The Rip Tide Perspective

I recently sat on a panel of senior military spouses—or, as I like to define "senior," people old enough to remember life before Facebook.

The first question was simple:

"What do you wish you'd known in Year One that you know now?"

The woman at the end answered first.

"I wish I'd known you can't control anything. Once you accept that, everything gets easier."

I actually remember hearing those exact words over twenty years ago.

And honestly?

She's right.

Military life is full of things you simply don't get a vote on. Orders arrive. Deployments happen. Schools change. Training gets extended. Friends leave. Sometimes terrible things happen that no amount of planning, praying, or positive thinking can prevent.

I've watched spouses wear themselves completely out trying to fight realities that were never theirs to control. Accepting those limits really does make life easier. It's the difference between constantly swimming upstream and finally admitting the river is stronger than you.

But when it was my turn to answer, I couldn't help adding one small amendment.

I think military spouses have far more control than we give ourselves credit for.

I call it the Rip Tide Perspective.

Lifeguards tell you that if you're caught in a rip current, the worst thing you can do is try to swim straight back to shore. You'll exhaust yourself long before you make any progress and will eventually drown.

Instead, you’re supposed to relax and float, letting the current carry you out.

Now, that advice sounds wonderfully zen until you picture yourself actually being dragged farther and farther away from the beach. I'd imagine "Relax" is not your first instinct while your family is becoming tiny dots on the shoreline.

But the lifeguards know something you don't.

The current doesn't last forever.

Eventually it weakens. And when it does, you don't allow yourself to keep floating aimlessly out to sea. That’s when they tell you to start swimming parallel to shore, out of the current's grip, and then make your way back to the beach under your own power.

That, to me, is military life.

There are seasons when the mission is the rip current. You don't choose the orders. You don't choose the timing. You don't choose the uncertainty. Fighting those things only leaves you exhausted and drowning.

So yes. Accept the current. Do your best to relax. (As I’ve mentioned in the past, I highly recommend screaming in the woods and/or smashing old TVs with sledgehammers.)

But don't confuse accepting the temporary rip current with surrendering your life forever.

Somewhere along the way, many military spouses accidentally begin treating themselves like another household good—packed into the moving truck, unloaded at the next duty station, and stored passively until someone else decides what's next.

I wish I'd known in Year One that I wasn't luggage.

I could still decide what kind of person I wanted to become. We have an incredible amount of agency in our life if we simply look up and take advantage of the unique opportunities all around us. 

I could go back to school. Start a business. Learn a trade. Join a club. Discover a new passion. Get a job. Volunteer. Build new friendships. Invite old friends to visit. Explore my new city instead of mourning my old one. Travel. Create. Read. Write. Reinvent myself, my home, my profession and my hobbies as many times as military life requires or the mood strikes. 

The military might change my address, but it doesn’t have to determine my identity or my daily schedule.

That's why I think the first answer wasn't wrong, it was just incomplete.

The Serenity Prayer doesn't stop after "accept the things I cannot change."

It continues:

"Grant me the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

To thrive, military life requires both.

The fool fights the current until she drowns from exhaustion.

Another fool lets the current carry her forever, convinced she has no power in her life.

But the wise woman does something different.

She lets the current do what the current does.

But then she lifts her head.

She scans the horizon.

She notices opportunities instead of only obstacles. Adventures instead of interruptions. New beginnings hidden inside unwanted endings.

And when the pull begins to loosen, she doesn't just float.

She begins to swim.