The Chapters We Wouldn’t Have Written

I keep saying that Brian was supposed to be the one fighting a war this year, not me.

Except that isn’t really how this story started.

This was supposed to be a relatively easy deployment.

Then, the night before he left, war broke out.

I remember sitting across from him at dinner as we watched everything unfold. Our three-month-old baby was home with a babysitter. It was our last dinner, just the two of us, before he left.

And in an instant, the year we thought we were walking into changed.

Then a few months later, it happened again.

You have cancer.

Another sentence that changed our world in an instant.

People ask how Brian is doing. If he is coming home. The answer is simple, yet complicated.

He hates it.

He wishes he could take this away from me. He wishes he could sit beside me at every appointment, be here for every scan and carry more of this.

And yet, in very Brian fashion, he is also completely confident.

He tells me he is going to come home safely.

And he tells me I am going to beat this.

Sometimes he has enough confidence for both of us.

It’s one of the reasons I love him so much.

It’s Not as Simple as Getting on a Plane

People understandably ask why he isn’t just coming home.

I understand the question.

If your spouse were thousands of miles away and you were diagnosed with cancer, of course you would want them home.

I do.

But coming home from a deployment isn’t as simple as getting on a plane.

There are responsibilities and circumstances bigger than the two of us. There are processes we don’t control and parts of his service that will always remain private.

What I wish people could see is how hard it is to love your family desperately and still have a responsibility to something beyond them.

He is torn between serving our country and wanting desperately to be here fighting alongside me.

And I am torn too.

Because of course I want my husband home.

I want him beside me.

I want his arms around me on the days when I finally stop being strong.

I want him here for the ordinary things too. Bedtime with Brooks. Dinner at our kitchen table. Sitting on the couch after the baby is asleep and talking about absolutely nothing.

I just want my person.

But I also know something that gives both of us peace.

I am not alone here.

There is an entire community loving me, loving Brooks and carrying pieces of this with us.

Friends are taking Brooks to school. People are showing up for appointments. They are bringing meals, helping me prepare the house ahead of chemo, sending messages, praying for us and stepping into the ordinary pieces of our life that still need to happen.

Knowing how loved we are here gives Brian the space to do what he needs to do there while still fighting for us from thousands of miles away.

It doesn’t make it easy.

It just makes the impossible a little more possible.

Questioning God’s Creative License

None of this was our plan.

I say all the time that God writes the story better than we ever could.

Although, if I’m being completely transparent, right now I’m questioning some of His creative license.

I feel fairly confident I could have written this chapter better.

I wouldn’t have written war into a deployment that wasn’t supposed to involve one.

I certainly wouldn’t have written cancer into the first year of our son’s life.

I wouldn’t have put thousands of miles between Brian and me while we tried to figure out how to navigate any of this.

There are days I don’t understand it.

There are days I’m angry.

There are days we cry for the year we thought we were going to have.

And there are days when trusting that there is a bigger story feels much harder than saying that I do.

But then I look backward.

The Chapters Behind Us

I think about all the things that didn’t make sense while we were living through them.

The circumstances that eventually led Brian and me to each other.

The years of wanting to become a mom.

Six rounds of IVF filled with appointments, shots, waiting, disappointment, heartbreak and so many moments when I wondered whether our story would ever lead where we desperately wanted it to.

And then Brooks.

Our perfect little boy.

There were so many moments along the way when I couldn’t see where the story was going.

Now I can look backward and see goodness woven through chapters that felt impossibly hard while we were living them.

So why would I believe this chapter has to end differently?

That doesn’t mean I believe cancer happened for a reason.

It doesn’t mean I understand why our family is walking through this.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I have to call any of this good.

I don’t.

But I do believe God has been good to us.

There is a difference.

And when I can’t see very far ahead right now, sometimes looking backward is enough to remind me of that.

We have enough evidence from the chapters behind us to keep believing in the chapters ahead.

Someday, Brooks Will Know

And someday, Brooks will know this story too.

He’ll know how desperately we fought for him before he ever arrived.

The IVF. The waiting. The disappointment. The prayers. The hope we kept finding when it would have been easier to let it go.

And then he came.

Someday, we’ll tell him about this chapter too.

About the year his daddy was thousands of miles away serving our country while his mommy was home fighting cancer.

About how badly we both wanted to be together.

About the people who stepped in and loved him when we couldn’t always do everything ourselves.

About the prayers being said for our family in more places than he could possibly imagine.

And I hope what he hears isn’t simply a story about war or cancer.

I hope he hears a story about how good God has been to us.

Because before he ever arrived, he was the little boy we were fighting for.

And now he is the little boy we’re fighting for all over again.

Someday, I hope he understands that when things felt impossible, his daddy kept going there and his mommy kept going here.

That we were scared.

That we cried.

That we questioned why any of this was happening.

But we kept going.

And so much of our strength came from knowing we wanted to make it home to each other.

To him.

He was worth every fight before we knew him.

And he is worth every fight now.

In the Meanwhile

So for now, Brian keeps doing what he needs to do there.

I keep doing what I need to do here.

We love each other across the miles.

We lean on the people God has placed around us.

We cry when we need to.

We laugh when we can.

And we wait for the day he can come home.

This isn’t the chapter either of us would have written.

But neither were some of the chapters that eventually gave us our greatest blessings.

I don’t know how this chapter ends yet.

I’m still scared.

I still wish I could skip ahead a few pages.

But when I look at the story we’ve already lived, I have to believe there is still goodness ahead.

And someday, I hope Brooks looks back at all of it and knows just how loved he was through every single page.

Before he ever arrived, he was who we fought for.

And now, he is who we’re fighting for all over again.

With love, in the meanwhile.