State of Our Union

Deployments are hard, I mean really hard on a marriage.  Communicating through email, quick phone calls and Facebook is not all that a marriage is supposed to be.  But since July 9th, that is all our marriage has had.

There are so many things wrong with that.  There's such a lack of intimacy when most of your marriage is through a computer screen.  And in order to make it work, there has to be a lot of work, effort and grace.

I want to start out a series of posts about marriage, with the current state of our marriage.  You ready?

Our marriage right now, is hands-down, the best it's ever been.  Can you believe it?  I can't.  But it's true and it feels so good.  Yes, there are major parts missing in our marriage.  Some are more obvious then others.  I'll just assume you get the obvious ones.  My mom reads this, for Heaven's sake.  *cough*

A few months before Joel left, we made the effort to be a united front.  We chose our battles, but most often we chose to let things go rather than battle.  Joel and I came together as a team and worked to make the last few months he was here fun, relaxed and special for us and our girls.  We didn't want to look back while in the midst of the deployment and remember the stupid fights.  We wanted to look back and hold on to the memories - taking walks, having dinner, playing Wii, hanging out with the girls, staying up late just talking in the dark and simply enjoying one another.

We said "I love you" about a million times a day - just to make up for the days when we wouldn't be able to hear those words from the other. 

Joel and I are still on the high from the months leading up to his departure.  We know there is always the possibility that he won't come back.  It's a tough reality.  We didn't want any tension in our marriage before he left.  So we chose to live without the tension, without the petty disagreements.  But why don't we choose that way all the time?  I hope we'll do better.

Knowing where we are at right now - how strong we are, makes this time so much easier.  Not that it's easy, but the state of our marriage is not something that I have to worry about at all.  Thank God for that.