Grace and Mercy

To me, one of the biggest character flaws that I have is my ability to incorporate grace and mercy into my life. Normally, I am pretty good with having grace and mercy when it comes to strangers, friends, or neighbors. However, when it comes to my family it is the hardest thing to have and I truly struggle with this. I think a lot of it has to do with expecting more from family and parents and siblings. You expect more because you love them and you would go to the end of the world for them, whether you want to admit it or not. Recently, I was made aware of this and it isn’t something I’m proud of. I want to be the best example of how a lady should be, and how more importantly humanity should be to my children.  By not being graceful and showing mercy to my own family, that’s not being a good example or a good person. Anger and frustration have really taken a beating on me emotionally, and really weigh me down. I don’t want to be that angry person that snaps at the drop of a pin. I don’t want to be the person my kids fear, or the person who chases friends off. I need to forgive, truly forgive, and get rid of the anger and frustration that I’m housing and holding on to and let it go. Really let it go.

I really have struggled having a relationship with my middle brother. He struggled with addiction issues and is highly enabled by my parents, mainly my mother. I struggle with being frustrated with him, for not growing up and doing something productive, for moving back home frequently and accepting a lot of handouts. I get frustrated that he is in a craptastic relationship, for reasons unknowing to me, and has gotten his girlfriend pregnant. I am so frustrated that two, irresponsible people are bringing a child (another child for her) into this world and they are so unstable themselves. My heart breaks for that little girl. I think it is the most selfish thing they have done to date. But I’ve realized that being frustrated and angry isn’t going to help anyone, remaining angry at my brother for his actions and behavior isn’t going to be beneficial to him or myself. Instead, I should be supportive from a distance and show mercy and grace and move on. Be the better person, be the person I would hope my children would be. I know, it won’t be easy and I know there are chances for me to slip up, but I really need to let this go. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t fair for anyone. So tonight, I plan on calling my brother to catch up with him, to apologize for being ruthless and to help guide him to make sure he takes the appropriate measures that I think he should take as a dad. I worry about him becoming a dad in an unmarried relationship, I truly do. So I really want to help him be a good dad and a good person, I may not be able to help him financially, but I can help him emotionally and I can pray for him.

I also really need to let go of the frustrations I hold with my mom, and that is going to take a lot of time and a lot out of me. I hold a lot of grudges against my mom, and there are a lot of personality traits that really bother me and frustrate me. I tend to get extremely upset with her when she doesn’t tell my dad certain things, and leaves him out to dry. But I need to recognize that, that is their marriage and it isn’t my place to belittle her. I tend to be extremely blunt with her, because she victimizes herself, or she creates bad situations for normal situations. MY attitude won’t help the situation, so I need to distance myself from that and just focus on how I can help without being involved. I need to pray more for my mom instead of getting angry with her and yelling, and creating a ruckus.

I really, think that by showing more grace and mercy towards others and being more forgiving will allow me to live more according to His will and will help me follow God’s plan and allow me to walk closer to Him. I am an extremely emotional person, and I do truly take things to heart so this is a struggle for me. But it is really something that I need to change and is something I need to work on NOW before the boys have a real understanding of what is going on. I want to be a fantastic example of having grace and mercy and that needs to start yesterday now.

Military Wife Rant

So I'm probably going to get some shit (excuse my french) for saying this, especially from those involved in the military community, but you know what I really don't care. Here it goes...
I'm rather tired of reading facebook status' saying; "Civilian girls have no clue what it's like to miss their husband, try walking a mile in a military wife's shoes" or "What is 3 weeks compared to 6 months" or "Don't complain about missing him until he's deployed for x amount of time" or the whole poor, poor military, "We moved and these passes won't transfer from park to park". But here is what I have to say about all of it.

First and foremost, when you love someone and they aren't there with you, whether it's a few days for a business trip or a few weeks for an underway, or a few months for a deployment. You miss them. It doesn't matter if they are at work for 12 hours a day, they aren't with you, and you miss them. It's just a fact of life. Everyone misses their loved one, and every one is entitled to miss their loved one. Civilian or military. Your husband signed up to deploy. End of freakin' story. My future husband signed up to deploy. Does that make us miss them any less, no it doesn't. Does it make us miss them so much it hurts? Yes. But here is the kicker. We knew this would happen, we expected it, we go through it because we love them. Now by no means am I saying that no one has the right to miss them, I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is, don't be mad when you hear your friend saying that they miss their own husband when he has to go on a business trip for a week. Don't. She loves her husband as much as you love yours. So you can't be mad at her for missing him. Does she miss him for as long as you are going to miss your husband, no. But that's just life. Life isn't equally fair, but that's what is beautiful about it. I'm so sick and tired of people telling people that they aren't justified to miss their loved ones. Everyone is justified to their own feelings, opinions, thoughts, and emotions. When you tell someone they can't miss someone or they don't have a right to feel the way they feel, you turn into a bully.

Secondly, I read an article about a military wife, emailing Six Flag's because she was upset her parking pass that she paid for wouldn't transfer to another Six Flag's park when they PCS (move to another duty station). Okay firstly, let me just state this. Most of the time, I'll say 9 times out of 10 you have a pretty good idea of when you are going to move, and you know where you're going to move at least 3-9 months before you do. So common sense pretty much prevails with this one, who the hell purchases a parking pass for a whole year at a park that they know they won't be coming back to over and over again for the whole year. On top of that. Companies have policies in place for a reason. It's not to belittle military families, nor to punish them. But it's to create a fair and equal environment. To stop discrimination from occurring. To prevent people from being charged different rates, to allow everyone to participate. So just because a company won't allow you to use a parking pass you purchased in let's say Chicago, in San Diego it's because there is a policy against it. They're might be a universal parking pass you can purchase to use at ALL parks, but if it's purchased in Chicago to use at Chicago, then of course you can't use it in San Diego. They're are policies in place that prevents this, more than likely to save you money. If they made everyone buy a parking pass to use at every park than I can assure you it would cost a ton of money, so why not just have a parking pass to use at one park. There are policies there to benefit you, the customer, and to prevent discrimination on the companies behalf as well as to protect the company. That's all, it's not because your a military family, it's not because they want to screw you over, it's for the benefit of everyone. Simple as that.

