It was a normal day at work, or so I thought. I was busily plugging away at a project on my computer when the desk phone rang. It was my husband calling.

I picked up the phone and he told me the words I had been dreading. We’re moving.

When I first met my husband three years earlier, he already had two strikes against him. He was over a foot taller than me. And he was in the military.

I realize that might not be on most people’s “future spouse criteria” list, but they were both on mine. Why? Because I was afraid of the military lifestyle. Moving from place to place and having to start over building relationships and a career did not seem appealing. And the worst thing that could happen, in my mind, was getting stationed somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

But God has a sense of humor and a little over two years after that first meeting, hubs and I tied the knot, despite the fact that he was in the military.

And about a year and a half into our marriage I got the dreaded phone call. Not only were we moving, we were moving to the middle of nowhere. I left work that day in tears. My fears had become a reality.

It’s funny now to think back on that day as we approach almost a decade of marriage. Being a military spouse has left me wondering many times whether I was really cut out for the job. But it has also brought me more joy and opportunities than I ever would have imagined.

There are many challenges that come with the military lifestyle. There are many days I want to throw in the towel and call it quits. BUT there are many blessings that come with this lifestyle as well.

So today, on this Military Spouse Appreciation Day, I want to focus on the unexpected blessings of being a military spouse. (If you didn’t know, Military Spouse Appreciation Day is celebrated each May on the Friday prior to Mother’s Day).

Friendships. There’s a popular meme that says that military children will say goodbye to more significant relationships by the time they turn 18 than most people will have in a lifetime. The flip side to this, however, is that they will have experienced that many significant relationships. The same is true for military spouses.

We have a unique opportunity to build relationships with people that we otherwise never would have gotten to know – both relationships with others living the military lifestyle and relationships with those in the civilian world.

Military spouse friendships are unlike any I have encountered. We are brought together by a special bond forged out of a mutual understanding of a life of TDYs, deployments, long hours, frequent moves and living far from family. When it comes to enrolling kids in activities, it’s not uncommon to meet someone and say, “It’s nice to meet you. Will you be my child’s emergency contact?”

It takes time to get to know someone on a heart level, to move past surface-level conversations to soul-deep conversations. And yet military spouses know how to do this quickly. We know that we most likely only have a few years together at best and we want our time to count.

One of my favorite examples of this came the week we moved to a new duty station for my husband to attend school. I had been added to a Facebook group created specifically for student spouses. A spouse posted on there that it was her birthday and she’d like to celebrate, but hadn’t yet met anyone. Six of us went out to dinner as strangers that night, and spent the evening sharing our stories, fears, hopes and dreams over street tacos and margaritas. We left as friends.

I also have to give a shout out to the civilian friends who open up their hearts to military friendships. I have encountered plenty of individuals who have no interest in building relationships with military spouses because of the fact that we will probably only be around for a few years. But I have also met those who embraced my friendship anyway. And I am truly grateful for them.

Our non-military friends remind us that there is a world outside the military. They introduce us to the hidden gems, give us recommendations on which service providers to use, and teach us more about the ins-and-outs of the local culture. Saying goodbye is never easy, so the longer I am a military spouse, the more I appreciate my non-military friends who understand this, but who are still willing to offer me their friendship.

Perspective. You may have heard the phrase, “join the military and see the world.” That hasn’t so much happened for me. It took us almost ten years of marriage to get an assignment outside the Southern United States. I’ve still never lived outside the Central Standard Time zone. But even within the same geographic region, I’ve gained a broader perspective on life – something that can be difficult to do when you’ve lived in the same area your entire life. It’s easy to assume that everyone else thinks a certain way, uses certain phrases or does things in a specific manner.

What is culturally normative in one area, however, is seen as strange somewhere else. This applies to both the big and the little things. I suppose I should have learned my lesson when I first got married. This girl from Texas was completely baffled by her new husband from Minnesota who would regularly take his shoes off and leave them by the front door. Why would you do that? It wasn’t until we moved out of the South, that I realized he wasn’t weird. That’s just what people in the Midwest do.

