Intentional Living on Sea Duty

I've been thinking about this blog for a few days now...thinking about what I wanted to say and how to say it.

Today I took Ms. Caraline or "C" as Zack and I often call her to her 6 month doctor appointment.  She is growing well and right on track but that's not the point of this blog.  The corpsman(the enlisted version of a nurse...with minimal training) asked me if her father was deployed.  It's a standard question and in her digital medical record I guess some little box would be checked.  Deployment stress trickles all the way down to children and infants.  I answered no, but soon.  He jotted it down and then went on to the rest of the standard questions.  The answer is soon.  Soon he will be deployed. (Side Note: I am not breaking OSPEC...various info has been posted on fb basically saying the ship was leaving...and they generally leave the same time every year...and I guarantee N. Korea, China, Russia and whoever else knows it too!)  Zack and I have already started to change our mindsets.  We are preparing ourselves for the deployment and getting back into the zone.

I mentioned this to a friend and she asked if it is hard...if living this way was hard.  The question made me stop and think...try to formulate my thoughts into words.  My answer:  This is how we live.  This is all we know.  This is our normal.  She replied back and say that we all find normalcy in our routines...but isn't it hard?  I struggled to find a way to explain to her the intentional attitude that Zack and I live by.  I am sure that I failed in my explanation...so here goes my second try.  Zack will be enlisted this coming September for 6 years.  We have been living apart or on sea duty for the entire time.  We'll be married for 4 years this September...meaning that all we know is sea duty during the entire duration of our marriage so far.  Noah is two...meaning that all we know is raising children while on sea duty.  This is what we know.  For something to be hard doesn't it first have to be easy?  We don't know how it is to live during the shore duty rotation or even as civilians for that matter.  But I can say that I wouldn't want to live as civilians.  Is living on sea duty hard?  I would say that it has challenges.  But doesn't living on shore duty or as civilians have their own sets of challenges?  Yes, he misses those "special" days.  He missed Noah's first birthday, Caraline's birth, and will miss her first birthday too.  But aren't our trips to the zoo, aquarium, fun place....aren't those special days too?  Don't they count for something? Yes, we miss him.  But we know what it's like to not have him home and appreciate the times we have together so much more.  Isn't hard being a "single" mom?  My answer: Isn't being a mom hard?  It's rewarding and challenging all at the same time.  I would argue that having him home makes parenting harder because then I have to reset my mindset to making dual decisions.  Instead of just making the decisions by myself the way we're going to do things...I then have to run it by him...we discuss it...and then we come to an answer.  While he's gone I run important things past him...but for the most part we decided that I'd handle it here.  I'm the one living it here and therefore it's okay for me to make decisions without him.  Wouldn't I'd rather have him home?  Yes, of course!  If given the choice of having him away or home...of course I would choose home.  But does that mean that him being away is hard?  Having him away is challenging.  It often calls for having plan A, B, C, D...etc.  You'd be surprised how far down the alphabet a sea duty mom can get!  We both agree that this life can spit you out in heartbeat.  But we refuse to sit and say that living on sea duty is hard...that it sucks.  Sorry, you won't hear it coming out of our mouths.  We've lived happily for the past 6 years and to say that it's been hard would negate all the massive amounts of happiness we've shared together.  It's challenging but with any challenge there are those that choose to sit and stare at the mountain rising before them...and then there are people that see it, prepare for climb, and then make the trek while stopping to enjoy the scenery as they go.  We intentionally live by that second attitude.  We always...always try to find the positive in any situation the Navy throws at us.  And there are quite a few almost weekly!  On a rare occasion(actually only once has this happened), Zack came home with an announcement that he was visually upset about.  He filled me in and I sat in silence trying to find a positive in it.  Zack looked at me sitting in silence and said, Julie, there is no way that you can find the positive...it just plain sucks.  There is no way to spin this one, baby.  And so I sat for a few more minutes because I was sure that I could find it.  I came up empty and then I prayed.  I was sure that there was no way that was the plan for us.  And the next day we got a call from his Chief with an alternative for us that we could find more than a few positives in...compared to the alternative that is!  My prayers had been answered.  For us to say that our lives are hard would be equivalent to the Copernican Revolution.  It would be a paradigm shift...it would be unfathomable.  And so I say again...you won't hear it coming out of our mouths.  This life has made us better people.  The challenges that occur cause us to grow as individuals and as a couple.  We can't grow and change when we live in our comfort zones everyday.  When life throws us challenges we choose to respond intentionally with a positive attitude.  Do you?