It gets so frustrating when I see and hear people pulling the "woe is me, poor poor us suffering because we are military family" when it really isn't the case at all. Everyone has it hard, everyone has their struggles. Some have more struggles than others, some struggle differently than others, and some complain about those struggles more than others do. It just chaps my ass sometimes when there are families who have to have the breadwinner working 4 hours away to make money for their family, and then there is a military wife saying "Well at least it's only 4 hours away, mine is 6,000 miles away!". In fact it pisses me off. Maybe it's because I can see it now, where I'm not dealing with a deployment, but have the knowledge of two under my belt. But it's wrong. It's so very wrong. That's being a bully, telling one wife she can't miss her husband just because he isn't being shot at, or isn't floating on a ship working 17 hour shifts. Like I said, our husbands (fiance's or boyfriends) choose this life, they enlisted, no one made them. Does it suck at times, hell yes. Are there rewards? You bet.

But in the end, it is wrong to tell another woman she is not entitled to miss her husband because they aren't in the same situation that military wives are in. Military wives claim that we are held to a higher level than others, that we are supposed to be role models, that we are supposed to support and help one another out. But in reality, that couldn't be further from the truth! In reality, most (not all) military wives sit on Facebook, telling other people how to act, what to do, and bullying others around. Instead of supporting one another, they are too busy playing the rank game, creating drama, and calling each other names. It's pathetic, and couldn't feel more like high school. I've never understood why women feel the need to belittle others, and create drama when there are more important things to be concerned about and frankly I never will. Nothing is all sunshine and daisies like the show Army Wives portrays. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, it's more like a 'Real Housewives' show on Bravo.

Women need to grow up, and mature. Realize what is important, and what is not. They also need to stop being bully's. Stop with the freaking facebook, stop with the 'woe is me', stop telling others they aren't entitled to feel the way they feel. Stop putting yourself on a pedestal and realize, your just like everyone else. Civilians don't care about rank, instead they base their friends on morals, on who is going to be there when they are having a bad day, who can step in when an emergency occurs. Maybe military wives can take a note from their book, realize there is more to life than the military, than pulling the rank card, pulling the branch card, pulling whatever card is going to 'one up' another person.

That's the end of my rant for the day. Happy Monday.

Feeling Productive

Well it has been a very productive past few days, and I am feeling really productive today. Erik is checking into his new command this morning, and beginning his first day of work there. Yay for shore duty!! We've done a lot of unpacking, and by we I mean me, and Erik's done a lot of buying the past few days. We had a drawer crisis - at our old apartment they had these storage racks in the closet which I used instead of drawers, and Erik - being Navy - takes up a lot of drawers and not a lot of closet space (aside from dress uniforms and button ups of course) so it worked out.. well here we have a huge closet with no storage racks. So we had to go to Ashley and get the matching dresser chest. And we have a second bedroom now - so with pending visitors - I hoped on craigslist and scored us a nice (barely used, if ever) queen guest bed and mattress for $250! Thank goodness for being in a military town were people are PCSing all the time - the family we are picking it up from has used it like 4 times, and are PCSing and can't take the extra weight so it worked out.
So today, I am working and decorating, and unpacking all the boxes in my office/guest room to make room for it. I always feel super productive when Erik is gone. No joke. I did all the decorating when he was deployed last year, thanks to a bottle of wine and a sleepless night. But it works for us. I love decorating and he doesn't mind not having a say so. Hahaha! Every girls dream right? I do ask, but I always get the whole "As long as you like it baby" or the "What ever looks good and makes you happy"

On another note. I've been really frustrated lately concerning my dog, I had to leave her in Virginia Beach until we close on a home. I love my dog enough to know that I can't put her in an apartment, she would go nutso. She lives in a home with my parents, her same home since she was a few months old for the past 10 years. I'm not really sure how the move will affect her, and I am really hoping she will be okay. She also has horrible skin issues that I am trying so hard to fix, I've been to countless vet appointments since October and get some improvement and it just gets worse. It hurts me to see her like this, and it breaks my heart leaving her. It's frustrating having to be so far away from her when there is so much important things going on right now, it's also frustrating knowing my parents aren't exactly being straightforward and honest with me and knowing I have to rely on them to take her. I have a lot of built up anger towards them and I am really trying my hardest to let it go. But my dog is important and its hard knowing that I can't trust them 100%. I offer to fly up to take her to the appointments and get promised that they will take her, and then a week before her appointment I am told "oh we changed the appointment" her appointments shouldn't be changed, they are the dates/times they are because of the medicine she is on. Also, it doesn't add up when I get a call from the vet confirming the original appointment. I'm just frustrated. I want to do whats right for my dog. I know putting her in a 1200 sq foot apartment with no backyard isn't fair to her. But I also know that relying on my parents who aren't being helpful isn't fair either. Ughh... we'll see if I need to fly back to Virginia Beach or not to take her. Why can't they just be honest and helpful with me - it's one hour of their day?!

But back to work I go.. and back to decorating and unpacking! I've got a lot to do while Erik's at work!