During the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, Captain Malugani’s lieutenant had moved through with an infantry battalion. On a day-trip into the city with her commanding officer, unexpectedly she was within walking distance to the lieutenant’s operation’s center.
“A reporter came up to me and said, ‘I want to tell you, I wouldn’t have gone through this city if it hadn’t been for your lieutenant. We were all scared to death, but his bravery convinced us to go with him.’”
The battlefield is a primal place. Everyone wants to get out alive, yet so much is beyond one’s control, such as incoming fire. News of casualties hit hard, such as the death of Sergeant Peralta who, while mortally injured, grabbed a grenade thrown by insurgents and saved the lives of the four Marines with him.
“The reporters who went in with us had to trust that we were going to take care of them. Everybody at some point has to surrender, to trust something bigger than self: the person next to them, the equipment, or God. But each individual had to learn to trust.”
“In my own life I just felt so free and surrendered. It’s like the serenity prayer: Change the things I can and accept the things I can’t. I tried to the best of my ability to change the things I could by overseeing public affairs in the very best way. Surrendering to the divine order, I’m doing my part, and the outcome is not really up to me.”
Captain Malugani found freedom in surrender. “Free in the sense of free to not free from. I was free to choose the way I was going to look at it, whether I was going to see grace, chaos, or both. I was free to be present or to shut down and suppress.”
“What I did witness out there was those who believed in a divine order and surrendered to it, had a calmness and contentment about them. Those who didn’t have a belief in a heavenly being tended to be upset. Many days I missed my family and wanted to go home; however, when I chose to put my trust in the divine order, I had the openness to process what I was seeing and experiencing.”
Thank you for the gift of brotherly love that is willing to make the greatest of sacrifices.
“If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:3)