Bring Him Home...

Nothing can truly prepare you for deployment. No number of pep talks, encouraging words from other people, or even coffee dates with friends can prepare you for the lonely days and nights, the anxiety felt when waiting for those phone calls or even a text. But the truth is, that's ok. Deployments are hard, it's hard to be away from the person you love for months on end, especially with so many unknowns staring you in the face. There are scary moments and happy moments, but it is all worth it because in the end he comes home.

Through the first two months of 2016, I dealt with the love of my life being over 2,000 miles away from me in a foreign country. We fought 14 hour time differences, sleepless nights, and long days. Skype and Facebook became our confidants as we messaged and talked as often as we could. Finally, the day came that he would fly across the water and come home to me.

On the day of Tyler's homecoming, I was a nervous wreck. It's true what they say, you spend hours that day trying to look like a perfect lady, but the minute you see him walking towards you, you're willing to drop-kick anyone who gets in the way. While he flew 17 hours to get back to North Carolina I drove 6 hours up the coast to a new place and a new culture that was totally foreign to me.

When I arrived at Camp Lejeune the sights of miles of fences decorated in colorful "Welcome Home signs greeted me. The guards at the main gate had o doubt what I was there for and as they waved me through I couldn't help but stop breathing for a second. The reality of the new world I was about to enter terrified me and excited me, all at the same time. Driving down the long and dark road that entered Lejeune I breathed and thought about the fact that in only an hour I would finally be in the arms of the man I loved and have waited months for.

My best friend and I stood in the dark, shivering from the cold and excitement of everything going on around us. After what seemed like forever, we finally heard excited cheers as other wives and fiances met their men in uniform. I frantically searched the crowd for Tyler, but couldn't find him. You would think that I would have no problem picking out the 6'5" cowboy from Arizona in a crowd of Marines, but they all looked exactly the same. As I looked to the left and my friend looked to the right I felt anxious and afraid. And then I saw him.

He stood on the end of the sidewalk and we stood there for a while and just looked at each other. Then he walked towards me and wrapped me in his arms. There is nothing, nothing at all, like that first embrace. All of the tension and anxiety and sadness that had been building up over the months that he was away melted off of me.

As I sit here writing this I am, once again looking forward to another one of those wonderful embraces in just a little over a month when he returns home again. Nothing prepares you for the man you love being away. The days are never easy, and the goodbyes will always be the hardest thing that you will ever have to do. In the end, though, they are so worth it, because, in the end, he comes home.