Here we go again...

Melinda Mae Photography.

Well, tonight is it.
Tonight is the last night daddy will be spending the night in our house for a while.
As many of you know or have seen, about a month ago we made a trip back to the US, Colorado to be exact, for my baby brother's wedding.
Ironically, it also happened to be when we "celebrated" our one year anniversary of moving to Europe.

I had a great blog post going about all the things we've seen, learned, experienced, missed, and even overcome while living in a country where we are totally exposed to the international masses and forced out of our comfort zones in every way possible.
While all that is still something I want to write about there is now a new underlying factor playing a role in how the rest of our time here in Europe will go....

Melinda Mae Photography.

When we reenlisted and accepted the assignment to move here, it was with the notion that this duty station would be, finally, a time we could all be together as a family and although the work John has to do is time consuming and harder than we're used to at Bragg (go figure!), we were willing to take that risk just for the fact that, minus missions, he'd be home virtually every night.
Something not all us military families get or are ever guaranteed on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis.
We've been married seven years, and easily over half our marriage we've been separated by deployments, schools, missions, all the way down to work related field exercises.

Melinda Mae Photography.

It's normal, it's part of it, and oddly you very quickly get used to it.
You learn to live with the three different  "you's" that evolve out of this lifestyle.
The 'married' you, and the 'alone' you.
Thirdly, even, the 'alone mommy' you.
The biggest challenge of this lifestyle is the constant back and forth between those three people and hoping they show up at the appropriate times (does not always happen!).

One of the other caveats we were given/told when moving to Belgium is that "the likelihood of you deploying is very, extremely small, we have to tell you it can happen, but, it won't...."
Don't you love scenario's like that?
It's like practically putting a target on your back.
We naively went along with it living in complete ignorance of what could potentially happen.

A few days after arriving in CO for my brother's wedding, we got the call, that we got that one luck of the draw.
John's deploying again.
For the fourth time.
It hit us like ten tons of brick.
Man, let me tell you the questions that swirled around in our heads...
Where in the world did this come from?
What happened to our three years of "getting away" to be a family?
Especially our new family of four?
Honestly, just plain and simple, why??

Melinda Mae Photography.

The news came even harsher when we were told he'd be leaving within weeks of our return date to Belgium. So not only is he leaving for a year nine months, he's leaving pretty much right away minus some pre-deployment training in Germany.

So what to do.....that was the question.

After the shock wore off, what was supposed to be our vacation (and celebration of my brother) at home with our families, turned into a scramble for information so we could make the best decision for our little fam.
Last time John deployed, as many of you know, we were still stationed in NC and it was pretty simple and clear to us that Brynlee and I moving back to CO with our families was hands down the way to go.
But this time....??
Our home was in Belgium.
Not a 6 hour plane ride, or a 24 hour drive away from everyone, but an ocean and a completely different world away.
We were borrowing a car, car seats, even beds for our kids while in CO visiting....we were in CO on vacation, not to potentially move.
Do the kids and I stay there in CO and not even go back?
Do I go back and stay in Belgium by myself and the kids?
What would we do with our house and stuff?
Can we even break our lease (we had to sign a three year lease)?
What are the costs of putting things in storage? Do we sell our cars?

So many questions, so little answers and having to make a judgement call.
We hailed in our support system and immediately coveted all input, prayers, and suggestions our family and friends had to offer as we went through every scenario we could think of.

Did I mention we were there in CO for my only brother's wedding?!?
Horrible timing. HORRIBLE.

We spent the rest of our free time leading up to my brother's wedding weekend, silent.
John and I would go out, using and abusing the amazing babysitters we had available, but the more silent riding we did without our kids, the more everything sunk in and the more broken we became.
There were times where we just sat in the car or at a restaurant table in silence and seriously cried.
No words. Just exhausted, jet lagged, teary eyed and frustrated hearts.

Melinda Mae Photography.

One of the things we realized almost immediately upon hearing this news was that Bennett will be almost exactly the same age that Brynlee was when John left for deployment #3 (six months old).
That stung SO hard.
John missed so much.
Crawling, first holidays like Christmas, first birthday, walking, first words.
Are we really going to do this all over again? Exactly the same way??

