Last edited Mon Jun 4, 2012, 03:17 PM - Edit history (1)
But I have to add, these things have happened for me time and again, independently of whether I'm staying positive or not. The key is to recognize a blessing no matter how it initially appears.
In 1979, my Marine Corps husband got orders for a one-year unaccompanied tour to Okinawa. That meant that I and my two kids would remain at home without him at Camp LeJeune for a year. This was before computers and cell phones, and long distance calls were prohibitively expensive. Letters took over a week to get from one of us to the other. And the marriage was already in very bad shape.
The year passed excruciatingly slowly, but more and more I found myself thinking about just ending the relationship. But then he got orders to Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii. I simply couldn't subject my kids to four more years of his absence because at least he was a better dad than I had and they loved him. So I painfully decided to just let myself be picked up and moved once again from the east coast to a dot in the middle of the Pacific and take my chances. I remember clearly praying for the first time, telling God that I had no idea how things were supposed to turn out, but I was sure He did, so I would choose to trust and put myself in His hands.
It was so scary, though. A USMC friend gave me the contact info for a family he'd known forever, the dad being someone he'd served with. I put that slip of paper away to save until we got settled in our new home in Hawaii. We spent several weeks looking for the right place to rent off base, because we both knew there was a strong possibility we wouldn't make it as a couple. After we moved in, I dug out the name and address of my friend's friends.
I was shocked to discover they lived almost directly across the street from us. They were wonderful people who became our second family. My marriage ended three years later, and I ended up living there 5 years after we split.
My ex left for his next post on the mainland without providing for us to move back, but that was another story that required me to take matters into my own hands with the Marine Corps and did have a good ending.
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