This post was prompted by an email conversation between me and my friend, Amy, yesterday that got me to thinking. Amy is a Chaplain Candidate as well as the wife of a deployed soldier and mother to two small children. We have a lot in common, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know her lately. We were talking about Chris being gone, and I had mentioned that I am going to be pretty busy during this time. I have summer classes starting the day after he leaves, I’m teaching a VBS class the end of June, Kyra and Owen are both having birthdays to plan and give parties for, etc. She brought up the point that we shouldn’t necessarily purposefully just fill up the time during a separation with things to keep us busy, but we should embrace the time apart as an opportunity for personal growth. This is true. I had been thinking along this line even prior to our conversation. When I think about the time that Chris is going to be gone, I think of all the ways I would like to change while he’s gone. There are several areas that I really need to work on. There’s just something about being without him that feels like the freedom to experiment with who I am. Now, I know that sounds cheesy, but bear with me. When you work on a particular flaw of your own, it’s easier to do when you don’t feel like someone is watching you.

One of the points I brought up to Amy was that getting married young and having children right away tends to box you into who you were then. People who don’t get married until a little later in life tend to have more time to “find themselves”. I know that’s cliche, but I just mean that they have more time to mature and develop as their own person. I got married at 17. Think back to who you were and what you were like when you were seventeen. I’m sure you’ve changed a lot since then, right? When I got married at that age, the natural thing to do was to be dependent on Chris. He was older than me, and had experienced a lot more of life than I had. He is also a strong personality with lots of confidence in himself and his opinions. It was very comfortable for me to just fall into step with him and let him carry me along. While I’m not saying that is necessarily bad, it didn’t really help me become confident in myself.

However, when Chris went to Las Vegas to work for six weeks, about two years ago, I was suddenly all by myself. I had two little kids, and I was on my own. I was a single mother for six weeks. Given, a very blessed single mother, seeing as how Chris was still depositing money into the bank account weekly and paying the bills online. The thing was, though, he wasn’t physically with me. I did things on my own that I always let him do. One thing that I had been afraid of for a long time was driving in Knoxville. Driving on the interstate scared me to death. I never had to do it, because I got married just a year after I got my license. Chris always drives when we are together. When he was gone, though, if I wanted to go somewhere, it was all on me to get myself there. The first time I drove alone in Knoxville was when I drove home from leaving Chris at the airport. Talk about jumping in with both feet! Shortly after that, I drove there on a shopping trip with my mom. It was the first time I actually drove around Knoxville, and I got a nail in my tire. I had to go to a Pep Boys, arrange to have a new tire put on, and do it all with just a quick consultation with Chris over the phone.

Halfway through the six weeks, I took the kids and flew across the country to visit Chris. I had never been on an airplane before in my life. I was scared to death about changing planes and finding the right gate after the layover. Kyra was almost three, and Elijah had just turned one. During the first flight, both of the kids fell asleep. I couldn’t get Kyra to wake up and walk when we landed. A lady who was across the aisle from me asked me if she could help me get the kids off the plane. She took Elijah from me, and I carried Kyra. As I was turning to try to get my two bags from the overhead compartment, I saw a well-dressed man who had my bags. I was alarmed at first, but he told me he was going to carry them for me. When we got off the plane, as I waited for them to get my stroller, the man asked me if I was, by any chance, from Crown College. (He asked because I was wearing a long, denim skirt. Kind of a trademark of our particular denomination.) I told him no, but I had friends who went to school there. He told me he had just came from a conference there, and asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to visit my husband in Las Vegas, because he was away working at the Nevada Test Site. The man acted a little surprised, and said that he, too, was going to Vegas. He was a Baptist pastor of a Las Vegas church, and some of his members even worked at the Test Site. About that time, they brought the stroller, and I retrieved Elijah from the kind lady, amid many thank yous, and gathered my things. The man told me if I needed anything he could help me with just to let him know. It was then that I sighed a big sigh of relief. On that short, forty-five minute flight to Charlotte, NC, God had let me know that he was looking out for me. Through the rest of the trip, including a four hour delay in Charlotte and navigating two large, busy airports with two toddlers, I learned something about myself. I learned that I really could do things on my own if I had to. I was capable. After all, I wasn’t truly alone. God sent many people during the trip there and the trip back who helped me. I depended on the kindness of strangers more than once. The majority of people I came across saw a young (20 yrs old) mother with two small children and they responded with kindness. People held doors for me, let me go first, offered to help me carry things, gave me better seats on the plane, etc. I had to laugh when we got on the flight to Vegas. I had boarded first with the kids, and then the other passengers boarded. I was very curious as to who would be sitting with us, and I was crossing my fingers and praying for a kind grandmother with a purse full of Kleenex and cookies. Much to my surprise, I looked up to see a very, very tall black man, who looked down at us and said, “This is going to be a long flight.” I just gave him a smile and apologized in advance. Near the end of the flight, I had dozed off, since the kids were both asleep, only to awake with a start when my head jerked down. I looked over to check on Kyra, who was sitting in the middle, and found her cuddled up against the afore-mentioned black man. I started to pull her over towards me, and he looked over at me and said, “She’s okay. You’ve got your hands full.” Indeed, I did, with a lap full of a blissfully, sleeping Elijah. At the end of the flight, this same man carried my bags off for me, and then helped me set up my stroller. God had really prepared the way for me.

So, now that it’s time for Chris to leave me again, I’m wondering what areas of myself that God’s going to work on. I know that separation can force independence, but I’m waiting to see what other ways it will change me. I’m ready to step outside of the box, though, and find out a little bit more of who I can be when I push the limits of who I think I am. If I’ve learned anything through the last separation, it’s that there is always room for growth if you just allow it to happen.