The week after Gregg and I were married, his unit – a Special Forces unit out of Birmingham, Alabama – went to do a joint something something within the United States. He was gone for about 2 months. When they returned, almost immediately, they shipped off to Afghanistan.
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During an airborne operation, my husband, Gregg, discovered that he was allergic to fire ants. He parachuted out of a plane and landed on a fire ant bed. He was bitten several times, resulting in his body producing massive amounts of histamines that started to send him into anaphylaxis. After taking a dose of Benadryl, we both still thought maybe he should go to the emergency room, just in case.
Pin ItI had my day and my week planned down to the minute. My home ran like a well oiled machine. Things would interrupt that smooth operation — an out of town trip, the early stages of garden growing when you have to be outside tending the garden constantly, a night with no sleep and a cranky child — but for the most part, it was all good. For three years I excelled at the housekeeping part of homemaking.
In the course of our discussing it, we discussed the fact that God has placed the husband as the head of the family. Gregg said, “I am responsible for my choices. If I make a bad decision, God is going to say to me, ‘Why did you make this bad decision?’ If I seek your counsel and take your advice, God is not going to say to you, ‘Why did you give bad advice?’ God is going to say to me, ‘Why did you make this bad decision?'”
I believe that God has a purpose for us. I believe that ultimately, we will all know what our purpose was, and why we had certain situations, triumphs, defeats, etc. I also believe that if we are not living within God’s perfect will for our lives, that we are not following our purpose, then we will feel restless, discontent, possibly even edge toward depression.
Pin ItThe first thing that attracted me to Gregg was his mind. Before we met in person, we had known each other online for two years as part of a writers’ group. This group was supposed to be about writing, but writers like to read what they write, so it was a prolific bunch. We discussed everything from writing to politics to religion. After 9-11, it really exploded with talking and writing, and it wasn’t unusual to get 400-500 emails a day. Gregg and I are very similarrily minded when it comes to religion and politics, so we “bonded” intellectually long before we met. However, that bonding never went beyond the discussions to anything personal simply because I was married. The first time we ever had a private conversation, I was already separated from my husband.
Pin ItGeorge Washington wrote a letter to the governors of the 13 states on the occasion of his retirement from the command of the Continental Army and his removal from public life. In the letter, Washington said that he wanted the governors to convey his words to their legislatures and that he hoped it would be regarded as coming from someone who always wished to be useful to his country, and who, in the shade of retirement, would not fail to “implore divine benediction upon it.”
Men are visual creatures. And we live in an extremely visual world. From swimsuit models pedaling beer to shiny sports car commercials, we are bombarded visually on a constant basis. You can barely even read a website without your peripheral vision being attacked with ads that flash, scroll, bleep, bloop. I was on a website recently trying to read a long line of text and an ad in the sidebar was so annoying that I had to open another window and put it in front of the one I was reading to block the ad.
I don’t know that we as women give the differences in men and women’s brains and thinking enough credit. We feel. We feel deeply. When your husband writes you a love letter, it likely fills your heart to overflowing. His words likely awaken a romanticism inside of you, make you go all soft and gushy inside, give you words to focus on, ponder, adore. It can make you fall in love with him all over again.
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