Confession: Military Life Isn't What I Expected

Another military wife blogger asked her Instagram followers to share milspouse confessions with her as part of her IG stories last month. I was reading through the responses and chuckled when I saw someone say how this lifestyle always seemed way better before she actually started living it. I laughed and then almost immediately starting crying because it is so darn true. Military wife life isn’t what any of us expect, even if we grew up in this lifestyle.

Thinking about my own start to military wife life helped me craft a few “lessons learned.” Military life isn’t what I expected, but when our reality as military wives sucks, we can take a few actionable steps to keep moving forward. Before we get to the practical tidbits, let me share a bit about my early days as a military wife.

I met my husband at Penn State University while he was in Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (NROTC). If we’re being honest, the uniform sucked me in. And like many other military couples’ stories, our timeline from dating to marriage was quick. A year into dating he proposed, and we were married ten months later.

He had dreams of becoming a Navy pilot and after the wedding and graduation, I followed him to Florida to start his flight school training. Life was great! We were newly married and living in a vacation hotspot. Almost every weekend was spent fishing or on the beach. He was working his way through flight school and I had a job at a local law firm. To fill our social calendar, we had dinner parties and hung out at Blue Angels air shows. I embraced my military wife role and the community it provided by joining a spouse’s Bible study and game night club. The dual-income-no-kids military life was glorious.

The picture-perfect military life was short lived. As the months went by, I started to notice some changes in my husband. He would come home from flight school training upset, on edge, and generally unhappy. He was supposedly living out his dreams, but he became a shell of his former self. Soon enough I started to realize, the man I saw before me was no longer the man I married.

We faced a hard truth, that being a pilot might not be his thing. And as if a switch was being flipped everything started to feel hopeless. The dreams and plans we thought we had for our future with him as a Navy pilot started to crumble around us. The reality of our situation was vastly different from our expectations.

Just weeks before this realization we found out we were pregnant with our first baby. So here we were, about to start a family and feeling all kinds of unsure about the future.

We started asking questions like, would he get out of the Navy? Would he be able to transfer to a different community? If he got out, could either of us find another job with good health insurance before we had our baby? We were questioning everything.

In a series of complicated military events, it would soon be decided that Mike would stay in the Navy but transfer out of aviation. Because he had a degree in engineering he was needed in a different community. The months it took to come to this decision felt impossible. It stands true still today, those were some of the only times I’ve seen my husband completely undone in tears.

I was pregnant and scared of being jobless before our first baby would even be born. Mike was going through the loss of his childhood hopes and dreams. I was questioning if military life was for us. We were unsure what our future would look like. Our reality was so heavy and uncertain, I didn’t believe there was hope for a better military future. Thankfully, there was another plan opening up, another path. God has a much greater sense of vision than we do and He was pulling us out of one season to enter us into another. He had a plan when we didn’t think there was one; a plan filled with hope and brighter days ahead.

The ladies of Women Soaring, a military spouse organization, say, “it [military life] may not look like what you think…[but] take responsibility. Take action.” So, if the solution to an uncertain reality is taking action, what does that look like? What action steps can we take? It’s so much easier to pick up the phone and use your best friend or mom as your first line of defense, but what would it look like if we chose to pray first? Ask yourself if you could change your habits by asking God first. When you are trapped in a reality in which you don’t understand, ask God to invade the situation. Ask Him to assist you with decision-making and to comfort you as you endure hard things. If you can’t find the words, just say, “Lord, help!”

In no way should we never share our hurts with those around us. Absolutely ask those who have gone before you to help guide you. Pray first, seek counsel second.

Above all, we must be bold. As hard as it can be sometimes, we must try not to find ways to escape. There will be hard and easy times, busy and slow seasons, and certain and uncertain days. Military life will shift — hard versus easy times, busy versus slow seasons, solid plans versus uncertainty — but the only way to persevere with hope is to confront issues head-on.

As we create our action plan, we must look for the good. The pursuit of silver linings and blessings will save you immense pain and frustration. Yes, your current reality sucks and military life looks nothing like what you thought it would, but there is still something to be grateful for.