Day 17-To my friend Julie

HA!  I have a story for you!  Mike's second deployment, but first to Iraq, resources were scarce.  There weren't phones or Internet set up for the soldiers.  It is hard to imagine, isn't it?  The Battalion Commander got a satellite phone and he let all of the soldiers use it.  So that everyone could use it, the divided up the time--each soldier got 3 minutes.  Yeah, you read that right, 3 minutes once a week.

Mike's day to call was Sunday.  He shuffled and traded time with friends and other soldiers, so he could call after I got home from church.  Coming home from church, I totally vented to my mom.  I had had the worst day EVER.  I vented so much that I think my mom thought I had Tourette's Syndrome.  I had a world class "hissy fit."  Well, apparently, that outburst didn't help me get it out of my system.

When I finally got Mike's call, he was so sweet.  He asked me how I was doing.  HA, well, you guessed it, I told him how I was doing.  Now I had two people thinking I had Tourette's.  I ranted, I raved, I yelled, I cried.  I was basically NUTS.  I paused for a second to catch my breath and my sweet, adorable husband said, "Babe, my time is up.  I love you so much.  I will talk to you next week."  The phone went dead and I spent the next few hours bawling my eyes out.  I didn't even tell him that I loved him.  I didn't even ask him how he was doing.  What if something horrible happened to him and the last things I said to him were ugly, awful comments.

I promised myself a few things that day.  

First, I vowed I was NEVER going to do that again.   What if that had been the last thing I said to him?  How would I have felt if he had done that to me?

Second, I decided that I would really try to vent to other people and use my phone time to connect with him.

Third, for my own sanity, I had to accept that not all phone calls were going to be perfect.  That is life.

I have also realized a few other things about phone calls.  But I will save those for other posts.

Julie, in the meantime, cut yourself some slack.  You are doing awesome.