Inspired by my friend, The (Un)Experienced Mom, I decided to answer the question posed at Confessions from a Working Mom for Truthful Tuesday:
“Have you ever lost something….And come out a winner?”
Many years ago, I was a Corporal and my husband was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army. He had been in for 12 years and I was a few months shy of 4. At the time, I was pregnant with baby number 4 and taking care of 9 month-old-twins (there’s a long story behind how that happened, well, maybe not the *how* but the oh-my-gosh-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me-not-another-one story is certainly interesting but I’ll save it for another day). Anyway, my husband had two different sets of orders (so much for military efficiency) and neither set included me and the kids.
My husband tried to have his orders amended to include the entire family. He even offered to extend one of his overseas tours so that we could all PCS together. Well, the military wasn’t having it, so we made the hard choice to separate from the military. We literally walked away with our last checks and nothing else. No jobs. No retirement. No healthcare. Nothing.
We left Fort Polk, Louisiana and relocated to Pennsylvania where we lived with my mother~in~law (I’ll spare you the gory details but let’s just say I spent a lot of time bent over the sink hacking at chickens to keep from, well, you know…). My husband was able to get a job with a wonderful company that has enabled him to provide for our family and I was able to attend school and earn not one but two Master’s degrees ~ one in History and the other in Library Science.
We lost our livelihoods ~ I was a military brat and my husband had been in the Army for many years ~ but we gained a greater reliance on God and on each other.
PS
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