Where it Comes From

These last two days have been an emotional roller coaster. It has hurt my heart to have people take something that I think to be so beautiful, that is so very special to me, that I feel does so much good and taint it. I know there is a reason for this. I know there is a purpose here. I know that at some point it will be shown. From adversity comes strength. From trials come determination. 


So many people have read promises now and I do not care where they read it or who they think authored it. The good is that people are reading it. It is touching people. It is helping people the way it helps me to know these things, to know the promise. I cannot find any sadness in that. 


I have decided that after this I am throwing my hands in the air, falling to my knees, and giving it up. The accusation of plagiarism will no longer hurt me. I know I would never take from anyone else - especially, especially, a soldier and his spouse. I know where I was when I wrote this. I know how I cried the entire time. I know how much I struggled with publishing it. And the reason I struggled with it was because I feared criticism. I feared people would not be able to accept the reality of it. And that never happened. It only did good. Yesterday was the only day anyone publicly criticized it - if the internet is public. So one time out of thousands, well, that isn't too bad.


On the Facebook page I linked to this criticism written by a Navy spouse. So many of you read it and came back to respond. I took it down - not because I didn't love what you all said in response - I cannot tell you how much your responses meant to me - but because of how much higher it was raising her post in rankings on the internet because so many people went to go read it. But I think my response is important to have on record, since she hasn't approved it to be shown and there may be others like her. Whether they are questioning that the experience behind the words are mine or find a wife who allows her soldier to leave her to be weak, meek, or for the soldier that does so to be less Christian as this young Navy wife believes. 


I am not sharing the link - you can find it if you look - but I will share the basis of what she says. She took The Soldier's Promise to be between a couple who hated to be together. To criticize women like me for not being selfish enough, that we must not really love our husband's enough, that they must not truly love us. That we stand in their shadows. That how less-Christian a man must be to lie to his spouse, to share things with his comrades that we don't know. She implies that we take our soldiers for granted. That we find them to be bothersome. She calls Promises "Shenanigans." 


I know other people must think that too. 


Yes, I know it is very few - a minuscule number of people but you all know how much it boils my blood when people criticize a life they don't know, don't understand. I believe in being kind in all things and to judge a life you have not lived - to question my character, to claim that C can't be Christian and live this life - that is far from kind. 


Below is my response that she did not publish - the same one I had up on my other page for an hour or two last night. I am putting it here so that other's may share and help others to understand what "Promises" means, the reality behind it, where it comes from. 

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I wrote this.  I entitled it “A Soldier’s Promise”.

There is a response to it called "The Army Wife's Promise".

There has never been a day that I have prayed for a deployment to come. There has never been a day that I have wanted him gone or to lie to me or to shut me out.

My husband has served for fourteen years. He has lost dozens of friends. He has stood at funerals to honor the fallen. He has called families to tell them that their son lost both his legs. (By the way, that REMARKABLE soldier still serves).  

My husband joined at seventeen with every intention to stay in until the day he is too old. There is no six-year timeline for us. Your sailor’s service is admirable. Your dedication to him is admirable as well.  But it makes our perspectives far different.

Mine is a combat soldier.

When he walked into the house of an Iraqi family who had been murdered for helping US troops, when he saw the body of a toddler filled with bullet holes, left for so long, maggots were eating at her skin … The only person that can understand that, the only person who can deeply, completely understand what he felt in that moment is his comrade that was beside him in tears. I will never understand what it is to make the choice between destroying a possibly bomb-rigged truck speeding straight towards you, ending the life of a possible suicide bomber, and defending your men. I will never understand the moment of that decision. But the soldier who followed his order, who fired that weapon to destroy it before it destroyed them … HE understands it. He knows what it is to be forced to choose between life and death. I have never had to make that decision. Have you?

You have never gone through the month before a combat deployment to the third deadliest area in a war zone so you cannot understand what I mean by “shut you out.” No words I can say will make you understand that. But if you are balancing in your head leaving your family, the young men you are bringing with you who will leave their families, that some of them may not come back, that you may be taking sons from their mothers, fathers from their children, husbands from their wives ... You have never carried that. Neither have I. So if in those weeks before that mission, if my husband has trouble telling me “What is wrong?” Well, I can understand him not knowing what to say. It has nothing to do with PTSD.

If he tells me that he is going to CHOW when he is really going to a meeting with higher-ups, that is going to quiet and comfort my heart rather than him telling me  “I can’t tell you.” When your husband is in a war zone, and you don’t know the next time you will talk to him, have fun for that week or two or three when the last thing he said to you was “I can’t tell you.” See what happens to your sanity.

Unless you have had your husband gone for an extended period of time, you cannot know what it is to reintegrate. You cannot know what it is for things to “fall back in place.” What it is to move from survival mode to partner. What it is to move from a war zone to a house. Yes, it is like crashing back in. But you couldn’t know that.

I do not feel my husband needs to “make up” days he is not physically present for. I would never in my life expect that of him. I am not physically present for days just as special to him during deployments.  Those days are precious either way – but what is most precious in a family like ours is knowing the other is safe for one more day. The other is surviving. The other’s heart is still beating. That is the greatest gift on the birthdays they “miss” and anniversaries they aren’t here for. To think that I expect him to “owe me” for them … you couldn’t be more wrong. You cannot understand what the emotions are behind missing the birth of a child. This wasn’t talking about anger or an “I owe you.” I can understand why you wouldn’t understand that. You have never held a friends leg while she gave birth with her husband on the phone six-thousand miles away. You cannot understand the strength that takes of a marriage to show that love across the world. You cannot understand that beauty.

This was written for men and women who choose – please understand that – CHOOSE to serve this nation – day in and day out, for as long as it will allow them.

Our deployments are twelve months long. My husband has served in both wars. He will serve again. And if asked again after that, he will go. And I will never hope for those days to come, or for him to leave, or “hate when he is home.”

He is the father of our children. The love of my life. My partner on the journey.

I do not stand in his shadow. I stand beside him – proudly. I carry him with me in everything, EVERYTHING, as he does for me. I am so very sorry you cannot see that. So very sorry you cannot respect those of us who live this life for so long. I see no respect in what you wrote.  

There is such beauty in the life between this kind of soldier and his wife. It is a selfless love. No, I guess I am not selfish enough to understand what you are saying.

I am so very sorry you question the love between my soldier and me – and, yes, you are questioning it. So very disappointed you can say it makes him less of a Christian. How dare you.

My husband’s boots hit the ground, have walked the streets of Baghdad, have lived beside Afghans in Kandahar. And in all the times that he is gone, I LIVE our life, I HONOR my soldier, I raise OUR children, and keep him with me, always.

How much you do not understand.

I thank your husband for his service to our nation.