Last week, I wrote about the brave women of whaling families who let their men go for months and years at a time while courageously holding down the fort. Today, I offer another shout out, admiration of and appreciation for their modern counterparts: the spouses of active duty service members.

Their husbands or wives are shipped off for tours to far away places, usually to face hard circumstances and often to handle unpleasant or even horrible duties.

And when those husbands or wives come home, they have to readjust to life together again, sometimes with the special challenges of injury, mental illness, or emotional distress thrown in to complicate matters.

They may have to move many times across the country or even around the world.

If there are children involved, they must do what they can to be both mother and father to those children during deployments and help the children readjust to every change, every sudden up or down, every normal childhood milestone that may be more complicated in the face of military life.

And while it’s true that some will quickly say, “This is what we signed up for and I am just doing what I need to do,” as far as I am concerned, they are not sincerely thanked nearly often enough.

Because it takes an incredible amount of courage to face the unknown and the what ifs, to remain faithful to one’s spouse when they are so far away, and to keep caring and supporting when the hazards of the job lead to additional relationship stress.

That is some kind of courage. And some kind of tenacious love.

In honor of these military spouses, I offer a very short poem, written in the voice of a committed wife writing to her deployed husband.

Many things may worry you but let this not be one.

My heart will be staying true until this trip is done.

And evermore. And evermore.

Some pain lodges in the mind and some invades the heart.

Release in Grace your pain can find while we remain apart.

And evermore. And evermore.

You will stand, risk, and obey until the time has passed.

Then you will come back one day, come home to me at last.

And evermore. And evermore.