People Skills. I’m what would be referred to as an “ambivert.” I love spending time with people and sharing life with them, but going out of my way to meet someone new does not come naturally to me. Small talk annoys me. And yet, the military lifestyle has forced me out of my comfort zone. I’ve learned how to strike up a conversation with someone I just met. I’ve learned to call a relative stranger out of the blue and ask if we can get to know each other. I’ve learned to take action steps that I probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise. And I am a better person for it.

Resilience. There are many things that get thrown at you as a military spouse. There are many holidays spent without your significant other. There are many days of solo parenting. There are many opportunities to make the best of a difficult situation. There are many things you thought you couldn’t handle, until you had to handle them. The deployment curse is real. If it can go wrong, it will happen when your spouse is gone. I’ve learned to be resilient.

But even more than my resilience, this military lifestyle is helping my children develop resilience. No, it’s not easy watching your children say goodbye to significant relationships. It’s not reassuring to know that your two-year-old is already living in her third house and legitimately has no roots. But I am grateful that we are giving them an education and a foundation for the future.

We are helping them process big feelings. They are learning that life doesn’t revolve around them and that it isn’t always easy or fun. They are learning how to embrace change and make the best of challenging situations. These life skills will benefit them for the rest of their lives. And they are better for it.

Confidence. Confidence is what helps us rise to meet a challenge. It is developed through both our belief in our ability to respond to adversity and through taking action. In other words, through both mindset and forward motion. We must believe that we are capable and then we must act. Through taking action, we grow, learn and develop our knowledge, skills and abilities. As our competence grows, our confidence does as well.  

In the summer of 2016, I was pregnant with my second daughter and my husband was set to deploy in a few weeks. I opened my email one day to find a message from our landlord, saying they had decided to not renew our lease. Suddenly I was faced with the challenge of finding a new place to live, and moving while pregnant with a toddler and a deployed husband. I panicked. I cried. I gave myself a day to mope. And then hubs and I made a plan.

We hadn’t yet done a do-it-yourself move as a married couple, but I had moved plenty of times as a single young adult and I had watched movers pack for us before. The situation was not ideal, but I could handle this.

Thankfully, hubs decided we should move before he left. It took us a few days to find a new rental, two weeks of packing each night after my toddler went to bed, a weekend (and some hungry volunteers) to get our stuff moved into the new house, and a couple days to get the heavy items set in place. Hubs said goodbye and headed off on his deployment, while I spent a few more weeks unpacking each evening.

I took the skills that I had and I built on them. I believed we could handle it and we took action. No, it wasn’t fun. But we did it. And through taking action, my competence and my confidence grew. I’m sure I will face many more un-ideal situations, but with each situation, my confidence in my ability to handle it grows as well.

Curiosity. I originally entitled this article the five unexpected blessings of being a military spouse, well, because five seemed like a good number. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided to include a bonus blessing – curiosity. I’m an avid book reader and while I love all genres, I really enjoy the field of personal development/growth. One theme that keeps coming up in several of the books I’ve read lately is curiosity.

Curiosity is what drives our desire to learn new things. Curiosity drives us to both be genuinely interested in others, and to contribute to the world around us in some way.

The longer that I am a military spouse, the more I try to cultivate curiosity. I have been at duty stations that I loved and ones that I didn’t love, but in every place I have been, curiosity has helped me embrace the location. Even in my least favorite locations, there were hidden gems to find and amazing people to get to know. Curiosity, ultimately, is the catalyst for each of the other blessings I mentioned. 

As much as this military lifestyle sometimes annoys me, I know that I have received so much from being a part of it. There is plenty of heartache, sacrifice, tears and frustration. But there is also plenty of joy, peace and a richness of experience.

What about you? If you are a military spouse, share your favorite part of this lifestyle in the comments. If you’re not, the next time you encounter a military spouse, consider sharing an encouraging word or offering the gift of your friendship. It might be just the thing he or she needs.