Sunday Review

This morning I sat in church and prayed for both inspiration and strength. With Homecoming about three weeks away (our own personal homecoming, not to be confused with the Ship's Homecoming, or any movements thereof), I face once again the hard part. Giving back control.

In three weeks I stop being the head of the household. In three weeks I will turn over that responsibility with a happy heart to my husband. It's hard to do that and not load it down with conditions. Mostly, because I'm a control freak. I need to feel control over certain specific things in our lives to keep the rest of my shit together. Fortunately for our family, the things I need to feel control over are things that I'm good at and that he doesn't want to deal with. That's a happy coincidence. So where do I draw the line in the sand and turn myself back into a properly happy shipwife? Where do I remember that no matter what time has passed and what has changed in each of us, we pick up where we left off? But we can't, really. The world didn't stop when we parted company the night before deployment. We didn't stop. We kept growing and changing. While I was able to work and practice my parenting skills, he hasn't. While he was able to remember what it's like to be free of caring for a child 24/7, I haven't. Which brings me to today's book.

Priority Parenting.

We'll be in trouble if we make Tiffany the center of our lives. We'll be in HUGE trouble if we rely solely on our roles as parents to come back together. There's going to be a really big period of adjustment when he returns. There's going to be growing pains and all sorts of friction. One of the things I've learned in this book is that we can't use her as an excuse to avoid those conflicts.

It's a lesson worth learning.