“I want adventure in the great wide Somewhere! I want it more than I can tell. And for once, it might be grand to have someone understand… I want so much more than they’ve got planned.” As I little girl, I would sing Belle’s reprise from Beauty and the Beast at the top of my lungs, never knowing that my life would be even more of an adventure than the life my cartoon hero. Who would have guessed that I would be living my dreams, a full and amazing life, at only 22?
If you had told scrappy, tomboyish, constantly imaginative Emily that a real Prince Charming/Captain America/Will Turner would come and sweep her off her feet, dragging her headlong into the adventure of a life time, Emily probably would have scoffed at you, quoted something from Lord of the Rings, and gone back to plotting battles with her siblings.
And yet here I am… married for almost 8 months, 8 weeks pregnant with an unexpected wee blessing, states away from the family who raised me, and learning how to run a household that supports an officer of the US Navy. And I love it. I love every minute. I love waking up at 4am to drive my superhero of a sailor onto the base so that I can have use of our one car in the middle of the afternoon. I love putting together shopping lists and making a game of seeing just how much I can save with this week’s grocery bill. I love cooking meals for my husband; preening over that look of satisfaction he gets when he’s eaten something delicious and laughing with him when some of my experiments turn out less than edible. Fortunately for him, my meals are rarely inedible. I did marry a man who loves to eating out though, so I’m still searching for that perfect recipe that will wow him into loving home cooked meals.
Sure, there are difficulties too. It’s hard being away from my man so often. His job has him on his ship at all hours of the day with watches through the night at least once a week. Even as I’m writing this, he’s underway, leaving me to man the home front for the past week (and if you’ve read the bug posts here and here, you know this is no easy task!). It’s hard to have moved many hundreds of miles away from my precious, close knit family. I miss them like crazy. It’s frustrating to go from a full time nanny job that was fairly high paying to working retail at a store I barely even like, especially when the hours I’m given aren’t at all near the hours I was promised. And it definitely can be hard delving into a church when you don’t know anybody. Friends are scarce in my neck of the woods, but that only makes me more thankful for the wonderful friends I already have.
But I wouldn’t change it. I know that community will grow, work schedules will change, and that I will continue to adapt to being the best wife I can be for such an incredible man.
Life is what you make of it and honestly? I’ve got the best life.
Becoming Still Waters 