HOOAH: The phonetic pronunciation of the acronym HUA (Heard, Understood, Acknowledged)
According to Wikipedia, HOOAH can also:
- be used as a call and response cheer, with one soldier exclaiming, “hooah!,” and other soldiers responding in like.
- be uttered at random and in a group in order to boost morale. One or a few soldiers will begin chanting “hooah!,” and then others join in.
- be used as a sarcastic remark for something specific to the Army. Sometimes used sarcastically. As in, “This detail is about as hoo-ah as it gets.”
- to describe a highly motivated individual. As in, “Greenfield has been extremely Hoo-ah lately.”
I can think of a few things that make me want to say, “HOOAH!” – like seeing my man in uniform! I am so proud of him and it is an honor to stand by his side. Also, when I finally had him back in my arms after his deployment – what a day to celebrate!
When I read this topic though, I immediately thought of a time where I felt really proud of myself as an Army wife. A time that I felt like I pushed myself, pulled myself up from my bootstraps so to speak, and worked through it.
When Rob was deployed to Iraq last year, Murphy (of Murphy’s Law) decided to attack our truck. Our truck that was fully paid for and our only option for transportation. A few issues came and went, but the one I was the most proud of was when I fixed a window on the truck, saving us 200-300 dollars and earning a lot of self confidence.
One day my daughter and I headed out to run a few errands. We had a big list ahead of us and a lot of driving to do, so our first stop was to fill up the truck with gas – something that should have been routine. As I hopped back in the driver’s seat and closed the door, the back left window fell down.
Ok, that was weird. I didn’t shut the door THAT hard. I’ve had windows fall before so I thought I’d just hop out, push it back up with my hands and be on my way. Only, it wouldn’t budge!
Tried the power switch – it would go down, but not up. Great, I just made it worse. Tried the other windows and they worked just fine. Isolating the problem already!
I decided I couldn’t go run my errands and leave the truck with an open window (and our purchases inside) everywhere we went, so we changed our plans and went home.
Normally, I would have just waited until Rob got home and he would have taken care of it. He’s handy with fixing things like that but since we had several months of the deployment left to go, I knew it couldn’t wait. My second best option? Google. I quickly came to the conclusion that the window had either simply fallen off the track, or the window motor would need to be replaced. Neither of those sounded like something I knew how to do, so I called a repair shop for a quote.
“$300-400 including parts & labor. Oh, and we don’t have any in stock so it’s a special order.”
WHAT????
I needed a plan B. Sure, we had the extra deployment money and even money in savings, but I sure didn’t want to spend it on that. So, I prayed for direction, and then I looked up the price of the worst case scenario – a window motor.
The price of the part? $100.00 delivered to my house.
That’s it? God is so good!
I knew that if my husband were home, he would replace the part himself to save us that $200-300 dollars, so I was determined to do it myself. Now, how to accomplish that?
“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:13)
It is an amazing world we live in, folks. Seriously. I’m aging myself here, but the internet still amazes me on almost a daily basis. You can find anything out there. Lots of things I don’t even want to know about, but that’s another post.
I found a video on YouTube of a guy demoing how to take off the door panel and replace the window motor. I can do this!
I put on my work clothes, got the tools out, and took my laptop out on the driveway to keep the video handy. I’d watch a little, push pause, work a little, hit play…over and over until I was done. I ended up taking the entire panel off the door, removing the speaker, unhooking the motor, and then putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It took me about 30 minutes. Mechanics get a really good hourly rate!
HOOAH!
Sure, I was proud of myself, but even more I was thankful that God helped me get through this. I trusted Him and He never lets us down. It’s moments like this where we can choose to let the hard times knock us down, or we can push through them. It was important to me to do this for several reasons — 1) I wanted to make my husband proud – for him to know I can handle things at home, 2) I wanted to save us from spending money if we didn’t need to, and 3) I wanted to be an example to my daughter – she even got to help me!
When the hard times come – and they will – I hope you’ll make the choice to push through them and find your own HOOAH moment! You’ll be glad you did.