To Own a Promise

I was with C today when I received an email notification that someone had commented on Promises. I have left the comment up. 


I did not delete it.


(Updated: Many friends have asked me, as this conversation and explanation has grown, why I have left it visible on the blog. I know deleting it seems to make the most sense.  When I began this blog I made a promise to myself  that unless something violates OPSEC or degrades the American soldier and/or their family it would remain. I will not break that promise even now.)


After you read here you are welcome to read what was written in the comments. I was accused of stealing "Promises" and of plagiarizing someone else's work. I don't know who made the accusation or where they feel credit belongs. They responded anonymously. 


(Update: He/she responded with a detailed explanation for which makes me understand the perspective better.)

Over the last week, "Promises" has been shared all over the internet - with different titles and with no author or source named. I cannot tell you how much it warmed my heart to know that this was touching so many people. I cannot tell you how much it has broken my heart to see others imply that they wrote it. A good friend knows I almost didn't publish this. I thought it may be too real - too honest. I have learned through this blog - in the months after writing this - how necessary real is. How vital it is to understand what we enter into and to understand that we all - marines', airmen's, sailors', soldier's spouses - we all are heart broken, we all are left behind, we all go through this together. 

There is so much hardness in the reality of this life. I was worried to show that when I wrote Promises. But, Lord, there is such a beauty, such a joy, such a goodness in the journey, in the hearts of each of us. We have to acknowledge the heartbreak, the darkness, to really know - I mean that deep, fiery feeling in our core of knowing - that this is worth it. This life is worthy of our joy. Worthy of the sacrifice. Worthy of the tears. 

I sat here to defend my writing. I sat here to tell you, line by line, where it came from. To point to each post before it that supports it. To defend myself. To talk about how our wedding anniversary is shared with the anniversary of the phone call informing us of the death of one of C's comrades. Or of the birth I witnessed of a friend's daughter while her husband was in Afghanistan. To take each one of these moments to claim just to our life, our journey.

And I keep typing these things and then deleting them. I keep wanting to say them - to make every one understand, to fight against an "anonymous". 

But that is the beauty of "Promises" - anyone of us could have written it. Anyone of us could take it line by line and claim it. Say "this is my life," "this is my journey."Anyone one of us has been there. 

We have all been there. 

This is my promise to C and his promise to me and to our boys. But it is your promise to your soldier - or sailor, or airman, or marine. It is his or hers to you. 

Promises belongs to every military couple.

The words are mine. My fingers wrote them. My hands published them.

But it was not just my tears that soaked them, not just my heartbreak that felt them, not just my joy that allowed them.

That is of all of us. 

As it should be. 

Until those sandy boots sit just inside our doors. 

Promises