by Kelly Winzer

Created on: July 18, 2008

My husband, Nathan, is a career soldier in the United States Army. He is the best of the best. He has found a way to serve his country, be a faithful, devoted husband, a humble follower of Christ and a father who doesn't compromise when it comes to his son. Yet even the most solid marriage will face trials unlike any other when faced with a combat deployment. Nathan's unit is deployed to Iraq and he has been gone for nearly two years. This kind of life we've chosen comes with uncertainty and with lessons that are valuable not only in a military marriage but in any marriage.

Here is the thing, we don't know how many days we have here on earth. So much of what we learn through this journey is that life carries no guarantees. The assumptions that so many take for granted are distant memories of ours. We don't assume that we will be here to hold hands in rocking chairs on the porch of the family farmhouse when we're ninety. We don't assume that we will both watch our children grow and get married and have children of their own. We hope and pray for these things but we never assume. We live a life in which we must always prepare for the worst and hope for the best. There are no guarantees.

If I had to choose the most important lesson I've learned during this deployment, it would be that we should never take our partner in this life for granted. I often hear women in passing complain about their husbands' bad habits. More alarming for me is the incessant need for many women to talk about their husbands in ways that are not honoring to them. I look at my neat, perfectly organized home and my clean bathroom and it makes me sad. I look at the empty sink and the freshly vacuumed carpets and I miss him terribly. I know that husbands come with a certain amount of dirt and a certain lack of knowledge about how to remove that dirt. I know that they create laundry and hefty food bills. I know that they want to watch the football game and spend the early morning hours of the fall season in the woods hunting anything that moves. I know that they have a knack for keeping a vehicle spotless but can't understand why you don't want their dirty feet on the coffee table. I also know that I would trade all of those neat and tidy things and all of that relentless desire to be a woman in control of her home, for just one day with my dirty, football watching, deer hunting husband. I long for just a few hours of having him here, just his presence. I want to see his shoes by the door and

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