Michael and Kerri Hartwick were high school sweethearts. They married during their senior year of college and then decided together that he would join the military.
“His dream was always to fly,” said Kerri. “He loved airplanes, anything that flew. I was supportive.”
Mike served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, and Iraq as an Apache helicopter pilot for the Army. In November 2005, one month before he would deploy a second time to Iraq, he arranged a “powwow” with Kerri.
“We each took a day off of work, and the kids were in school,” remembered Kerri. “He’d been deployed before and knew the risk factors. We should have done this before; maybe this was a God thing. But he made sure we sat down together and talked about everything we needed to discuss in case he would not return from finances, to who he wanted to be pallbearers, who he wanted to speak at the funeral, and where he wanted to be buried. We talked about where the kids and I would live, his thoughts on me remarrying. We discussed everything. It was hard. He put all our finances and insurance information in a binder for me. I didn’t know then what a blessing that would turn out to be for me.”
When Mike deployed, Kerri prayed the same prayer each night: “Lord, if you bring Mike home safely I will praise you for keeping him safe. If you have other plans for him, you need to prepare my heart because I won’t be able to do it alone.”
“I didn’t have a premonition,” she said. “But God put that in my heart that I needed to pray that way.”
In speaking to their children, seven-year-old Tanner and ten-year-old Haley, Mike never promised he wouldn’t get hurt. He said he’d do his best to stay safe.
Lord, prepare my heart for whatever you have in store for me.
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)