By Sara Horn

Deployments are tough. When my husband was gone there were days I did okay and then there were days I wished I could press snooze on the alarm clock and not wake up until he came home! But like anything in life, deployment is just one more bump in the road we face and it’s our choice on how we handle the potholes.

In April I had the privilege of speaking at a spouse brunch held during the National Guard Association of Louisiana’s annual officer convention. My host for the weekend was a red-headed Guard wife, Tawney, who was kind enough to be my ride from and to the airport.

Tawny had emailed me a couple of months before and mentioned that she and a few other wives were planning on going to the officer’s ball, despite the fact that their husbands were all in Iraq. Under any other circumstances, I probably would have bowed out gracefully at the invitation to attend another unit’s ball, but two things convinced me: my curiosity since I have yet to attend a Seabee ball for my husband’s Navy Reserve battalion, and admiration for wives who weren’t letting deployment stop them from having a little fun.

I wasn’t disappointed. Tawny and Nancy (another Guard wife) and I spent the evening eating, laughing, and talking like old friends – something I’ve noticed isn’t too hard to do with other military wives. There were also some tearful moments, like the wreath of yellow ribbons marched during the flag ceremony in place of the brigade currently deployed that includes Tawny and Nancy’s husbands, and the yellow roses that were solemnly brought to each as the wife of a deployed soldier. But funny times also graced the night, like the bobble-head soldier with a picture of Nancy’s husband’s face on it who joined us at the table that evening for all of the festivities.

What I loved most about these strong wives is that they made it a point to not just attend this weekend’s events for their husbands – but they represented them and did it well. I was impressed at how often they stopped to walk over and talk to officers their husbands knew, making sure to remember names and conversations they would go back to their rooms and skype about with their own soldiers later.

It would have been very easy for these wives to have stayed home. Or to have come for the spouse brunch but not the ball. Instead, they threw on their dancing shoes, got dressed up and came to enjoy themselves, deployment be damned.

Months from now, after the deployment is over and these women are once again in the arms of their men, they will have a chance to reflect on how they handled things.

No doubt they will look back at this weekend and smile. They had the choice to survive but instead, they chose to thrive. We should all aspire to approach life with the same choice and goal.

Contact Sara at sara@sarahorn.com, or visit her blog at www.sarahorn.com.