The Final Countdown

In the final countdown to deployment, everything becomes hard, especially faith. Maybe that seems counterintuitive for a minister to say, but that is my experience. Prayer become hard. Studying scripture becomes hard. As a result, I find my heart turning to scriptures like ones found in Isaiah, “those of steadfast mind God keeps in peace,” as if God is trying to speak into the very core of my anxiety as the days, the minutes and the seconds rapidly countdown.

Countdowns are strange. As a child, I remember counting down to birthdays. I couldn’t wait until I could demolish the homemade lasagna that I knew my mother would make. The longest countdowns were the days leading to Christmas Eve and Christmas.  I could hardly handle the molasses of time waiting to open our gifts and to dive head first into the vanilla cake with chocolate frosting that my Aunt Glenda would always make. For the most part, I don’t really recall that the numbering of days were a perpetual part of my life growing up, though I can see now that I have always been obsessed with food - especially sweets.

I guess all changed once I raised my right hand, took the oath of office, and joined the US Army. Almost immediately, my life reoriented to the concept of “x number of days and a wake up”.  This is a common expression meaning that the mission is complete in a defined number of days and then you get to leave the next morning. The phrase is inscribed everywhere. You can find it on the insides of portapotties, on the green seat backs of old school buses, and the undersides of the mattresses on the top bunks. In case you ever wondered, Sharpies really do write anywhere.

During my basic officer course, I found myself tracking it too. I would look at the calendar and calculate the number of days until I finished the course. Everything gets a final countdown: the two weeks of annual training, the months leading up to promotion boards, the anniversary date pay increases, the preparatory weeks before the physical fitness test and so many others. The most obvious countdowns are the ones that happen while on deployment. This countdown is very similar to the one at Christmas. They are slow. Painfully slow. No surprise, but the saddest countdown is the one that leads to deployment; it is also the one that moves the fastest. You wake up and it is upon you.

That is the one I am fixated on right now. For weeks now, we have counted down to the moment when I would load the buses headed to the plane and then the Middle East: only four more weekends together…now only three more weekends together…and so on. For example, this last week, the kids knew that this was our last Friday night movie and pizza together.  Every bite of pepperoni was topped with anticipatory grief. These deployment countdowns are heavy for sure. Often, you drift off into an un-helpful series of questions and thoughts:

Is this the last time I’ll watch my son play with his Tonka truck in the backyard or will he be too old for it when I come back?

Is this last time my oldest daughter won’t be completely embarrassed to hug me in public?

Is this the last time that my youngest daughter truly believes she was a puppy at birth or will the “real world” close the book on her beautiful imagination?

Your mind creates these unfair emotional calculations in your head like I can only kiss my kids good night a few more times before I leave and there are only a few more times that I will get to hug my family before I take off. Luckily, my deployment setting this time won’t be in a combat zone and so these final countdowns are not accompanied by an overwhelming fear that I may never see them again. 

It still creates stress for me and the whole family.  As an adult, it is often a challenge to articulate the feelings that the deployment creates. It is basically impossible for the kids. I found my son this week in the middle of his bathroom in tears. He was breaking down while he was brushing his teeth.  There sitting on the commode, I held my son as he sobbed. He just didn’t have the words and I failed to offer him any that helped.    

It also creates a lot of parenting and partner overcompensation. Some of it feels silly. For example, at least ten times a day I tell the kids how much I love them and I tell them that they are important to me. Ha! At this point, they see me coming with that doting look in my eyes and they take off. Even at six years old, my son can only handle so many Hallmark moments in a day when he’s only trying to put his waffle in the toaster. I think the dogs are even weary of my long embraces and sentimental outpourings.  I think that the only thing the family doesn’t mind is the way each weekend becomes a mini-vacation/holiday/event. We hit the beaches, the restaurants, the playgrounds, the pools, the ponds, the fishing piers, the hotels, stores and all the ice cream that exists in Southern Georgia. I walk into work on Monday mornings completely and utterly exhausted, but I know that I will miss that exhaustion soon…real soon.

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This morning is the “wake up”. I don’t have any more days left. In a few short hours I will leave my family at 03:00am. Tomorrow, I will greet the new day alone, but with a new mission: to serve the men and women that serve on your behalf. Tomorrow will initiate a new final countdown, 270 days and a wake up, wading through the molasses of time, until I can replace the sobbing images of my family with a feeling that no amount of Christmas presents or chocolate cake could ever rival. Tomorrow will begin with the prayer that God placed on my heart in difficult times, “those of steadfast mind God keeps in peace.”