I've always been relatively proud of my ability to handle pretty much anything Army threw our way. I researched all options available, prepped for the worst, hoped for the best, prayed and moved on. And Army has thrown us some humdingers over the years, so I came to realization that I thrive in chaos. When everything else seemed to be falling apart and things were super crazy, I could always find a sense of calm. I attributed it to faith that God would provide and that you know, I thrive in chaos. What other people viewed as insanity: moving from overseas in less than 10 days notice, living in a house that had to be hazmat-tented when it was demo'd a week after moving out, keeping the house going smoothly and thriving during a horrendous 15 month deployment, having to move out of another house for a week while housing dealt with a massive rodent infestation, dealing with a challenging FRG/Command Climate, surviving another horrendous (albeit in a much different way) deployment, road tripping with 3 kids for 3 summers in a row while the husband was stuck someplace else, dealing with homeownership from half way across the country, and living in an area so far from civilization that it used to qualify for Remote Duty Assignment incentive pay was my normal and the chaos of all it was no big deal.
Turns out though, I only thrive in controlled chaos. Turns out, in non-Army regulated chaos, I turn into a crazy manic who goes from being a Bejeweled-playing ostrich to a hysterically sobbing, simultaneously screaming hot mess. I thrive in environments where there a just a few options and, in the end, most decisions are completely out of my/our control. Environments where there are hundreds of options and they're all based up mine/our decisions, I fail. Complete and utter epic fail. It's not pretty. Additionally, I fail in a cyclic manner. Not in a "that time of the month" manner, but in a "Okay, I've given this to God and I'm just waiting on guidance" one minute to a gasping for air, wanting to puke, hysterical hot mess the next minute. I am a roller coaster. Not the fun kind either. The kind where you're fairly certain it's never passed a safety test and the guy who just locked you in said "Good luck, last guy who sat here fell out on that third curve and we're still picking pieces of him out of the track below..." Hmm, that might have been a bit too graphic. Oh well, you get the picture. It's not pretty.
When we first arrived in the desert, a woman at PWOC gave a speech about how in the Old Testament, God would take people out to the desert when he wanted to work on them. Well, so her speech was a lot more eloquent, but that's the gist. Anywho, I took that as a warning that those major changes that we thought might be in our future, were definitely in our future. And I thought I was prepared for those changes. I thought I was ready for whatever God threw my way. I mean after all my strongest Spiritual Gift is Faith. So I had this.
Bwhahahahaha. God's so funny.
Turns out that while I've got Faith out the yin-yang, being faithful is a completely different boat. And I'm not sure how much of it was that I had faith and how much of it was that I'd Googled all options and came to terms with all options and then gave it God, therefore not really giving it to God, but more like telling Him "okay I'm good, thanks!". But when you have a plethora of options and they all depend on decisions that you get to make, there's no amount of Googling that got me to that "okay I'm good, thanks!" point. It was just a never ending sea of options and overwhelmedness.
So yah, decisions have been made and The Husband has a job out there in the real world and I have no idea how this is all going to work out and there are so many options that I've scored well over 150,000 points on Bejeweled today alone. But I now know that there's a significant difference between having faith and trusting God. And I'm working on it, one minor meltdown at a time.
