Waitin' On the Love of a Travelin' Soldier

When we were at Wheaton, Johnny was on a ROTC scholarship.  When we started dating, we knew that most likely he would graduate and then be deployed, serving four years of active duty and four years inactive to pay back his scholarship.  That's how we convinced my dad that we needed to get married in January before we graduated.  "But we love each other!" "We won't get to be together!"  Worked like a charm.  Anyway, around the time Johnny had to make his final decisions for where he'd be going after college, he realized that he could serve the eight years that he owed through the National Guard.  He could still have a civilian job and then serve one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.  Perfect, we decided.  (By the way, look how well-rested we look in this picture. Anyone else have children in their bed during the storm last night?)

So Johnny graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the Army and has since served in the National Guard, first in Philadelphia and now in Topeka.  It's been fairly uneventful.  He was called up once during a blizzard in Philadelphia.  He had to drive around in a Hummer to shut down all the highways, but the roads were so bad that he had to walk to the armory to get to the Hummers.  Sorry he's wearing the same outfit in all these photos, by the way.

After the blizzard event, he spent four months in Augusta, GA doing some training.  Since then he's moved up to First Lieutenant and now Captain.  He goes to Topeka one weekend each month and then for two weeks during the summer he goes somewhere for more training.

This year he's going to Fort Riley, and he leaves tomorrow.  I'm never happy when he has to leave, but we've been extremely blessed that in five years of serving, he has never been deployed.  Johnny comes from a huge Navy family with four close family members currently serving Active Duty, including his sister and her husband who have to live apart and his cousin whose husband is deployed.  I'm thinking about them all as I'm packing up Johnny's ACU collection.  It's true that we've all consciously made the decision to have our families serve as military families, but that doesn't mean that it's an easy service...and Johnny and I are on the way easy end of it.

With the 4th of July coming up, don't forget about all the military families who are serving, especially the people who are currently deployed and are being greatly missed.