With that as my inspiration I put on my walking shoes and left for my walk. Even though I still had some pain in my foot I was able to complete 1 1/2 miles today and actually found not only lessons, but also reasons to be grateful for my circumstances during my journey through the deployment (round 2)

It's really difficult to even know where to start to search for the answers I was looking for but one thing that came to me almost instantly was my relationship with my mother. 

I had written in my book (from the 1st deployment) that I felt my family didn't really know how to support me or if I even needed it. Thankfully my mother read my book before the second deployment and the lessons she learned from reading the book, she put to good use the second time around.

I was in pretty bad physical shape with my spine issues when my husband deployed. I had undergone 2 surgeries already and was still having regular medical procedures performed while my husband was deployed. With every procedure, I would be in horrible pain the day of and sometimes even worse for up to 3 days following. It was during this time that my mom and dad both stepped up to help me. My mom had made a promise to support me in such a way that I knew she would be there for me and she was. On procedure days my mom would drive me to my appointments, stay the entire time and drive me back to their house (my old family home) for my days of recovery. It was during this time that we started to get closer. Don't get me wrong, my mom has always been the mom that calls every day to see how everyone is and until I moved 10 years ago, I was always only 5 minutes or less from the homestead. We just never really "talked" about the important things before. I mean really deep topics that helped to heal a lot of the issues we had with each other. Growing up I was NOT the easiest child to raise and my mom was not the most emotionally available person. I never blamed her though because we learn by the way we were raised and in her generation children were to be seen and not heard and there were many topics that were NEVER to be discussed. However, as a child myself I could not wrap my head around that fact like I can today.

When we almost lost my father I was already on a leave of absence from work due to my depression and during that time I was actually able to be there for my mom just as she had been there for me. My dad was in intensive care for a week and had a lot of scary moments. My mom was continuing to flash back to the loss of her mother in an intensive care unit and she was struggling with the fact she now had to look at my dad on a ventilator just like my grandmother years before. She was so afraid she was going to lose her life partner. I do have 2 sisters and while they were at the hospital as much as they could be, they both had family and job obligations that did not give them the flexibility that I had during that time. Mom didn't want to leave dad alone (for fear he would wake up and have nobody there) and during that time there was no place I would have rather been than at my mother's side in my father's hospital room and at my father's bedside when I could talk mom into taking some much needed time away to take care of herself.

In recalling these memories, I actually found my first moment of being grateful for the deployment when I think about these events and how they made me closer to my family. It may not be as glamorous as the events I described from my moment of being grateful during the first deployment but it is just as profound. The reason is a little more detailed but I'm going to try to explain it. So I was depressed, mostly because of the deployment. My depression led me to need a leave of absence from work which made me available for my mom when she needed someone by her side. My husband was overseas so I I had no ties to my home. As a family we watched my dad slowly make progress and he did recover and is doing well to this day.

The second part of this is that if my husband had not been deployed my mom would not have taken me to those procedures, had me stay with them while I recovered and we would not have gotten as close as I feel we truly are today. I know to this day I can talk to my mom about anything and I have the deployment to thank for it!

I found today that looking for a lesson hidden by a time filled with despair is much like "dumpster diving". You always get a little dirty while you are going through it but sometimes you find the best of jewels!

Lesson for today: I learned that I can look back on the times in my life that were life changing and find the lesson intended for me and the big lesson was that it doesn't have to be a good experience that makes you grateful for the circumstances you have experienced. Sometimes those lessons can be even more valuable because you have to work hard to find them!

Wishing you love, happiness and light!

Until next time,

Laura D.