Ashley Whitten

Brandon and I had an experience that I think took a lot of faith about a year ago. Brandon had been having some issues at work and decided that he was ready to look for some new opportunities. He became interested in joining the Air Force. I'm not sure exactly what sparked his interest (he had always expressed to me that he had no desire to join the military), but once he became interested, there didn't seem to be any way for me to talk him out of at least getting some more information. We met with a recruiter and we were actually feeling really good about joining the Air Force (for the most part) and so we decided to move forward and begin the application process. I had a lot of concerns and worries about it - I never wanted to be a "military wife" and I didn't want our children to have to grow up with their father gone for 6-7 months at a time (which is the average deployment time for the Air Force). Even though I had concerns, we continued to move forward with the process. We prayed all the time, hoping that we would get a "concrete" answer about what we should do in this situation. We became frustrated when an "ah-ha!" moment never really came to us. It got to the point where we just decided that since we didn't feel BAD about the decision to join the military, then it must be a GOOD decision. It wasn't until we had completed the application process completely (we were just awaiting acceptance) that we began feeling bad about our decision (mostly me). We realized that if this was the right decision, we wouldn't be feeling so sick about it. Sure, we might have concerns, but we would at least be at peace with the decision we'd made. This was not the case and ultimately, we decided to withdraw our application. I was confused by the experience because it had felt so "right" at first, only to end with our decision being the wrong one. I really think that we were supposed to go through that process for a few reasons. 1) It helped us realize that we can't live without each other and we would absolutely die if we had to spend months apart, 2) It definitely helped our testimonies grow and helped us to understand that we have a loving Heavenly Father who is always watching out for us and has a plan for us, and 3) I think we had to go so far into the application process before realizing it was the wrong decision so that when we decided to pull out, we knew without a doubt that the Air Force was not a good option for us - it allowed us to get ALL of the information that we could which helped us make the decision. I don't think a day has gone by since we withdrew Brandon's application when we thought maybe we made the wrong choice and should have joined the military. From that experience we learned that there are sometimes in life when you have to take a few steps (or 100 steps) into the dark and just have faith that Heavenly Father is going to steer you in the right direction.