Sunday, October 10, 2010

6 Month Deployment Almost Over!

I haven't updated this blog in almost 6 months, guess I've been a little bit busy. This has been a very challenging 6 months. Being apart from your spouse is difficult enough even when life is smooth and uneventful but of course it wasn't all smooth. But it has all turned out well and my husband returns in 5 days, on his birthday!!! We are super excited and can't hardly wait. About a month ago my husband was informed that he has been selected for a job in New Mexico, so we will be moving at the end of January. This job is a blessing because this type of job is highly sought after in the Air Force due to the recognition and people he will be working with and also because this is a non-deployable position that lasts at least 3 yrs, sometimes 4. So we are happy we get to keep him around for a while.

As for my challenges~My 19 month-old daughter has been in therapy for several months now due to a delay in wanting to eat regular food, she prefers baby food. At first I thought maybe this was a sensory integration problem or some problem with her gag reflex since she tended to gag at anything solid. But after working with a speech, occupational and physical therapist for months now we have realized nothing is per say "wrong" with her, this is just a choice she is making. She is very strong willed for a child her age. About 3 weeks ago she began eating normal solid foods, showing interest in the food my 3 yr old daughter and I were eating and even stealing her sister's food. But this past week she has reverted again for some unknown reason. There has been no change in our routine yet she has gone back to crying anytime I offer her normal food and is requesting and crying for baby food. I have done everything I know to break this habit, getting her prayed for and even sometimes refusing to feed her the baby food even though I was advised not to withhold the baby food from her. With my husband returning in 5 days, I'm hoping things will once again improve once we get back to normal family life.
It is obvious she misses daddy since anytime we are at church she prefers the company of men that she knows are safe. She will go to these nice men in our church and then will refuse to let go of them, I have to almost pry her off of them all the while she is screaming. We just pray that this obsession with wanting male attention is satisfied once daddy is home.

So my husband returns in 5 days and we are busy preparing for his homecoming. My oldest daughter has had a jar of "daddy kisses" (Hersey's kisses) that started with 179 kisses in the jar. Since there was about 20 or so remaining she has been taking them all out every night, sitting them on the floor and counting them one by one, eating one (for that day) and putting them all back in. Today since there's only 5 days left I am going to replace the regular kisses with dark chocolate ones which have a purple wrapper, so she knows this is special because we only have 5 days left!

Meanwhile as I sit here and write this, in the back of my mind runs my "To Do" list which seems to be a mile long list of things that I have made up that I would like to get done in the next 5 days. About 90% of this list my husband will probably never notice or even care if these things were done or not done because I know all he wants is to be home with us. These crazy things I make up in my mind that have to be just so,...ARRRR.... I think I am writing this now to try to put all of this list back into proper perspective and to let God tell me what's really important because at this juncture I don't know how its humanly possible for me to get them all done without stressing myself out. Today's message at church this morning was about stress and letting go of it. So I'm trying to let go of all the unnecessary "shoulds" I put on myself as a wife and mother and focus on what's really important and let God take care of everything else.
I had a few goals that I wanted to achieve that I did not accomplish during this deployment (this is more of that shoulding on myself, as us therapists like to say). I have realized these goals were unnecessary and evidence that even a well-educated, self-assured woman such as myself is still susceptible to being brainwashed by society's lookism. For instance~wanting to lose all of my baby weight while my hubby was deployed since I stopped nursing right after he left and I could diet again. I did lose about half the weight but now I'm kinda stuck. I have come to realize the things I DID accomplish are what really matters.

During this deployment I hit more than a few low points in which I really allowed stress and worry to run over me like a mac truck and then back over me a few times. Thankful I ran to God and he healed me and took all of this from me. This caused me to grow more in my relationship with God and to understand his true nature better, this is one major thing I did accomplish. I truly learned that he is my source, I had never fully embraced that before now because I was not forced to. But God can use hurtful, depressing, lonely times to show you who he really is and show you that you can truly count on him. In other words, when my back was against the wall and I could do nothing else for myself, once again he showed up in BIG way. God sent others to minister to me and his spirit ministered to me by healing me of several health problems I was having. Accomplishment #2-my faith was stretched and as a result I and my family were blessed. I can count 4 chronic pains or physical problems that I have been experiencing for some time that I have been healed of in the past 3 months!!! Three of these problems I was on medication for, one I had unsuccessful surgery on, one had a doctor so confounded he didn't know what else to do, and the other two kept me up nights in pain. I have been healed of all of them thanks God of course ministering through members of my church that laid hands on me. I am on only one medication now to keep down inflammation and I think that within a month or so I will be able to stop taking that as well, this is more of a preventative measure. I do believe God can and does work through doctors so this one last medication I'm letting run its course to make sure I don't re injure myself since I am aggressively exercising 4-5 times a week. But just to tell you of my progress, 4 months ago I didn't know if I could continue to exercise and was even advised to totally stop exercising until I was back to 100% pain-free for months. But I didn't accept that because exercising has also been a coping mechanism for me and I knew dieting alone would not help me lose this baby weight. So I took this to God and he took care of my pains for me and I have been able to continue my exercise routine. To give you an idea of additional challenges I had and how I coped see my next entry.

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