No One Is Sailing Through Reintegration Babe

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The Reintegration journey we are on surely has been interesting. So many awesome highs and a few pretty depressing lows. It's unbelievable how much work it takes to put your entire life on hold to leave for deployment. Undoing it all and even just being able to remember what you did a year ago to set everything up to leave, even if you kept good records, is mind-blowing. Then there are never-ending decisions to be made about the future, the exhaustion and the emotions all over the place.

I have to say I am so proud of my husband. He has impressed the socks off me in his efforts the past few weeks. Has everything been perfect and easy, hell no. Has he gotten frustrated, been exhausted and struggled? Sure, or course he has. But he has amazed me at how hard he tries, how loving, patient and forgiving he has been and how he's tried to put the principles he learned in the post deployment/reintegration training to use in his life and with our family.

He on the other hand is not so impressed. He thinks he should be accomplishing tons more, full of energy, and perfect at every turn. Last night we had a talk about that and I felt strongly that I needed to remind him that no one is sailing through reintegration easily. Everyone is having their struggles. I imagine there are some who came home to find out one of the spouses was cheating or planning to leave the marriage. Others came home to other hardships we can only imagine and thank our lucky stars are not happening to us. I am sure no one is finding reintegration and recovery to be as easy as they believed they could make it if they just tried hard enough.

I can say that our relationship has really grown due to reintegration. We work together better than we ever have, our communication is more open and generous. We seem to take a lot less for granted, enjoy our friendship more and we are kinder and gentler with each other than we even were before. That is awesome, because we are a good team. We are really enjoying each other. Early this morning, with the sun glaring in my eyes, waking me up, I looked over at him sleeping peacefully next to me and just got the biggest smile on my face. I find him ridiculously cute, which is funny considering I went totally against type when I started dating him. As I lay there in bed I  jubilantly thought - He is here. He's with me. I love him! He loves me. Hooray!

It's good to remind our loved ones that reintegration takes a certain pace, it can't be rushed. And that everyone is having to find their new normal. No one came home to easy street with everything just as they left it and no challenges. I was grateful to have the chance to remind my dear husband that this is a marathon, it is not a sprint. You can't sprint a marathon and there is no way possible that he could ever have his entire life reconstituted in a mere 30 days. Just as pre-deployment takes a long, long time, reintegration requires a similar amount of time to move through. When it comes to reintegration the phrase "Slow and steady wins the race" seems like a pretty great motto.