“RRRRIIIIIINNNGGG!”
The telephone’s sharp ringing interrupted a peaceful afternoon in 1999. Dennis and I were in the midst of planning our wedding that summer. On the phone was his commanding officer, who had called to notify Dennis of an involuntary deployment of Navy reservists for Kosovo. The news took my breath away.
Countless military families have dealt with a loved one’s mobilization, but not having been exposed to this before, I was frightened. A first generation American, I didn’t grow up in a military family. My parents left Taiwan for educational and employment opportunities in the United States. Although I grew up in Rockville and Bethesda, Maryland, neighbors to Washington D.C., I never knew anyone who had been deployed.
After that phone call, I wondered if I could live with such uncertainty. When Dennis and I started dating in 1997, he told me he was in the Naval Reserves, but had not been called up during his ten-year tenure. As a result, I hadn’t thought much about it. Ironically, if he hadn’t been in the reserves, we might not have met. I was pursuing my doctorate at the University of Virginia, and Dennis was working in Phoenix, Arizona, when he came to DC for a two-week Navy Reserves trip. We met randomly and unexpectedly one Friday night while playing volleyball with mutual friends.
He asked me to go sailing with him the next day. I was attracted to his confidence, strength, honesty, listening skills, and patience. It also helped that he was attractive and very tall six-foot-seven, especially compared to my petite height of five feet. We had a great date and maintained a long distance relationship until his day job transferred him to the East Coast.
But I will never forget that phone call in 1999. It was my first brush with the reality that Dennis could be called up. The thought of what he could face and what it could mean to our impending marriage was the most frightening possibility I had ever contemplated.
Thankfully, he was not involuntarily recalled then, giving me time to adjust my thinking. God was planting seeds for what was to come. Like Abraham, I had to move forward despite the uncertainty of mobilization in my marriage. Even though I didn’t know where the road would take us, I realized that faith was the best map for such an unknown journey as deployment.
Thank you for your promise to be with us where we or our loved ones may go.
“By faith Abraham… obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8)