Why did you deploy
I have been thinking all week about what to blog about. I mean really you heard about my mushy complaining, you heard about some the missions my husband is doing, we talked about care packages, so really what more can I possibly say about this topic. You know I’m actually kind of glad it’s like that because I look at the local newspaper in Kuwait and really locally it’s all pretty every day normal stuff. Even Howie tells me I have nothing to worry about, so for this I am thankful. There was a bombing in Iraq and people were killed and it is a tragic loss of life. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to blog about it though because I really didn’t look too much into it. So this week I think I want to talk about why my husband chose to deploy. So here we go.
I am not sure if I mentioned this but my husband is a member of the Florida National Guard, he is not a regular; this is my only job army member. For those that may not know how the National Guard works, in a nutshell it’s something like this: the men and women typically have civilian jobs they only train one weekend out of the month and two weeks out of the year. They only get paid military pay for the time they train, which makes sense. The free medical insurance does not apply to these members however they can get military insurance at discounted rate. The GI benefits for school do apply to the members.
So there is the background now we can explore why my husband chose to go on this mission. As a National Guard member you are guaranteed deployment every 5 years. My husband first deployment was in 2005-2006. That deployment was mandatory, as he said it “his five years were up.” Now technically his second deployment would have been in 2011 but he chose this deployment, he volunteered. Now a lot of people did not understand this move including me for a very long time. My friends would ask why would he ever volunteer. What did you do? I even would ask myself am I that horrible that he would want to leave to go across the globe to get away from me?
Then a wonderful epiphany hit me, he deployed to take care of me. While we lived in Florida we had struggled with money. Howie struggled to find employment. He felt like he wasn’t doing his part as the provider. So he chose this deployment as a means to take care of our family financially. Now that he is deployed he is earning money to be able to provide for us. So I was on the phone with him the other day and I asked if after this deployment he will volunteer again and he hopes not to but if the jobs out in Colorado are not any better than they were in Florida than he will volunteer again. So once again I will be blogging my mushiness!
