The Reality of Homecoming

durbinstephanie
Jun 8, 2017
2 min read

It's been a while since I've wrote a blog post... well, simply because I've been spending time with my husband who just got home from deployment! YAY!

Military homecomings are so beautiful. It's hard to explain the feeling I get the week before my husband comes home from a deployment. I am so excited to see him, and it's all I can think about. The butterflies are uncontrollable and I squeal a lot! The week drags on and on, and then the day finally comes. And the reality is, it is everything I hoped for and SO much more! A friend and I always watch the boat pull in, it's a tradition we've done together since our first deployment.

((A little background here, we ALWAYS wear the same outfit, everywhere we go. And it's NEVER planned. So don't mind our matching army green Target T-shirts that we bought together, and our ripped jean capris, because trust me, this was not planned.))

After that, I feel like we experience the longest day of our lives. We try to find things to kill time, because we know with our husbands jobs, they won't be off until the evening. There is this saying about Nukes, they're the first ones on when they're leaving and last ones off when they're coming home. It's SO true. So we usually make a trip to Target, because who doesn't love a good trip to Target, right? I think we have a Target problem. Then, depending on the day, but most times we go home and clean until there is literally nothing left to do. (It's a good time killer because time goes by fast and you're busy!) We've probably spend more hours getting ready than we'd like to admit, and then we go to base and WAIT... and wait, and wait. Then finally our husbands call. I remember scrambling around trying to find my shoes because he was in the parking lot that we were in! And then, just like that, the moment we had been waiting for three months is finally over. I see him wearing that white hard hat, with that big ole sea bag on his shoulders. And just like the movies, he dropped everything and we ran to each other, he pulled me in and hugged me like he hadn't seen me in a year. For just a moment it felt like nothing had changed, for just a moment it felt like he never left, and from that moment on my heart was full and complete again.