Sacrifice

This weekend was the weekend of meltdowns.  It was the weekend of me throwing my hands in the air and telling him I wasn't going to keep talking and being ignored and I wasn't going to keep arguing in circles.  When I do that, he tends to stop talking to me.... For a long time.  He hasn't spoken to me in 24 hours and is unlikely to for a few more days at a minimum.

This post, entitled Sacrifice, is not about the sacrifices of the spouses and children, it's not my sacrifice I'm talking about.  It's his.  It's the very idea that I log onto Facebook everyday to see people arguing their points of view on raising children, gun control, the war, our governments choices, our President and any number of other things.

At work the other day two close friends asked how things were and I had to admit that he was melting down again.  I talk candidly about what was happening in our secret life behind closed doors, on our own private battlefield.  Both said they felt I should leave and that he should no longer be in the military.

To all of these people I want to say, my husband made a sacrifice for you.

He has sacrificed who he is, his marriage, his life, and sometimes, his sanity for you.  Think about what he is going through, the hell that he lives, the hell that I live and remember that you get on Facebook and spout your opinions without fear of reprisal, because you live in a land where others fought for your freedoms and others stand ready to at any moment to fight again.

And while you will read articles about how we spend months, sometimes years apart, and you will read about the sacrifices of military families, there are large points that they miss in those articles.  True, distances from your loved ones is hard, true we spend months apart, spouses suddenly become single parents, kids miss their mommies and daddies, money can be tight, benefits can change, and stress abounds in this life.  But what about the other sacrifices?

What about my husband who went to war, who loves what he does in the military, who was willing to give up who he was, he was willing to sacrifice his marriage, his love, his life as he knew it, to do what he believed in?  What about that sacrifice.  Me?  I love him.  And I am here.  And I will be here if he yells, refuses to talk to me, shuts me out and tells me he hates me.  Because tomorrow, he may not feel that way at all.  That is not a sacrifice, that is love.  That is determination to help the man I married find himself again.  But him?  He gave up everything for his nation.  His life is crumbling, his identity gone, his mind is fractured, his soul is wandering all in honor of the nation he loves, filled with people he's never met.

Sacrifice.  Though there are times that I feel I sacrifice a lot for this nation as a result of loving a military man, the sacrifices he has made are so much greater.