Difficult Conversations

One challenge of deployment is finding common ground in conversation. Another challenge of deployment is not being able to understand or comprehend things the other person is experiencing in their life. This has become very clear this past week in my conversations with Josh. He and I are able to Instant Message back and forth a few nights per week, and here are 2 recent examples of our conversations:

Conversation #1
J: "How are you?"
R: "Ok. Tired!"
J: "From what?" (I know all you moms out there are laughing inside. Being a mom makes us tired?)
R: "Getting up at 7:45 with Annabelle, driving to get diapers, having her throw up on the way home, getting her bathed, fed, and down for a nap, rinsing out throw up and poop from her clothes, picking up the house, paying bills, teaching my dance class, taking apart and cleaning out the car seat, doing the laundry, fixing dinner, having one hr. of quiet time with Annabelle on my lap (it's not very quiet), and getting her put to bed."
J: "Hmmmmm...did she get car sick? Has she done that a lot?"
R: "No. She hasn't thrown up since getting the new car seat."
J: "Oh. Is it snowing there? Is the new Wal Mart close to opening?"

Conversation #2
R: "How are things?"
J: "It's been pretty crazy over here."
R: "What kind of crazy?"
J: "3 men from our base were killed by an IED a few days ago."
R: "Did you know them?"
J: "Yep. One of them was the Chief of Staff of the base, and I had meetings with him twice a week. I had to go help recover the vehicles after it happened."
R: "Wow. Was it hard?"
J: "Really hard."

As you can see, we don't have a way to fully understand what the other person is going through. It's probably like this for most people in a marriage to some extent, but our lives are soooooooo different from each other that it's even more challenging right now. We sympathize with each other in our "trials," but we'll never fully understand what each other has gone through during this past year. It's one of those times when we've both grown and learned in our own ways--the ways our Heavenly Father intended. We have grown as a couple as well: we have a new respect for the other person, their strengths and courage; we have a new appreciation of together time, and we have gotten to know each other on a completely different level, simply because our only methods of communication are verbal and written conversation (which doesn't allow for "dead air" time or time together without talking). We both agree this deployment kicked some life and love back into our marriage after having a baby and unintentionally neglecting our relationship for a few months. Nevertheless, the majority of growth and learning has been individual. Somehow we still always find at least an hour and a half's worth of things to talk about when we get online; I think that's a testament to our friendship and relationship with each other. But right now we are both feeling that it's time for this to be over, and time to be able to relate to each other again. I always feel awkward not knowing how to respond correctly to something he's either gone through or is working on (a lot of times it goes over my head), and it's challenging not having him know how to respond to a difficult, exhausting day with a toddler. I don't know what it's like to be a deployed soldier, and he doesn't know what it's like to be a single mom. We never will. But the best part is that I do know how to LOVE a deployed soldier, and he definitely knows how to LOVE a single mom. We may not "get" each other right now, but as long as there is enough love, we'll be ok for another month.