Solace

I asked someone, shortly before getting married, what it meant to be an Army wife. The importance of what I was doing was weighing heavily upon my head, and I was reeling from a serious case of self-doubt. I just knew I could not keep a marriage to a soldier going; I was going to come undone and have a mental breakdown.

A calm voice told me to calm down, take a few deep breaths, and then she said one simple sentence.

“Be his God given solace.”

Further in the conversation, she explained that he needed a soft place to fall, a place to find comfort, peace, and solace. The Army hardened the Sergeant, he’s got rough edges, a tough attitude, there isn’t anything put in his place that he cannot do, and will often run himself into the ground doing it. So my job has become being the soft spot in his world.

I admit, I’m struggling. My own wild streak, the quick temper, the mood swings, the instability, doesn’t always make for a soft landing. The days when he is gone for hours on end, the days when the loss of deployment hits me, the days when I’m just pissed off at his poor attitude over something I deem important, those days are the days when it’s hard to be soft. I’ve always equated being soft with weak, that I would just have to surrender my will, and learn to live with him telling me what to do.

I am slowly but surely learning that there is a difference between being his solace, and being weak-willed. Being solace for a man who has seen so much, and will see so much, doesn’t make me weak. It actually takes all of my strength to be there, to be his soft place to fall towards, when he finally needs to be weak for just a moment.

And, it’s a privilege. He does not speak very often of what bothers him, more often than not what bothers him comes in small sentences, until I have the big picture. Most of the time the Sergeant is everything to everyone. I’m the one to get to see him peel the layers back, and I’m the one to see the real him, underneath those layers. It’s that dark eyed, serious creature, with quiet thoughts about everything, his own fears and dreams, that I fell so madly in love with, probably the first time I laid eyes on him.

So here I stand… and at the end of the day, when all of my layers are peeled back, I am simply his solace, his peace, to come home to.

~Jennifer