Yesterday afternoon Mark and I went to the movie matinee to see Indivisible. This movie has connections to some long time friends of ours as their son-in-law was the 1st assistant director for the film. The movie is a Christian movie but also a soldier movie. I planned the trip but really did not go into a lot of details with my husband because I so wanted him to go with me and he usually would not pick the same type of movie as I would so I was afraid if I told him a head of time that he would refuse to go.

I could tell at the beginning of the movie that he was not into it and I worried that he would fall asleep or something while sitting there and just tune everything out but soon the story line got his attention and he was getting into watching it.

The movie basically tells about soldier life, war, and PTSD through the eyes of the Chaplain and his family.

As we sat there watching, my eyes filled with tears many times. I have lived the life of the wife in that movie and my mind was racing with so many thoughts!

My soldier husband left for Iraq as one of the oldest members of our Tennessee National Guard K troop. He was not in shape when he was activated and fell out many times during the gruesome training that he had in Hattiesburg Mississippi. I remember the first time that I made the trip down to Hattiesburg that I could not sleep at all that first night over seeing the living conditions that our soldiers had to endure and the horrible heat that they suffered from. It was very hard to witness!

My husband ended up passing all of his physical training and was ready to be deployed to Iraq. Right before he left, I remember thinking what a jokester he had always been and how his laugh was so contagious and my biggest concern was that he would lose that in going to Iraq and come back a totally different person.

As I watched the movie yesterday I realized that my husband did come back a totally different person and the man that I love so much has a part of him still left in that far away land.

Mark and I collect bluebirds as we travel around and take trips and we have for years and that is another story for another day as to why but I believe that God fully intended for me to marry the man that I married and I know that God was in it for I had prayed diligently about it.

The wife in the Indivisible movie had a happy ending to her story but for me so far my story has not ended well. I remember when Mark first returned home how hard we suffered over the PTSD that he has. He was so different and still is to this day. He did a lot of strange things at the beginning and had nightmares every night for 2 solid years. He would moan and groan in his sleep and run in the bed and I would ask what he was dreaming but for the longest time he would never tell me but finally he did. We went the route of the VA doctors and the medications and the anger. I had a fear of my husband during that time because I could see so much anger in his eyes and I was afraid of him. The medications really did not help and made the hard times even harder. I remember going to talk to a fellow soldier’s wife one time and left her office in tears. She told of her husband and how he just sits in his recliner all day, medicated up, staring at TV, and never going out anywhere with her anymore. I decided then and there that I did not want that for my husband. He stopped all the medications and just talks about it all now for his therapy.

He talks and he talks and he wears the soldier caps and everywhere we go he searches out other men with those same caps on and makes a bee line to them. He will talk on and on with them and I basically have to drag him away many times. I want him to talk to me like that but he never does and it makes me resent the bond the soldiers have sometimes. He keeps up to date with all the men in his troop and knows when each one is going through an illness or if one of them dies. He receives phone calls from fellow soldiers and he will sometimes get up and go outside to talk. It is so hard for me on this side of it all to understand.

The movie that we watched yesterday made me realize a lot of what I go through many other women have walked the path before me. My husband has a Facebook page but instead of wife pictures and family pictures his is filled with him in the desert or fellow soldier pictures. It is so hard to understand all of this.

I am not writing for pity sake for me but for the ones that follow me to know that what our soldiers and their families go through is very real. War changes them forever! The movie was entitled Indivisible but when we say the Pledge of Allegiance you will remember the words right before and after and they are: One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All!

Liberty and Justice for All! With Veteran’s Day fast approaching did you every stop to think how your Liberty and Justice was paid for by so many men and women of the armed forces and many lives were given? I have just shared enough in this article to give you a small glimpse into what we on this side of it sacrifice for you.

I hope and pray that my husband will someday return to the person that he once was. I long to hear the laughter in his voice and to see the smile on his face return. I pray for him to be able to move past all the hurt that he has endured and to put it all behind him but if that never happens I made up my mind a long time ago to just deal with it come what may and move along the best I know how.

In Isaiah the 26 chapter and the third verse it says these words:

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. 

When I took my marriage vows, I said the words, For Better or for Worse and in this time of our lives I am living in the” for worse years.” I pray all the time for the better years to return but if they do not then I know that I can survive. As we drove away from the theater yesterday I said to my husband that the wife in the movie had a happy ending to her story but my story did not. He replied with silence.

I have a grandson right now that has a Dad that is serving in the Ukraine and the 9 year old is suffering from acid reflux. Just a coincidence you say, I really don’t think so.

Please pray for our military, their wives, and their families.