Thursday, June 2, 2016

Change Without Community, Its Hard!

Nine months.  It has been nine months since my husband and I packed up our lives and headed to The South.  It has been 13 ½ months since we got married.  Neither of these huge life events were exactly what we expected.  My husband, J, and I have fairly frequent conversations about how nothing that happens in life is like how it happens in the movies.  Marriage, relationships, sex, moving to the coast, none of it is like what you see in the movies.  Real life is messy!  It is hard and exhausting, but it is real-and I would much rather live a real, honest life, than live a lie that looks like what people want to see. 

Don’t get me wrong-being married to J has been wonderful!  It is lovely to be able to face life’s challenges and excitements with someone that you love, and loves you in return.  The first several months of marriage were pretty blissful-kind of like the movies.  We were surrounded by the love and support of many friends and family.  We first met in a community group at our church, and everyone was able to witness how our relationship took shape and bloomed over a couple years.  We were spoiled to have such loving, committed relationships around us.  And, we were able to share our love and joy with all of them at our wedding-such fun!   Along with all of the glory, we have also had some difficulties.   It has been a wild ride for us so far.  I became an official military spouse, and had 4 moves within the first six months of marriage, but each transition has helped us to learn how to trust and lean on each other and how to trust in God and lean on him for our source of strength.  We have been learning how to “leave and cleave” and how to survive while separated from all our family and friends.  We have been learning how to love each other despite our sinfulness and how to offer grace to each other, and accept the grace that God offers to us. 

Since J is in the Air Force, I have a feeling that moving and transition will become a regular part of my life.   In fact, we will have to move every 2-3 years, per Air Force rules, which makes it difficult to plan very far ahead in life or to know how to make roots.  The temptation is to focus on building roots wherever we currently are, but time is precious and fleeting and I am thinking that it would be a better plan to root our relationship in the Lord, rather in a location.  Moving to the Gulf Coast has been hard for us.  Neither of us have been overly enamored with the location-it is hot, humid, and they have some really big bugs here.  Eww.   The tea is beyond super sweet, and for someone who doesn’t like seafood-it’s not the best location for culinary delights. 

However, I think the thing that has been most difficult for us is our current lack of community.  I don’t think either of us realized just how good we had it in St. Louis.  We were surrounded by friends and mentors that we could trust with anything and we were never lacking for social interaction or engagement.  It is one of those things where you don’t realize how good (or how important) what you have is until it is gone.  Since I am new to the whole military spouse thing (let’s face it, I’m still new to the whole being a spouse thing!) I have tried being what I thought other military spouses are like so that I could fit in.  I act proper, and polite, offer to cook meals for others, smile lots, dote on my husband, etc.  The problem with this is that it doesn’t work well when that is not who you really are.  I am much more of a say-it-like-it-is, rough around the edges, but will love your pants off kind of gal.


Community and connection, in my opinion, should be about living life and getting in the nitty gritty of honest living with those around you.  It doesn’t look pretty (like in the movies) but it is real, and life changing, and lifesaving!  Although we haven’t found that down here yet, we continue to search for a church, and for a community where we can do that.  Knowing we will move again within the next 1-2 years doesn’t mean I get to opt out on relationships where I am.  It means that even more so-I need to be intentional about keeping rooted to God, and loving others well.  I need to work to love my husband well, and to love my neighbors, co-workers, and fellow military spouses.  Not just because they are all deserving of love, but because community is essential to our survival.  Community provides a way for God to love on us and for us to share his love with others.   It is how we can grow and stretch individually and as a couple.  It is how we can have peace, hope, and joy in the midst of difficult and stressful circumstances and the good ones!

~Written by Nicole Morgan M.A., LPC

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