Last weekend, we celebrated Josh’s first full year as a Georgia resident.

My year anniversary was back in early September of last year.

We were separated by 2500 miles for seven months – not because of fighting, not because of a strained relationship. It was more a working together over a long chunk of time to make the move to Georgia a reality for our family. Logistically, it took a really long time for both of us to get here. We bought our house in Effingham county in 2008, and we waited for 4 years before making the jump. We wanted to be smart about it; we wanted to be ready.

Becoming self employed in 2010 was the first piece of the puzzle – what I’d do for work out in the sticks became a no-brainer. And then in 2012, things continued to fall into place. We got a nice chunky tax refund to pay for the move. So move we did. But Josh’s stay in our new home was temporary, and he flew back to California shortly after the boxes were all in our house.

His work situation for Georgia was still up in the air. He wanted to explore job options out here so he’d know he was making the right move pursuing the pd he works at today; I wanted to be a supportive wife. So he lived with our friend Jay’s family in southern California while I held down the fort on the east coast.

Being separated sucks when both halves of the couple actually really like each other.

Stressful single parent days on my end. Lonely days without seeing our amazing son on his end. Short, terse phone calls on a phone provider (AT&T) that gets ridiculously bad reception in the country.

No end to the days and days of being apart.

An email to my pastor at Living Faith Church brought some insight – upon hearing our situation, he replied:

 “Ask God what He is teaching you in all this. Patience, Faith, Trust, etc?
Probably all of the above.”

And then, finally, after months and months of our frustratingly long distance marriage, Josh got hired at the pd. He moved to Georgia for good. We got to be marrieds again.

And our seven month separation has helped make me a more patient wife.

I used to get extremely frustrated with Josh’s work schedule. Nights, weekends, holidays, you name it he works it. I just couldn’t deal with the fact that I had to juggle everything while he was either working or sleeping. I wasn’t always nice about it.

Now, for the most part… The crazy hours of his job don’t bother me. I’ve had seven months of not seeing my husband at all except for short weekend visits every month or two. Having a string of days where I only see him for an hour at the end of the day when we’re both ready to drop from exhaustion isn’t as tragic as it used to feel.

Getting to see this guy at all is really what’s important, and I feel like I’m getting better and better every day at accepting the work schedule, rolling with it, and just being patient.

(Note I said I’m getting better every day. This gal still ain’t perfect.)

What about you – has your marriage grown after a serious learning experience?

Let’s chat about it in the comments!