A Letter from the In-between
My Dearest Friend,
I am writing this from a borrowed room.
Not mine. Not ours. Just a space we have been welcomed into for a night, or a few, while everything that belongs to us is somewhere else. The house we called home only days ago is no longer ours to return to, and the home that will one day hold us has not yet been reached. Our lives exist now in suitcases and scattered shipments, in carefully packed bags and hastily opened ones on unfamiliar floors.
There is a strange dissonance in this season. We are not where we were, but we are not yet where we are going. We wake in spaces that are kind but not our own. We move through days without the rhythms that once grounded us. There is no familiar drawer to reach into, no well-worn routine to fall back on, no sense of permanence to anchor us.
And yet, life continues.
We still share meals, even if they come from takeout containers balanced on hotel desks. We still laugh at the same jokes. We still navigate the small chaos of family life—finding pajamas in the wrong bag, searching for chargers, settling a toddler in a room that looks nothing like the one she knew last week. We are unsettled, yes, but we are still living.
Military life asks this of us more often than most: to exist in spaces that are temporary, to find ourselves between beginnings and endings, to carry on in seasons that feel unfinished. The instinct, at least for me, is to move through it quickly. To fill the time. To look ahead. To prepare for what comes next.
But there is very little to prepare for here.
The house is packed. The goodbyes have been said. The responsibilities of the last chapter have been laid down, and the responsibilities of the next have not yet arrived. For once, there is no list to complete, no task to check off, no way to rush what comes next into being.
We have done what we can.
And so, we find ourselves here—in the in-between.
The Lesson
The in-between is uncomfortable because it strips away the things that make us feel settled: our homes, our routines, our sense of place. But it also reveals something we often overlook. For a brief stretch of time, we are not being asked to build, to establish, to prove, or to perform. We are simply being asked to live the days in front of us.
This season is not empty space between chapters. It is a chapter of its own.
To the Spouse Walking Through the In-Between
You may find yourself unsettled, living out of bags, sleeping in borrowed spaces, missing the comfort of what once felt familiar. You may feel the pull to rush forward, to arrive, to begin again as quickly as possible.
But this season does not need to be hurried.
You have done what you can. The next chapter will come in its time, whether you spend these days worrying about it or not.
So for now, allow yourself to be here.
Let the days be simple, even if they are imperfect. Let yourself enjoy the small moments of connection, the unexpected pockets of rest, the rare opportunity to exist without being pulled in every direction at once.
You are not behind. You are not lost. You are simply between.
And there is still life to be lived here, too.
