My daughter came home from her nine month deployment in Afghanistan yesterday. Her hubby posted some photos of the whole regiment arriving, then a couple of them embracing and two of my daughter arriving home and seeing her eighteen month old daughter for the first time.

My daughter’s face was shiny slick with tears as she smiled cheek to cheek with a grinning hubby and her face red , eyes gleaming with more tears as she lifted her daughter who knew it was mommy because of the daily FaceTiming they’d been doing. I can imagine my daughter was wondering if her baby would remember her as she’s been gone half her short life. Thank God for technology.

I cried as I looked at these photos. So many emotions were all jumbled around my aching heart. I feel like I am missing out on so much of their lives yet I am so happy for their reunion. I also remember being apart from my husband early in our marriage when he was still on active duty. How hard it was to spend so long apart. And then a sharp pain in my heart remembering how many of those times my husband was gone on recruiting trips, first in the military and then in civilian life–cheating on me and his family. How could he? How could so much precious beauty be devalued? I will never understand the incomprehensible.

Then I missed them, because they are on the other side of the country. I can’t just hop in the car and go hug my daughter. Even if I could, she has grown more and more distant from me, especially since the revelation of her father’s infidelity. She judges me as harshly as him, more so. She loves her Santa Dad. Respects her responsible mom, but doesn’t seem to want to be close. It hurts my heart. Her dad has filled her head with stuff about me—negative judgements, yet she has built her own. And I don’t understand that either. My heart aches for her–that she has to live knowing her parent’s marriage was not what she thought. Me too.

Sometimes it feels like I have all but lost my family. Either to death or distance or betrayal. My family is small so there are not many people anyways. My heart aches for what I wish I had. Yet I know that a lot of people have distant families, both geographically and/or emotionally. I certainly am not unique in that. To build expectations for it to be different is a set up for resentment and unhappiness. So I try to be as thankful as I can for what I do have. They are heathy. They are reunited. My UH is much less angry than he used to be. He is continuing to go to 12 step groups and therapy. He puts himself in the path of recovery. I can wish all I want that he would become a man of integrity and reliability—use the tools he is exposed to at all those meetings, but once again—expectations build resentment and unhappiness.

It is so hard not to want. I don’t know how to stop wanting and wishing

As the Alanon slogan says:

Let Go And Let God.

So difficult, so sad, so painful.

I will see my daughter in mid March. I am grateful for what short visits I can.

I am grateful.