tribute to military wives gone before us

with today being d-day, can you even begin to imagine what the wives and sweethearts of those soldiers 65 years ago were feeling? were doing to cope with their situation? there was no email. no cellphones. no mwr calls. no webcams. just snail mail. and then even that wasn't guaranteed to be delivered.

and then you think of the wives of the vietnam wars. with the development and advancement of television, could you imagine what they faced and felt with their husbands so far away and no frg to censor the news on the six o'clock news?

i think back to what it was like when my dad deployed for desert storm back in 1990. it was christmas eve and we were stationed in germany. we didn't have the opportunity to move stateside. we moved on post and lived life, one day at a time. there were no cellphones or answering machines for us. so, if we missed dad's phone call, we missed it. but, we didn't know it. all we could count on was the snail mail. i still have all the letters i received during those eight long months from my dad and several pen pals. i remember baking cookies and making hot cocoa and taking it out to the soldiers who patrolled our base. i don't remember webcams or recorded bedtime stories or flatrate boxes or emails.

but i remember we managed, we survived just like the families before us and those of us to come still. we're military, and if you for one moment took for grant it the fact that your soldier is on duty 24-7, and that deployments are a reality of being part of this family, time to be slapped back into reality. but, we, the community of survivors, the community you can lean on, will be waiting for you just as those wives did back in 1944 and even before then. and along side our wives and friends in arms, you can trust that God will be carrying you through the valleys and up on the mountains of this adventure called life, married to the military.