At this moment, all I wanted to do was to move into our room in Building 62 and get our private life started. Josh and I had already had a short preview of what life would be like on our own again, and we desperately needed to get to work on figuring out how to deal with the issues we experienced the first time. After filling out a ton of paperwork, we moved into our room. We knew the outpatient chapter of our lives would mean more work but more authority over our lives again, but it was already better than sitting in a hospital room waiting for someone to come tell you what to do. Our marriage was improving through counseling and from being in Building 62 for just a few days. Having our own room meant we didn’t have to throw on the Miss America smile and remember to talk about our “homework” from therapy around constant interruptions. We could go in our space, close the door, and pray the ugly prayers together.
I was personally working on realizing that Josh and I never intended to hurt each other, but when life had become too much, which seemed all the time, we withdrew into ourselves, assuming the other just wouldn’t understand. I learned that sin easily crept in by making us believe that we didn’t “get” each other. I had often believed that Josh just didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of me emotionally, because I can be complicated sometimes. Instead of opening the door to lies and assumptions, I should have used those opportunities to teach him what I needed. By default, I laid a lot of stuff on my friends, which actually drove a wedge between us. On our wedding day, we committed to “for better or for worse.” It’s easy to view “worse” as the day that Josh got blown up—this romantic idea of this unwavering wife running to be by her husband’s side at his worst moment. But I learned every day in counseling that transformation is bigger than a moment, that “worse” is not the event itself but the aftershocks and journey to follow. A moment can be catalytic for change, but it cannot erase the person you have been, nor can it create the person you want to be. A moment may open your eyes, but it doesn’t give you skills and wisdom to deal with a new reality, and your old ways of thinking aren’t sufficient for the journey ahead. The less we were in front of people, the more we became like our old selves—eye rolling, mumbles under our breath, hanging out in separate rooms. Bringing that up in therapy helped us develop new habits to start becoming the version of ourselves that everyone thought we were. Every day we moved closer toward who we wanted to be. Becoming our better selves was not going to be a blast of supernatural healing but rather a newfound commitment to honoring our marriage one small choice at a time.
Despite every step Josh was literally taking and the ones we were figuratively taking in mending our marriage, something else would come up that would put us four steps back. As winter approached, we began going through the disability rating assessment process, which would take months and months of assessing the veteran’s mental, emotional, and physical state and ultimately result in a disability rating. This rating would determine the amount of retirement pay, what jobs Josh could qualify for if he decided to stay in the military, and what our benefits would cover. Surgeries and procedures had dwindled to wound maintenance, and that sometimes happened at the bedside. Once major surgeries were over, we were ready to begin the assessment process. We had to book appointments for what seemed to be every body part. Some appointments showed really positive results of Josh’s recovery. His bone density and muscle density were better than what he would need to walk even if he still had his legs. Other appointments were not so good. We visited the urologist to check on the trauma to Josh’s reproductive organs.
This appointment will forever be filed under “really bad days at Walter Reed.” One of the long-term issues was that Josh would have spikes and plummets in his testosterone levels. I could always tell when
