FLASHBACK

"you CANT understand your life and marriage are PERFECT!!!!"
Excerpt taken from an email i recv this morning. sigh.
I sat on the fence all day about this one..but i decided examples are powerful. So here i cut and paste a blog entry from the OTHER blog...time can do so much, this was a little over a year ago.
I am not perfect nor is my marriage ..we are human , we have bad days , bad moments, hell in our lifestyle sometimes we have bad YEARS.
But grace be to God for he is mighty to save.

ok here goes I changed out the names only
Sunday, 30 August 2009

[after swiftly dispatching another gladiator]
Maximus Decimus Meridius: Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?

(GLADIATOR)

Its been a rough week. With school started, still no word from my husband and one of the most debilitating migraines i can ever remember having i am glad that it is behind me now.

I am struggling with the pillow who is having a incredibly rough time with Highlander being gone and not talking to him for so long. Its like she is out of control half the day and inconsolable the other. I KNOW what it is that fuels her. Its anger its sadness its erratic energy with no place to let go. I feel her pain. Yesterday we took The Rock and Pillow to the weekend hourly care for a break so that the 2 older kids could have some fun without having to worry about leaving a movie or dinner early due to one or the other lil ones not being able to make it all the way through. After sitting through a painful session of Disney g-force (talking secret agent guinea pigs) we met at the px with ----- our only friend in El Paso to have a quick bite. Towards the end my focus came upon a family of 4 mom dad and 2 sons. I can always spot a soldier on his r & r leave. The first thing i see is somebody who appears beat down, and then you can tell this couple has been together for a long time not newlyweds or anything yet the soldier is being overly touchy feely, rubbing wife's back, touching top of kids heads, holding wife's hand. You see other couples walk right past, another family of 4, barely looking at each other engrossed in thought of what they need to go buy and what laundry needs to be put away when they go home, never even taking a second glance at who is by their side. We take for granite. Yes we do.

Somebody wrote me out of the blue after my last blog and asked am i witnessing the end here? The end of 2 people who i admire and really look up to? TRUTH is i don't know. These things never come with trumpets blaring and banners unfurled, no they come in unexpected and stealth moments when we least expect it. I can only tell you the day of demise in my last marriage, i did not wake up that day thinking it was going to be the beginning of the end, but that is exactly the way it turned out. Probably has to happen that way you know, or else we would all come prepared with a sack lunch prepared to stay awhile and battle to the bitter end.

In church today pastor Gary said, God is not so concerned with your situation as he is your character. As i was trying to work through all this and explain a little deeper to ----- all that has transpired the past few years , i went back to several of my blogs that were written years ago, when Highlander was in Iraq the last time and when he came home. I reread what one of our friends and one of Highlanders fellow comrades wrote about him in a blog HE was keeping during that time, it really gives keen insight not only into Highlanders character but why it is i cant compete with his job and why he cannot or will not? Be divided in his efforts to keep balance at home and on the war front. Because well he checks out of one life into the other. Its Clark Kent/superman at its finest. Only the phone booth is actually the plane he loads headed out to Kuwait to begin the transformation.

"SSG Highlander (Army Pathfinder, Air Assault)
1st Squad Leader. Silent, professional and extremely proficient, SSG Highlander is a force to be reckoned with. A light fighter from previous experience, he nevertheless mastered every aspect of mechanized fighting in less time than it said to say "holy crap, where did this guy come from?!" which is exactly what we all said when we first met him at JRTC. Everything that he touches, he has mastered fully, living up to his namesake. Truly unique, I have never met a soldier of his caliber anywhere else in my entire career. He is possessed of a markedly reserved but amazing sense of humor. Patient and observant, he has earned the undying loyalty and respect of the entire company. A dedicated family man, lover of music and tattoo artist as a hobby. There is not a man in this Brigade who would not follow this man to the ends of the earth and beyond.

-----------

So it was then as it is now that he is in THAT place. The one where people follow him and he is important and needed and valuable. Funny because i feel the same way about his presence here in the home, but to him, it is not even a comparison.Its why these guys come home and ride their motorcycle as fast as it can go.

It was said once by chaplain Hawkins or chaplain Murray i cant remember which that to be in this line of work is to spend YEARS away from your spouse, so you better be better than the next man on the block. you better stand out. you better make the effort, because it has to sustain you through long periods of drought, and i would say, that that term should be tattooed on every married soldier when they enter into service because its true. I know some will read this and think i am being harsh, some would say to me, oh but its his JOB! you knew when you married him.....ah.....yes...yes i did.

Highlander is not a bad man. and I love him very deeply but he is troubled by all that has come to pass and all that still haunts his dreams. Another excerpt from my friends blog during that last deployment

Insurgents blew a large IED south of 425 yesterday afternoon as our convoy drove by. The charge was buried deep a few feet from the road. The blast missed the vehicles but the fragmentation pierced straight through the outlying wall of a nearby house and struck a middle aged woman as she was doing her laundry in the courtyard, tearing her abdomen open and blowing out her internal organs. Doc, Scoutten and Highlander worked on her as her children watched in horrified silence. She never had a chance and died almost immediately

I won't get into it any more than that...I'm still sorting it out..."

To this day Highlander still dreams about her. Always the same, she ends up dying.... he cant save her and she is always talking to him in Iraqi and he cant understand what she is saying . Also on a interesting notation since he has been in Iraq, every time he dreams of her she keeps getting younger than she was in the previous dream.

I am not equipped. I cannot save him. Just like he cannot save her.Its a wicked wicked game.

I apologize this has been lengthy, and that as of late the subject dim, but this is life. Sometimes we are riding the crest and other times we are being drug under by the undertow.

I am still praying but i find myself more unfocused than i want to be, relying on God to read the words in my heart rather than hear what is spilling out of my mouth. For only then will any of it make any sense.

He knows my name,
He knows my every thought,
He sees each tear that falls,
And hears me when I call. (lyrics from he knows my name)

I can clearly remember the day that i got the word that Highlander had loaded the helicopter headed out of Fob Gabe into Kuwait, on his way to the journey towards home. I could almost hear the whining cutting sound of the blades, a sound i know well because i used to work for a helicopter company when i lived in Hawaii. I pictured my husband lifting away from that place, leaving much of who he was before he arrived there behind. Dave, Noah, Billy, that woman from the courtyard and many more who were not going home. The crushing feeling i still get when i think about that moment, that year, this year and all the years in between. Its like there was a life before all that but i cannot recall it, its like my memory starts the day i waved goodbye all those years ago in the dark cold morning at 2-69 company area. The feeling i had when it was the day that they were coming home! The grateful heart.... the grateful soul, the compassionate thread that i wanted to bind up invisible wounds with. Why does it take living on the edge to produce this?

What has happened to me? This isn't who i am. I'm not trying to falter, i dont want to fail. Hear me oh God and know that my heart is in true pain and that i need you to uphold me.

Good evening all, and a thank you to ------------- blog for the quotes and the ability to read some things that really SHOULD be written down as so to not ever forget. Never forget.


S.O.T.D
Mark 3:10-11
For he had healed many; in so much that they pressed upon him for to touch him

So now what did YOU learn today.

Goodnight