visit with James, Skylar & I before leaving for Korea after he graduated from AIT (Advanced Individual Training).

During my first deployment I learned so much about my marriage, my step sons, my own self and my daughters strength. I will never forget how I grew and how we grew as a couple that year. I hope we can get back to that.

Coming home on a 4 day weekend from Training Summer of 2007

R&R on our 1st Anniversary Feb 2008

Shortly after we met