Guest Blog for JFY Photography

Guest Blog for JFY Photography 

When I met my husband four years ago, I knew almost instantly that I wanted to marry him. I fell in love faster than I knew was even possible and could not imagine my life without him in it. He is my best friend in the world, the person I can count on in any situation and the person who never judges anything I do or say. He’s there, standing beside me, supporting me through everything I choose to do. I had to make a decision very early on if I would be able to do the same thing for him with his career. My husband is a flight engineer with the Canadian Air Force, a job that didn’t seem to be very dangerous until and he deployed to Afghanistan. 

When he deployed in December of 2009, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know when or if I would get to talk to him, if he was safe or even what he was doing. I quickly became one of those women (a fiancée at the time) who stayed home and sat by the phone, waiting to hear some news. And I questioned myself and my ability to be the support he really needed me to be. I got through that tour (my first, his second) the best I knew how and realized that it made my feelings for him stronger and really made me appreciate my time with him so much more. That first tour proved to me that I am strong enough to be a supportive military wife, which is something I didn’t know I had in me.

A couple of weeks before my husband deployed for his third tour of Afghanistan (in March 2011), a good friend of mine told me that Becky (with JFY Photography) was  offering free photo sessions for deploying families, with the condition that the soldier  be in uniform. I had heard about things like this before and was sad that I didn’t think about doing it before his tour in 2009.  My husband and I both thought it was a great idea to have them done and booked a session with Becky right away. Every minute we were all outside, freezing for these amazing photos, was completely worth it.

Becky asked me to write and explain why we decided to have these photos done. One of the biggest reasons for me to do this was that I wanted to have something that shows how proud my husband is to be a soldier and something that shows how proud I am of him. We have so many pictures of the two of us- from parties and vacations- that just show us having a good time. We have hundreds of incredible wedding photos that show how much we love each other. But we didn’t have anything showing the military part of our lives, which is probably the biggest part. 

For me, these photos show how proud I am of my husband. They are another way for me to show how much I love him and really support him in his career. Deployment is such a hard and emotional time, and having this photo session relieved a lot of the stress that happens before he leaves. It gave us such a huge positive in the middle of a stressful time and I couldn’t be happier to have done this. It was the last big thing we did together before he deployed and we have such incredible mementos of this period in our lives because of it. Every time I look at the photos I get to remember how much fun we had that day, laughing (and freezing!) and how for that hour, regardless of what he was wearing, we got to forget about the deployment, forget about how much we’d miss each other and really forget about the months of worrying that were ahead of us. We got to concentrate on just being us and being happy.

I remember reading all of the comments these pictures got and really not understanding why they made people sad. Sure I cried when I saw them but I cried because I’m so proud of what my husband is doing and am so happy to have him in my life. The photo session was emotional but it was such a positive experience. Sessions like this should be seen as an opportunity to show the love and the strength in a military family. The men and women who do that job are so courageous and this is another way for the families to support them. And really, who doesn’t like have incredible pictures to show off?