The Military Wife (a Poem)
The military wife is a special individual.
When she was a girl, her dreams were bold,
As bold as her fine, free gaze;
And every gift of grace and mind was hers in her younger days.
When she was a girl, a golden girl,
With a soul as fine as fire.
She could outshine the brightest jewel
That a rich man's love might buy her.
Yes hers could have been the glittering path
Through a careless, carefree life.
But she fell in love with an soldier,
So she became a military wife.
Away from the home of her childhood
She marched at her husband's side.
For she chose a wide and winding road
When she became a bride.
And sometimes the road was a hard one,
So different from what she had planned;
And sometimes she wept for the home she had left
As she lay in a foreign land;
And sometimes her steps would grow weary
As she followed the drum and the fife;
But she set about making the world her home
Because she was a military wife.
She learned to build a hearth for them
Wherever her man was sent;
And she knelt to plant a garden
Every time he pitched their tent.
Yes, she always planted a garden
Though she never saw it grow,
For she knew before the flowers came
That she would have to go.
But she left each garden gladly
Though it cut her like a knife,
For she hoped it might bring some comfort
To another military wife.
To the hardships in her married life
She brought one simple truth,
A promise that once was spoken
In the ancient words of Ruth:
"Wherever you go, I will go.
Wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people
And thy God shall be my God."
She shared his joys and sorrows
As they made their way through life,
For she was proud to love a soldier
And to be a military wife.
She bore the weight of worrying
What fate might hold in store;
And the wordless fear of waiting
When her soldier went to war;
And the nights that she spent fearing
That her waiting was in vain;
And the pain of wanting someone
She might never hold again.
But she bore his children gladly
Through uncertainty and strife,
And they never heard her crying
For she was a military wife.
She raised a military family
With the faith her love had taught her;
And she gave the pride she had inside
To her son and to her daughter;
And she taught them to love freedom
And to know what it was worth,
As they helped her plant her gardens
In the corners of the earth.
And she never wished for better
Than the road they marched through life.
Because she was as much a soldier
As she was a military wife.
--Author Unknown
