The Unknown

    

     Have you ever waited for something not even knowing when exactly it will happen?  You know it will eventually and you are well aware how amazing it will be when it does.....but you have no clue exactly when to count on it to be so.  I think there is nothing harder than having a deployment where there is no true home date.  Some would think that opens up the possibilities to a near end and yet, it also could be longer than you ever imagined.  I'll be honest, I thought having no homecoming date would not be this difficult.  It has opened up my ears to rumours when some speak of an extension to the crew's Mission.  It has also opened up my hopefulness when the word out there is a closer return than I had initially thought. Yes, they will be gone a very long time......but there's something about that date of return for me at least, that signifies an end...a light at the end of a long tunnel....SOMETHING I can count on.  There are many, many things about this specific Mission that are left unsaid and that are unknown, even to some of the crew.  Being the family back home waiting, no end means no ability to accept.

     I accept that my husband will be gone a long time.  I accept he is doing a good thing out there and I accept that he will eventually be able to return home.  What I admittedly am struggling to accept though are the ever changing plans, the unknown and the indefinate END.  I think it`s human nature to create for yourself, an assumption or hypothetical scenario, as a form of consoling at a time when you have no real answers.  My biggest fear in life is the unknown.  Great!  So throw me into a world where it breeds the unknown and uncertainty :) That`s the way it is in the military afterall and of course what makes it a unique and exciting life.  What you don`t know, you try to assume.  What you don`t know, you speculate.  But what you don`t know....you just DONT know.  My Sailor often says to me the only real definate in this lifestyle is the indefinate.  He says, you`ll know when and where for certainty, once you`ve arrived.

    So far......he is right. XX