Making Sense of the Senseless

I crave understanding.

It is built into who I am, it's not something I can turn off.

When I understand something I can deal with almost anything.

Sadly there are some things in life that you just can't really understand. No matter how hard you try you just can't make sense of it. I find many of these things pop up in the military life style.

I find myself asking 'why' quite a lot. Sometimes I get an answer and sometimes not so much. I'm sure my children understand even less than I do. In fact there is a lot my husband doesn't even understand, he usually cannot answer 'why' when I ask him with anything other than 'just because'. But that's a soldier for you. :)

These days the ability to understand the 'why' behind the events happening around me is diminishing quickly. Far too often for my liking I'm being told I have to endure something else unpleasant 'just because'. It is days like this me and the Army aren't such good friends.

I think it would be easier if I didn't try to understand........because then I could just blindly hate the Army. That is not the case, the truth is deep down I do know there are reasons behind everything they are asking of myself and my family, and even though I want to hate them, I simply cannot. So then I'm conflicted which creates more emotions in an already over emotional person haha. Then normal annoyances become much bigger annoyances until there's a meltdown over a change of plans, or dirty dishes in the sink (laugh all you want now, but it's a big deal at the time :-p).

Once a meltdown hits over something small I know it's time to sit down with myself and do 2 things in this order: 1) Have a good cry. 2) Force myself to rationally look at the situation and accept that I cannot control what goes on around me, I cannot change the course of events unfolding and sometimes it's ok not to understand everything, understanding myself and my emotions is an accomplishment enough.

I also find that finding something you CAN control is helpful, or slipping into a good book. It also doesn't hurt to repeat the serenity prayer to yourself once, twice or a hundred times......however many you need. ;-)