I’m a military spouse.
That means I hop states and continents faster than the Coronavirus.
Which means I make friends like I’m speed dating.
Back in my civilian days, I would approach potential friends like a not-so-desperate person.
First, I’d spy out women with similar interests or personalities and sit by those potential friends in class or at church.
Then, I might suggest we grab “coffee” (ethereal word for something we will never drink together) “sometime.”
We would exchange phone numbers, talk about how great it would be to get together, then call each other exactly NEVER.
We would continue to run into each other at various stores and events, and we would continue to mention how great it would be to be “real” friends.
But we would never actually get to being friends until we’d played the “we-really-should-get-together-sometime” card exactly 5,328 times, just to ensure we weren’t jumping in too fast, too soon.
Listen.
After 16 years of military life, I no longer have any tact.
I no longer have any patience.
I no longer have any filter.
Because for 16 years, I haven’t had any TIME.
As a milspouse, I have two, maybe three good years to dig in and get cozy with my girlfriends so we can deliver deployment donuts, shop for exercise clothes we’re going to pretend to actually use and not just lounge in for the next six months of deployment, carpool our collective 38 children and potluck together until the cows come home.
The women I stalk — I mean, meet — and I are either going to be BFF or we’re not, and if we’re not, I’d like to know about it on our first Starbucks date. That way, I don’t embarrass myself by sharing my deepest, darkest secrets on a second outing and then have her put out warnings on the Next Door App when she realizes I have one big mouth and zero filter.
But I don’t have a year to warm up to decide if we actually WANT to grab coffee before we start talking about surface-level things, like how you talk to your male humans about penis hygiene when the only other person in the house with said penis is constantly gone, because by the time we start talking about what’s REALLY going on in our lives, I will be MOVING.
We have chocolate to down, group parenting to embrace, husbands to FaceTime and planned vacations to miss.
We don’t have time for shallow.
This realization has driven me to some extreme measures in my military friend-making life.
(All friends made in the era before Super-Spouse issued me a military ID card — count your blessings. And maybe stop reading here. I’d like to salvage your image of our relationship.)
When we moved to Washington and I had gone three weeks without meeting a single friend, I started a Monday Mommy Madness Walk. (What this is, I’m still not sure.) I took a picture of myself holding my screaming toddler, plastered our faces to posters and then listed a time to meet if the poster viewer, too, needed to get out of the house on Mondays.
Because this is what the 20-something-year-old version of myself considered good social practices.
I stuck these scary things to every mailbox in our neighborhood and waited for women who were clearly as desperate as me to show up to a Monday Mommy Madness Walk.
By the grace of God, 10 women showed up.
Five decided I wasn’t crazy.
Two remain my friends to this day (God bless them).
When we’d lived in the state for five more seconds, our unit “sponsor” family called to see if I needed to borrow a pack-n-play while I waited for our household goods to arrive.
I took this to mean she also wanted to know if I needed a new local bestie, and immediately made plans to eat dinner at her house, start double dating with her husband and, two years later, hold her hand as I delivered our second child while my soldier was on a broken down plane in Germany.
When we were moving from Texas to Kentucky, a woman I had never met approached me at a speaking event and told me that I just had to be friends with her friend Tiffany once I moved to Kentucky.
Normal people smile, nod and then promptly throw away third-party numbers given to them by strangers at public venues.
I saved mine on the first page of my moving binder.
One of my first emails upon arrival in the Bluegrass State was not to my landlord, my utility company or my family; it was to the friend of this non-friend who I had spoken to for 5 seconds at a speaking engagement.
And we immediately became friends for life.
I became friends with my now dear friend Kelly when I ran into her two duty stations after our first meeting on a separate coast in a separate church and she hugged me and so beautifully, refreshingly demanded, “I know we’ve never hung out before, but let’s get together. Here’s my number.
No, really. Put it in your phone now. Call me this week.”
We stalked our then weekly potlucking friend Ali by illegally using my access to our church’s military ministry email list and repeatedly emailing the woman with the sweet smile and the huge heart until she agreed to be our Thursday night friend. (Slim Thompson, if you’re reading this, remember that Jesus forgives.)
By the time Leia and I had spent one Musikgarten class with our toddlers, who played and sang and danced to folk tunes while we rudely chatted through all Miss Susan’s teacher instructions, we were already asking each other how we could help the other with babysitting, meals or medical taxi trips to and from the hospitals that both of us considered our vacation resort homes.
Five seconds later, this girl who has since become my soulmate sister and I were texting through the night and essentially starting orphanages together on the homefront of our husbands’ deployments.
(And this is why you should never leave your spouse on the homefront with dangerous, Jesus-loving friends and a legally binding Power of Attorney.)
I stalked Kara when she attended one Friday Bible study and I decided she needed to be in our posse. And also completely give up her life to coaching Odyssey of the Mind.
I stalked Kristy when she moved in next to Kara and saw that she had already raised real, live, beautiful humans and this hot mess of a girl needed major mama help.
I stalked Liesel when I recognized her from a church we had attended together in Washington and also secretly coveted her legs of steel. Before I knew it, we were bonding over burpees in garages in summer sweat.
I stalked Angela when she adopted our host child and, after one in-person play date at the beach, we taught our kids to call each other "cousins." (Welcome to the family, Angela! Hope you're into creepy.)
And I text tracked no fewer than eight other friends of friends after one walk, one Bible study, one orphan care conversation.
And essentially made all of them promise to be my BFFs for life.
(Other dear friends I consider my sisters, I love you just as much as these sisters I met through my super scary stalking ways! Our friendship story is just as precious, and probably less creepy, than these ones that are going to get me kicked off my church’s military ministry team. J)
These military friendships may have started in speed dating, but all of them have ended in sisterhood.
You don’t pick lice out of each other’s hair, help bury each other’s miscarried babies and rip the pants off just anyone in the delivery room as her baby is crowning while her husband is stuck on a broken down plane in Germany.
Once you’ve seen the vajay-jay and heard the drug-less baboon labor wail, we gonna be friends for life.
It's a special bond, and it's a sacred sisterhood.
And on this, my last Military Spouse Appreciation Day as an active duty spouse, I am out-of-my-mind, beyond-belief, on-my-knees-praising-Jesus thankful for it.
Happy Military Spouse Appreciation Day, sweet military sisters.
You are truly one of the most beautiful things about this life.