(Military Times) Op-Ed: The Reserve/Guard Difference

[unhappycamper]

The Reserve/Guard Difference
Sara Horn | February 11, 2009

I've been the wife of a Navy reservist for almost eleven years but for much of that time, I never thought of myself as a military spouse. Until, that is, my husband deployed.

It probably seems silly to active spouses to hear that. After all, military is military, right? The uniform brings with it important commitments, responsibilities and values to uphold. But as a Reserve wife, I'm not sure I realized that those things my husband signed up for also included me. Correction: I'm very sure that at one time, those things didn't include me. Not when he traveled almost 400 miles one way each month to a military base I rarely saw myself. Not when I didn't know one other spouse of any of the members of his unit and had trouble remembering the few names of the guys he spent time with when he was away and he sometimes mentioned when he was home. It wasn't until he put on his uniform and went away – not just for a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, but for almost a year, that "military" took on an entirely different meaning. But perhaps the meaning itself didn't change—maybe just my perspective did.

As I think about all of the Reserve and Guard spouses I've met over the last few years, the one thing that stands out to me is the strength I've seen in their eyes. Most of us who have been married for any length of time before 2001 never expected the word "deployment" to be used much in our households. "Training," yes. "Short-term missions," maybe. But not deployment. Deployment was a word reserved only for the active. They had the support. They had the direct resources. They knew who their Family Readiness leader was and where to go if a paycheck got messed up or who to ask for help if a water heater blew up.

But as a Reserve spouse, I am stationed not in a military town but in a community that doesn't always remember military live here. Sometimes that's a blessing, I suppose. But sometimes, especially in deployment, that can also be a curse. And a lonely one, at that.

And so, as a Reserve or Guard spouse, you find yourself gravitating towards those who do understand. Other Reserve or Guard spouses if you're lucky. And you can find them. Or the active military spouses you once thought you had nothing in common with. And as you get to know those spouses, you realize that there aren't as many differences between you as you thought.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,184872,00.html?wh=news



uhc comment: About Sara Horn



Sara Horn is a freelance writer and author of A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith from Operation Iraqi Freedom she co-wrote with Fox News (convicted felon) commentator Oliver North. She is believed to be the first denominational religion reporter to ever report from a war zone after making two trips to Iraq the first year of the war for Baptist Press to cover stories of faith among the military. She is the publisher of the faith-based military news site, AGreaterFreedom.com, and the co-founder of a military wives support group, Wives of Faith. Her husband is a Navy reservist currently deployed to Iraq. Visit her Web site at www.sarahorn.com.