Breathing A Sigh of Relief

Let's backup a few months to January. Prior to January, Josh and I had been living and operating under the assumption we would be in Germany until 2018 - plenty of time to do lots of travel, see the things we wanted to see, buy more cool European stuff... and then move to another base where Josh would finish out his military career, serving his 20 years. That was the plan. There was no reason to think this plan wasn't going to work. Until... all of the lovely talks of cutbacks, and reduction of troops. There is a lot I could say, and want to say, on this topic. But I won't. This isn't the time nor the place to talk about it. Most everyone knows there are cutbacks being made in an effort to save money. One of the cutbacks is to reduce the size of the military. Some of these changes and reduction efforts I agree with, others I don't. But that is neither here nor there.

The point of this is we found out that Josh was on a list (a very LARGE one) of people who were being considered to be kicked out of the military. Well, they were using the terms of "early separation," but I will call it what it is - kicked out. At first when Josh told me about this, I went into a lovely state of denial. There are thousands of people in the Air Force, and of all these people they would not be selecting Josh. He has had a good career and is not a trouble maker. Period. However, as time went on and more details surrounding the selection process trickled in, my denial faded, and Josh and I both found ourselves in a state of panic. Utter terror. The plan we had for ourselves - for our lives, our future - could change dramatically, and we were completely unprepared for it. We have not yet thought about what Josh will do post-military. Well, we have thought about it "in theory," but we have no set ideas or plans, or no plans which we could act upon with a few months notice. We are smart with our money and we have a comfortable savings, but we are not prepared to suddenly lose an income and benefits (but is anyone ever prepared for this?). We might have had to change our life plans with only a little bit of notice. What were we going to do? We did not have a Plan B for our lives... we never thought Plan A wasn't going to work.

At first we were both stressed out and sick with worry - for obvious reasons. Then I swapped into damage control mode. If we were going to be done with the military, we would need to know where we were going. We would have to think of possible job opportunities or training for Josh. We would need to save more to have a larger "emergency" fund. I would need to start networking to try to have a job waiting for me. There is only so much planning you can do when you aren't sure what outcome you are planning for, and you are unsure of the dates. So... I planned as much as I could up until the pointing of knowing the answer - "yes" we're still with the military, or "no" we aren't. Then I shifted my planning to focus on getting the most out of Europe while we are here. If our time was going to get cut short, I didn't want to have regrets, or have less regrets related to leaving early. Hence some of the whirl-wind trips we have done recently.

For the past few months we have been operating in a strange limbo - we are trying to do as much travel as we can while still trying to save money. We are trying to live day to day without obsessing over the giant pink elephant in the room looming over us. Finally, after months of waiting and months of shifting information, we were told a specific date we would have an answer. Josh was relieved - one way or another, he would have an answer. I found myself suddenly sick with panic - this was it. The night before the big day, I had a hard time going to sleep. The day of I was sick - I went through waves of being too worried to eat and feeling like I was going to throw up, to feeling the need to eat an entire pint of ice cream (which I did). The worst part about all of this was at the end of the day, we never even got an answer. Yup. All of that tension and waiting for nothing. However, the next day Josh heard he was staying in the military. Relief and joy flooded through me. Finally, we had an answer. We could move on, move forward, and put this behind us. We could breathe a sigh of relief.

There are some good things which did come out of this process. We now have a tentative Plan B for ourselves. We went on some cool trips and saw/did things I was wanting to do. We also finally indulged in things we had been "waiting" to do. I have wanted to find some antique furniture while we are here to take back with us. It is something which always seems to get pushed aside - we will look next weekend, we don't have the space right now, ect. But faced with the fear we may leave, we finally went shopping. And shop we did! We found some beautiful, unique pieces which we couldn't pass up. We went from buying nothing to buying four major pieces.  Now our dining room is a little full, but I don't mind.

The other exciting addition in our relief shopping spree... is my new car. When we moved here we got Frank the Tank, who served his purpose, but proved to be unreliable. I upgrade to a used VW Jetta, which I have loved. The Jetta has gotten me to and from work and endured many road trips. In less than three years we have put 72,000 miles on this car, and it has only required maintenance. We have been blessed. But, my beloved Jetta has 185,000 miles on it. Sometimes it doesn't love to start, or it will get a bit sputtery when low on gas, and only one speaker is working (which is simply cruel when you are a music lover with a long commute). We have talked before about getting me a different/newer car, but it was mainly talk. We weren't ready to put our money were our mouths were. I had finally told Josh that whatever we we heard in regards to his job, I was getting a new car. If we were done with the military and moved back to the states, I got a new car. If we stayed in Germany, I got a new car. Within days of getting our good news we had gone to "look" at cars and bought mine - a 2014 VW Jetta TDI - aka diesel.

I picked out the color. I call her Ruby. She is just a delight to drive, and the gas mileage is AMAZING. I have never in my life had a new car, and I am pretty proud of myself for working to earn this. I have been driving to work, but we need to take it on an inaugural road trip.

Now that we have an answer and we know we will be staying in Germany, we are starting to plan out the rest of our travel for the year. I am really excited about what is ahead, and I am so happy to have that part of our lives behind us. Thank you to those who were sounding boards, supports, and comforters during our difficult times. We are blessed to have amazing people surrounding us. Cheers - here is to the next 4 years in Germany!