I married my husband fresh out of college. We moved into an apartment, then a townhome. Like many newlyweds, we followed the same pattern: apartment, puppy, house, and eventually, babies. After living in a tiny apartment during my senior year of college, I was more than ready to make a home with my new husband in every sense of the word.
We hadn’t planned on buying a house so soon. But four months into our marriage, we drove by a home with a for sale sign in the front yard and fell in love. We could picture it all—holidays, babies, the mundane of daily life and planting temporary roots, despite what the military had to say about our dreams of permanency.
So we created a home. We hosted Thanksgiving and game nights. We bought patio furniture and hung string lights. Then, when we found out we were pregnant the following year, I daydreamed about the room at the end of the hall turning into a nursery.
Three months later, my belly barely showing, we stacked sandbags by the back door of our sweet southern home as the rain pounded down. Unsure of what would happen next, we waited. As the rain crept in, first through our guest bedroom floor, then the back door, and finally the front door, we frantically stacked our possessions on higher ground. Baskets went from the floor to the counter. Electronics went into the cupboards. New baby items went from the floor to the dresser. Clothing in the closets got tied up.
The One Hundred Year Flood, they told us—19 inches of rain in less than 24-four hours.
I can’t tell you how long it took after the rain started seeping in for the firefighters to knock on our door. It felt like days, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two. I don’t remember what I felt as we trudged through the rain to a friend’s house a block away on higher ground to stay the night.
I will never forget the feeling of not knowing what would be left of our first home—the home we painstakingly created as newlyweds, finally together after four and a half years of long distance. Not knowing which possessions would be ruined and which would be salvageable made my stomach lurch.
A year after the flood, I remember tongue-in-cheek telling a friend I could confidently look at every one of my possessions and say which ones, “I would save this in a flood.”
With each move, it feels like the stuff in our home means less. Not because I lack sentimentality, but because of this lifestyle. At its core, so much of this military life we live is temporary: the places, the relationships, even the hard seasons. All the stuff that comes with it, it’s all so very temporary.
Maybe this mindset shift would’ve happened naturally as the years went on. Maybe things wouldn’t mean as much with each move, each time we pack them into boxes. But something about hauling away ruined items to the curb after the flood changed my entire perspective.
When so much of this lifestyle is spent placing value on experiences and people—on its impermanence—wouldn’t it make sense to spend less time placing value on physical things?
I don’t want to spend time cleaning my home. I want to spend the valuable time we do have at each duty station living. I don’t want to hate the home we are privileged enough to live in for a few years of our lives because the clutter stresses me out. I want my kids to know the value of time and memories, not things and clutter. I want our days in these homes to be meaningful and intentional.
In those moments of throwing things on the countertops and higher ground, hoping they’d still be there when we came back, I knew everything I valued was leaving the house with us; my husband, the growing baby in my belly, our pets.
And with every move, I want my kids to feel the same.