The Blessings of Technology

I'm going to write a short post on how grateful I am for Technology in my life.

In 2007 my husband was deployed and I was working in a nursing home. The Veterans and past army wives there would love to talk to me about the hardships of a deployment. I couldn't help but feel like I had it easy. They told me about 2 year deployments, where letters were the only communication, they took weeks if not months to deliver. You never got phone calls, nobody came to your door if something had happened to your spouse. All you had was a letter, dated a month ago assuring you that they were at least fine then. Now? Who knew.

I got phone calls, emails, photos, and a couple of times we even got to Skype. Technology is amazing. From thousands of miles away my husband got to hear our daughters newborn baby cry the day after she was born. When she was older he called on Skype and got to see her attempt to dance along to music, bobbing her little head. Technology held our family together in a way we couldn't have imagined. He got to experience important parts of our life through a phone call, or a video emailed straight to him.

When our daughter was two he deployed again, this time he had even more access to computers. He got to Skype often and Zoey loved it.

Zoey fed him cheerios via webcam, Daddy pretended to eat them. He even called Christmas morning and watched her open presents.

We made her a slideshow with pictures of Daddy, and took videos of Daddy reading her books that she could watch before bed. She would ask for the "Daddy movies" and give him hugs when his photo appeared on the computer.

Zoey would take a tape recorder to bed with her, he had recorded himself talking to her, telling her stories, telling her he loves and misses her. She would listen to that thing every night. It kept him close, we did so many things through the blessings of technology that our little girl never forgot his voice, it helped her cope with him being gone. And it helped immensely when it came time for him to come home and be part of our day to day life again.

We have been blessed. We aren't into gadgets, I don't know how to do most of the things my phone is capable of, but I do know that I love technology because it helps my sweet girls and their Daddy every time he is away. I am beyond grateful to live in this day and age where it's possible for these things. I know there are downfalls when it comes to technology, but for me the good far outweighs the bad.