The other hard part, that is completely uncharted waters on our end is that Brynlee is totally going to understand and know what some of this means now.
We've gotten away, for far too long, with Brynlee not really understanding what it really is that daddy does (she thinks he goes to work and plays with puppies) and when he's left we've taken advantage of the fact she has no real sense of time, and can just explain all the fun things we'll do while he's gone and she rarely gives it a second thought.
We've worked really hard to keep her little world as protected, pure, and easy as possible and that's actually a huge burden to carry when you are at it alone (bless you single parents out there, I just can't even....).

Melinda Mae Photography.

To our hurt we've sacrificed and worked so much so that she knows nothing but the love of her father, whether he's physically there or not.
Now.....well, now I guess we will see how well we did.
Simply, we are just terrified of how that will impact her this time.

Her father though.
The sense of "abandonment" John constantly brings up just hurts, because that's not what this is, but it's his internal struggle of dealing with his childhood and past, although there is absolutely no relation between the two.
He'll sit and just watch her play with tears in his eyes.
Something as simple as putting her to bed or dropping her off at school has now become an emotional burden he just can't shake without breaking down.
Knowing that she'll know is just ripping us both up.

How do I feel about it?
Honestly, I feel more confident than not, because I've done this with her before, granted with help, but it's not totally new territory.

Melinda Mae Photography.

However, I wonder if she's going to have to grow up a little bit quicker than I want because I'll rely on her help more than I normally would.
I know she's capable and I know she's old enough to be a help, but she's still a baby to me.
My baby, my first born.
One that I want to never grow up, let alone almost because she has too.
I am prepared for her to have questions....ones that I/we might have to have a real "come to Jesus" meeting with myself (and daddy on Skype!) to be able to answer.

Not to ignore the original reason we went to Colorado in the first place, my brother and his beautiful fiance, Kelly, got married on September 12th, and it was perfect.

Allison Easterling Photography.

It was so amazing to watch my baby brother be such an adult, haha!
I couldn't be more proud of Drew as the person he's become, let alone now as a married man.
Kelly has been such a fabulous participant and selfless servant when it has come to our family and extended family.
She's seen us all at some really raw and honestly some of our most lowest times and she's been nothing but a consistent support and rock for several of us when we really needed it.
They are a fantastic couple and I cannot wait to see what's in store for them, it's going to be so great!

After the wedding day, we had three days left in Colorado to decide what we were going to do.
The more I prayed, critically thought out the pro's and con's, talked to my family and confidants, the more I felt that I wasn't ready to leave my home in Belgium.
I can list all the tangible reasons why I wanted to go back, I mean come on now, it was our stuff.
But for some reason I just couldn't not go back despite all that going back meant.

Melinda Mae Photography.

John and I boarded the plane with the kiddos, back to Belgium, and arrived in Brussels the next day on a gloomy misty/rainy day.
Boo rain. Boo reality.
There are things here in this country--shoot, this continent-- that drive me crazy and I don't understand (if I hear "it's the Belgian way" one more time, I'm gonna....), but there's something about it that I'm totally drawn too.
There are days where I look at our situation and I cry without even meaning too, feeling so hopeless, alone and already defeated.
Then there are other days where I feel empowered.
"I will not break. My family is safe, we are strong, I can do this. Failure is not an option."
Ha, who am I kidding, sometimes this hopeless vs empowered struggle is an hourly changing event.

I'm taking advantage of this situation to learn.
I'm not sure what it is I'm going to or needing to learn, but I'm open...
I'm half wondering if doing it is what my lesson will be.

I want to be clear I don't post our business like this for sympathy or attention.
This is really just an avenue of venting for me and also so those of you that need some late night reading fodder can have something entertaining to feast your eyes on.

In all seriousness though, what I do covet from you is your prayers to 1) keep my husband and his dog, Rex, safe, 2) keep all our soldiers there with him and deployed elsewhere safe, and 3) to cover and protect the families, like ours, left behind, waiting for our daddy to return.

"We live by faith, not by sight."

2 Corinthians 5:7

Melinda Mae Photography.