Dear Deployment: Love, B.

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Dear Deployment,

For 20 weeks you have made our home your home. This is the first time you have visited us in my soldier’s almost 7 years of service… so we have been expecting you. Our last three and a half years started with a wedding, then two dogs, two baby boys, two years of flight school, and now you have taken over . You have brought our fast-paced marriage to a slow steady and given us time to think. Time to think about our relationships. Our relationship with each other, our relationship with our children, our relationship with friends, and most importantly our relationship with God.

You make it really REALLY tough to relate to civilians, but bring the ties between our Army family much stronger. You have weakened bonds with old friends but strengthened new ones. You make our society seem petty and frivolous considering the struggles our soldiers face each day.

You remind me EVERY single day how lucky we are. I think of my fellow military spouses who have lost a loved one. In fact, I think of them daily, sometimes hourly. I think of children growing up without their father or mother because of the evil that we are fighting against. I pray for them every second that I get.

You make me very proud of my husband. He is doing everything he has ever wanted to do- flying Apache Helicopters and serving our country. My sons have a father that is not only their everything, but a true hero as well. The superheroes most kids watch on TV and read about… is their Dad and my husband. But under that cape he is still their goofy Dad that makes up off the wall nicknames and wants nothing more than to tackle and tickle them to no end.

You have pushed me to do things like running a household alone, taking on two wild little boys by myself, brought me to a wonderful new church, advancing in my hobbies of running-Photography-crafting, and even running my first marathon in less than 4 hours! You have made me pretty fast actually. Considering we are only 4 months into a 12 month deployment… I can’t WAIT to see what else you have in store.

The darkness is always hiding since you have been here. Lurking right behind each days’ clouds. If we let any bit of that darkness in, the floodgates open and torrential downpour takes over. It can rain for days or even weeks if we let it, so I’ve learned how important it is to let the sunshine overpower that darkness. The brightness of the sun will ALWAYS prevail.

So thank you deployment for strengthening our family and our faith. I may not like you at all, but I do appreciate you.

Love,

My Name is Brittany Trumbull. My husband is in the Arizona Army National Guard and is an Apache Helicopter pilot. We met as cheerleaders in college at Northern Arizona University, have been married 4 years, and have two boys ages 2.5 and 1. We are 8 months into his 12 month deployment to Afghanistan.

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