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Saturday, June 18, 2011

How We Ended Up Together - Project Marriage

This post is the first challenge in Project Marriage.   MommyFriend and LifeWithOutPink have joined together to start Project Marriage.  The first challenge is to share your love story, you know, the one you love to tell that makes your heart go pitter patter.  So here is my love story on how my husband and I came to be.



My husband and I have a funny story of how we ended up together.  There were many hands involved and it just so happened that we were both dating different people at the time.  Anyways, I guess I'll start at the beginning.  Back almost 10 years ago, in the fall of 2002 I moved across the country to North Carolina.  I was in the Alaska Army National Guard so I had to transfer units.  My first couple of drills went fine.  Just your normal military stuff.  Then I saw him, sexy in his uniform, just a little older than me, a college boy, and looked like a frat guy to me.  All things I was perfectly fine with.  We didn't live in the same town, but I got to see him every month.  We were both seeing other people, but that didn't matter for several years. 

Once our unit was activated to go overseas and serve in Iraq things changed.  We were around each other a lot more and in several classes together.  We joked about getting married just on paper so we could make a little extra cash... but as it turned out we would actually be making less.  Go figure.  I guess that's when we started to become friends, instead of just soldiers who would say "Hey" or have lunch as a group once a month.  We worked in totally different fields.  I was an intelligence analyst and he was the driver for the General of our brigade. 

We deployed in February 2004, for Operation Iraqi Freedom II.  And yes at this time we were still dating people back in the states.  War was now on our minds 24/7.  We were going to an area of Iraq that was not highly populated and the base we would be calling home for the next year, was not well built up.  We lived in tents until we had more suitable housing built or brought in, and MRE's were a daily meal for quite some time.  Once we were able to finally get into a bit of a routine a few of us were able to start hanging out in the evenings.  We also started having breakfast and lunch together everyday.  We would sit around and talk about our days, what friends might be doing back home, and what we were missing out on.  We would talk about family, significant others and what we were looking forward to when we got home.


At some point, my good friend who was the Generals Secretary and also worked side by side with my now husband thought it would be a good idea to play matchmaker.  However, she wasn't trying to pair me up with the Generals Driver, rather the Sargent Majors Driver.  He was nice, a little younger than me, and very sweet to write me such cute notes.  But I wasn't all that interested in him.  I really wasn't looking for romance in the middle of a war.  But some how love and romance found me.



I mistakenly told one of the female sargents I was working with that I thought the Generals Driver was cute.  We chit chatted about him a little and then she wanted to see who I was talking about.  There were about 3,000 of us in the unit, so it's understandable she didn't know who I was talking about.  Anyways, as I proceeded to point him out, she took it upon herself to walk right up to him and tell him what I had said.  I was SHOCKED to say the least.  So that's where things really started with us.  In the middle of war, in the hot sand, trying to help make peace in a far away land. 


Fast forward a few years and in October of 2007 we married in the sand.  However, this time it was on a beach, in beautiful weather with all of our friends and even a few from overseas.  The Generals Secretary was my Matron of Honor, our Chaplain that was overseas with us in Iraq married us, the General was there, and even my husbands gunner who helped keep everyone safe on all their convoys was able to attend.



People always thought that our little war romance would die when we returned home to the states.  But I think once you have shared something so life changing, it's hard to even imagine finding someone that will understand what you have gone through.  We have been able to process and talk about our time in Iraq with each other.  No one but the people we went overseas with will ever understand what it was like, or why we may feel the way we do about things. 


Everyday life changes you in smalls ways, but war changes you in so many ways.  I'm happy to say that I found the love of my life in the middle of a war.  I thank a few good friends for being there throughout the rough times with us and for my husband sticking by me even when I thought I wanted out.

We have a great life together and a beautiful baby boy.  We will always share something together that not many can say they have, finding true love while at war. 


1 comment:

  1. Oh that is such a heartwarming story, love it :) Thanks for linking up to #projectmarriage

    ReplyDelete