A day late, a dollar short...

Veterans Day was yesterday, but today was the day my daughter's school set aside for honoring all the veterans who are either family, friends, or neighbors of the students. My daughter and another little girl got a special surprise in the form of a webcam conversation with both their fathers, who are serving together in a unit in the National Guard. Apparently there were tears on both sides of the screen, but the excitement of seeing her father for the first time in over a month was well worth it.

I hate to harp on something so simple, especially when military families seem to do so every time we turn around. I suppose I could say it bears repeating, but in all honesty I'm just expressing my heartfelt emotions when I say that the families sacrifice, too. Our soldiers willingly admit that they couldn't do what they do in service to our country if they didn't have those loyal, loving supporters back home waiting for them. I don't think that most military spouses and families are looking for sympathy or a pat on the back...frankly, that's annoying. However, until going through a deployment I had no idea how true the axiom is, that you can't really understand until you experience the situation. The depth of sorrow when explaining to a child how exactly the military will [hopefully not need to] notify her of her father's death is one that can't be plumbed without experience. How do you hold a child night after night as she cries herself to sleep, and continue to hold yourself together?

Being a spouse and not a military member, I know the softer side of deployment. Knowing how difficult it is for the families watching and waiting, I gain new appreciation of how much more difficult it must be for the military members who not only are missing their family and friends, but also all the comforts of home and the sense of security knowing that no one will bomb the neighborhood at night. I haven't experienced it to know in part or in full what the soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines feel, and I'm thankful in a way that their service makes mine on the home front, rather than the battle front, possible.

To all those who have served or are serving our country in any capacity, thank you. To all those who have supported those who serve, thank you as well.

The Five Minute Shower Challenge

If you look to the right, you'll see I've added a button titled "I'm having a Quickie." I would tell you not to blush, but I'm sure I'm more prudish than most of my (limited) readership, so I'll just explain.

As a military spouse I've found it's not good to be alone, either in real life or here in La-la-land. I'm very blessed in that I have a wonderful, close-knit group of online friends who help each other get through the hard times and celebrate the good times of being married to the military. Not only do we ooh and aah over babies and cry over deployments, we also talk about our everyday lives. One of our most recent topics of conversation has been about being "green" in whatever ways we can find. You could say we're a more crunchy-granola group than some, I suppose. Which means finding the Crunchy Domestic Goddess fit in perfectly with what we'd been discussing already, and I am more than willing to take up the challenge of a five minute shower each day. As I told the ladies, the kids don't let me get by with more than three to five minutes most days, anyway...hopefully this will be a piece of cake!

Military spouse or not, I encourage you to consider taking up this challenge...or setting one of your own, for recycling, driving less, or reusing more. Every little bit adds up and makes a difference.

Mandi's Big Give

This isn't a specifically "Jewish" post, but since I know there are other Etsy shoppers out there, I thought I'd share another link.

My friend Mandi is a former soldier who was dual-military until she found out she and her husband were expecting. Now her husband is also out of the military, and they are a hard-working couple: both in school with two adorable boys in tow. Mandi is an amazing mom who is the consummate juggler. She's a nursing student by day, an artsy-craftsy home-business woman in the evening, and a blogger whenever she finds time to fit it in (and you'd have to ask her when exactly that happens, because I've never been able to figure it out!)

Since the family is moving soon, Mandi is trying to move some of her Etsy products and gain some extra name-recognition at the same time: She's having a blow-out giveaway on her Etsy blog. Please visit her Esty storefront along with her blog, and see all the adorable children's and women's clothing and items she has available. You couldn't find a better woman to work with for custom items, nor a more worthy family to support with your dollars.

Love ya, Mandi, good luck with the move!

I could use some help

I'm sure I've mentioned in past posts that I'm a military spouse. My husband is preparing for a deployment in the not-too-distant future, and I have to admit that I'm not usually the best at handling bad situations. I tend to fuss and fight it as long as possible before I finally relax and let what will be, be.

Unfortunately, that relaxing is even harder to find when I don't have a strong faith or community behind me to "catch" my fall. Although I know I could speak with my rabbi, and he has told me repeatedly he's more than willing to be a sounding board as well as a source of wisdom...somehow I just can't find it within me to burden him with my personal troubles beyond those occasioned by conversion. This doesn't speak well of me as a person, I'm sure. I don't know if it's pride, fear of showing weakness, or fear of being rejected for being too flawed. Of course, talking about it in a forum like this makes it seem even more ridiculous that I'm afraid to open up to my rabbi about my struggles.

I suppose it's sort of a "super Jew" complex: I want to be the "perfect" convert. I want to know all the answers, I want to parrot the right responses, feel the right emotions, and be the "right" person. Because Jewish conversion is not an "I accept you" conversion, but a "will you accept me" conversion, it makes it that much more difficult to want to show vulnerability to others. Why would anyone in the Jewish community want me to be a part of it? I seem to be a needy woman who doesn't have much to give. What can I give to Klal Yisrael? I ask myself that repeatedly, and come up blank. There are more than enough learned Jews. Since my children will not be converting (at least not until they are adults and able to convert of their own free choosing), I can't offer a new line to add to the Jewish lineage. I am not coming as a counterpart to a Jewish man, I am coming alone as a woman.

I hope I find myself more grounded once this deployment gets underway than I am feeling right now as it approaches.

More time equals more blog reading!

This blog is a bit of a departure from my normal religious meanderings, but I'm not in the mood to try to unravel more threads today. Thus I'm going to blog a little boring piece about Jblogs (ie, Jewish blogs).

My darling dear is currently away for training, which leaves me with more time to myself after the children are put to bed, or while they're playing peacefully. Although I miss him dreadfully, I put this time to good use (*snicker*) by catching up on my reading. There are quite a few JBC blogs I enjoy, as well as some JBB blogs. The more I read, the more I find linked together...and I'm simply amazed! Is the blogging world so small, that everyone is inter-connected? Or perhaps it's the J-blogosphere that is small...although we should all realize by now that it's truly a small world, after all. :D

Right now I'm enjoying starting one by one, and reading from the farthest archive forward. It's almost like reading a novel, albeit a Faulknerian novel with many turns for stream-of-consciousness.