A Bizarre Twist in Our Story

This morning, Jeremy had to be at work at 5:15 am. He’s out at the range today all day and probably won’t be home until 11 or 12 tonight. Coop and I took him to work this morning, then came back home and back to bed. But at 7:30 am, my hubby sent me a text message. By now I was surprised I was still asleep because Cooper usually wakes me up before 7.

Here’s how our early morning texting went:

Jeremy: “You awake?”

Me: “I am now!”

Jeremy: “sorry, go back to sleep and call me later.”

Me: “k. is everything ok?”

Jeremy: “yeah”

Me: “not convinced”

…and the phone rings.

Jeremy proceeds to tell me that he has been assigned to the arabic language school by the CO (Captain). I was kind of stunned. Our friend, Patrick Casey, went through this school and it’s super tough. It’s a 10-month long intense language school with hours of homework EVERY night. And not only are they learning language, but they will be learning a lot of cultural things. It’s almost like a cultural class with an emphasis on conversational language skills. Additionally, it means that he won’t be participating in the training exercises or day-to-day duties that the guys in his platoon will be performing.

I asked him what he thought and at this point, we weren’t sure how things were going to go. We said we’d just pray about it and see how things went. But we both felt uneasy about it. He told me he had an interview with the Lt. Colonel/BC on Friday and didn’t know what to expect.

Well, come this afternoon, he told me he was taken out of the field and up to the BC for that interview! He was just told this morning that he would be doing this! He went in front of the BC and basically it lasted all of 2 minutes. The BC said, “So you want to be a language enabled soldier?” What the heck is that? As if Jeremy, a Specialist, is going to tell the Lt. Colonel no sir the CO voluntold me I would be doing this? Sheesh….

Jeremy and I haven’t had much time to talk about things and we are both kind of in shock and reeling from all this news. The nice thing is that the language school is literally down the street from our house. Jeremy can walk there. I don’t think it’s even 4 blocks from our house. It also means he won’t go to Yakima or be gone for that kind of training. But it does mean he’ll be gone every day of the week till 5 and he’s guaranteed hours of homework each night and over the weekend. He was told that “they” would be monitering his grades. That’ll make ya nervous right?

School starts August 5 and there’s no changing what’s been dealt from on high. Like I said, I’m in schock and not sure what this all means. Is it a good thing, a bad thing or just a thing? We aren’t sure and it’ll just have to play out for us to see it.

2 Things Jeremy said today were maybe this is a challenge that God is offering to him. A chance to show him that he can do more than he thinks he can do. And maybe this will encourage Jeremy to move towards taking more college classes and finish up his degree.

I can tell from just our quick phone conversations that he’s nervous and maybe even a little excited. It will look good on his resume in the civilian world, that’s for sure. But it’s a hard language to learn because it’s not a romantic language. It’s very contrary to what he knows. Can you imagine learning/mastering a language in 10 months? It took me YEARS to get to even a remotely confident conversational level with my french in highschool/college. YEARS!

Please pray for Jeremy and for me. Oh yeah…we also think this may mean that Jeremy will not go to NTC in California in February because he will still be in Arabic school. So one thing this answers is our question as to whether or not he would be home for baby #2’s grand entrance into the world. We like that idea. 😉