On the Bubble (sorry, no pictures this time)

Since you all are praying for us anyway, I thought I would fill everyone in on where we sit (and I do mean sit...oh, and twiddle our thumbs) with our return to the states. As those of you who got our Christmas letter know, we said in our letter how we will be back in the states for good in September. And oh, how we all did laugh. Josh would change command then and Oklahoma here we'd come. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

After this past deployment, Schweinfurt got an entire new command team. New battery commanders, new batallion commander, new brigade commander. Not a bad thing, just new. So a few months ago, the guys were doing something, and Josh got an opportunity to talk with our new batallion commander, Col. Hite. He is a good guy, and a much better commander than our previous one (but I won't get into that here). So Josh says to Col. Hite how we've been here for 5 years, and how Josh is currently in his second command, how he's never been to the career course, and how he's supposed to leave in September. So the coloniel says to Josh something along the lines of, "Well, we can work with you on that. We can figure out a way to keep you in command longer and let you deploy with your soldiers. Then we'd just to a change of command in Iraq and go from there." Oh, he's a funny, funny man. Josh goes something like, "Um, no Sir. I want to LEAVE in September. I want to do my change of command then, and I want to say goodbye to Germany for good then." To which the coloniel simply said, "Well, you're on the bubble." And the conversation was interrupted and thus ended. Never to have been continued.

It's really kind of funny when you think about it. I like to tease Josh that he'll get stuck and sent back to Iraq, he'll get his early look for Major sometime while he's gone, and make the list. Then he'll have come to German as a 2nd Lieutenant, and left as a Major, without ever having gone to the career course. I'm such a brat sometimes...hehehe. Anyhoo...

On the bubble. This means another stop-loss is going to hit our community sometime around September/October...maybe. This means we stand a good chance of getting stuck in Germany for another year and a half or so. This means Josh would deploy to Iraq for another year. On the bubble. This also means that everything could still go according to our plan. This means Josh could change command in September. This means we could be leaving Germany for good in September. Right now, we just don't know. Sigh.

I want to know. I want to know if I will be spending my summer trying to get our household goods shipped, and working out plane tickets and all that stuff, or if I'm going to spend my summer FINALLY learning German and working on getting Zeke into a German kinder class. I want to know if I can volunteer for the PWOC board for next year. I don't even really care which way it goes at this point. Obviously I don't want Josh to deploy again, ever, but I love it here and it wouldn't be a terrible thing to stay a little longer. I do want to be closer to you all and be able to see you all without having to spend hundreds (or thousands, currently) of dollars to get to wherever.

So, pray for us. Pray mostly that God's will would be done and that we would have the peace and grace to accept it. If you want to be more specific, you could pray that everything works out and we get to leave. Unless you're like my dear friend Sandra, and you don't want us to leave, then you can pray that we have to stay. But I guess, mostly pray that a decision would be made soon just so that we can know.