I’ve been a fire wife for 13 years. Sometimes people say, “I don’t know how you do it,” or “how do you do it?” As I stood at the cemetery yesterday on another Fire Fighter Sunday, a gorgeous day, watching my hubby in his Class A’s, my boys at my side, my mother in law with us, I wasn’t thinking about the how, rather, I was thinking about the why.

Why do we do what we do? Short answer… Love. I do what I do because of my love for my husband. Love doesn’t make this fire life that we have easy. There have even been times when love hasn’t even felt like it was enough. But when times get tough and I start to think of love as a feeling more than an action and a choice, this life that we have chosen, seems impossibly hard. I have learned and forgotten, and relearned and forgotten, and relearned again and again, that I can’t rely on my feelings and emotions to dictate my why. My why is clear and it hasn’t changed. My why is why we said our vows at our wedding. My why is why we put rings on each other’s fingers and made promises to last a lifetime. My why is love. And as I showed up for him and watched him standing there with his brothers, I felt incredibly proud of the job that he does and the man that he is.

How do I do it, is another question entirely. I do what I do because that’s the life that we chose. This fire life is the life that we chose. I do it because God allows me to do it. He is with me through it all. He provides me with strength and energy and my daily bread. For better or for worse. Some days and weeks and months (like this one) when there is more hours spent at the station than there is at home, when teenagers say they feel like they haven’t seen their dad in days or ask when dad will be home are hard. When it feels like all I do is drop off and pick up and prepare meals and clean up and am just zombie exhausted, truth is, I don’t know how I do it. All I know is that I just do. I believe it takes a village, and I think the village mentality is great, but sometimes there are things that your village can’t do. Sometimes there are things, mountains of things happening at the same time or overlapping times, or time after time, that is not for any member of the village and are just for me. Sometimes I can do it all and sometimes I can’t. And at the end of the day, no matter if I could or couldn’t, I usually don’t know how I did it. But I always know why. And I know my village is there, cheering me on, asking how they can help, but sometimes I just need to be an island, because all of the things are taking up every crevice of my brain and I’m overstimulated and overwhelmed and adding another thing, like time with the village while my hubby is away is just another thing and sometimes I just need to be here, just doing what needs to be done.

It’s convention week again. I swear, whoever planned this during the last week of school must not have children. By the time he returns, he will be getting ready to roll right into his shifts, that I am already assuming will be a 72. It’s a busy week. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I know why. To all of you out there reading this, if you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed, don’t think about your how tonight, maybe instead think about your why.