My heart was racing. I took a deep breath as I wiped my palms on my legs one more time. It was July 2004, eighteen months after I first deployed. Now, as the plane touched down at Ft. Campbell, I was nervous.
We marched into a building and stood for a short ceremony. And then I saw her my young wife who had endured so much on the home front while I had been away. I wrapped her in my arms, relishing the reunion. This time I wasn’t just home on leave; I was home for good. Seeing her again after so much time had passed didn’t make me nervous.
The nervousness came from the reality that I would no longer be shielded from the battles of life itself. I had been on active duty long enough to become institutionalized in the Army. Suddenly I could no longer rely on the Army to feed, clothe, shelter, and pay me. I would have to go back to school and even back to work. I could no longer just be legally married. I would have to truly be married. When I hear of all of the cases of post traumatic stress disorder, divorces, and even suicides that this war has caused, I am humbled and eternally grateful for God’s protection that I held so dear in war, and now has been extended to me years later.
After I arrived home, I realized just how radical God’s protection of me had been. In the year plus I spent in Iraq, not only did I remain alive and uninjured, but I do not remember ever requiring so much as a band aid for a minor cut. I am not quite sure why God chose to protect me in such an extreme way, under such dangerous conditions. I certainly do not feel deserving of such protection, after so many soldiers just like me did not make it home safely. But he proved to me that he was with me, even to the ends of the earth.
Lord, wherever I go, may I desire your presence and favor above all else.
“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139: 9–10)