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Posts for Tag: Son

The Roller Coaster "Deployment" FOLLOW ME!

More Musings from the Demented Mind of an Infantry Mother

Definition of Demented: Driven to behave irrationally due to anger, distress, or excitement.

 

 Our roller coaster ride leaves the platform this week. For months we have had this in the back of our minds, and for weeks now the fear has built up, the roller coaster we will be riding is enormous, with many loops, hair pin turns and it seems in our eyes to be higher than any roller coaster ever built.  The workman building this enormous ride of fear seem hell-bent to make it bigger, and faster, as each passing week when we gaze upon it, it reaches a little higher into the sky, and the drops are more severe than they appeared last week. It is certainly higher, faster and more frightening than the last one we experienced. Will our family survive this beast intact? Do they really expect us to ride this thing for nine months!

  I would like to refuse to get on it, to run away from it, please surely there is a smaller one we can take? Perhaps one with only one loop, perhaps one that does not jerk you around so much? But no, this one is ours, we are committed, and we simply have to get on board and strap in.

 The roller coaster I refer to is deployment. The time has come; our first-born son is leaving for combat operations in the country of Afghanistan. We know a little bit about what to expect. We anticipate the sleepless nights, the ball of fear that always rests in the pits of our stomach. The fear of strange cars parked on our street. The crazy obsession with keeping everything up on our phones at all times, Facebook, Skype, Messenger, Email and of course the phone itself. The sheer panic when you look down and realize your battery is almost dead and you left your charger at home! The crazy shopping trips where our cart is filled with baby wipes, deodorant, beef jerky, cans of chewing tobacco and a multitude of snacks.

 And of course those truly horrible feelings, when you hear news that someone was injured, someone has fallen. Is it he? Oh Dear God may it not be him? And then the names are released, or you hear from your soldier, and you rejoice, praise be to God he is okay…and then you think of the family of the one who did fall, the one who was injured…and your heart breaks into pieces…how can I rejoice…how could I have felt such joy knowing that someone like me, a family much like us, now has to endure the thing we all fear most, the death or injury of our soldier.

 What we do not know is how recent events that have unfolded in Afghanistan will affect our son and the men standing with him. It seems certain that these events will not make their job easier, and that it will place them in greater danger. And it is for sure certain that recent events have caused our fears to rise to an almost unmanageable level. We do not know how to deal with news that our soldier has been injured, and we do not know how to endure hearing the news that our soldier has fallen. We pray like all families of the deployed, that we will never have to learn what this is like.

 We are very afraid, our younger son is very afraid, we wish with all our hearts that this cup would pass from us, but even amidst the fear ,we embrace this deployment. This is what our first-born son does, he is a good soldier, and he loves his work, as he loves the men who serve with him. He extended his contract to accept this deployment, and we his family are very proud of the man that he has become. So we will stand with him these next nine months. We will help carry his burdens and the burdens of his brothers. We will lift them up in prayer throughout each day. We will arise when we are awakened in the middle of the night, and we will pray. We will remind our coworkers, our fellow church members, our neighbors and our friends of the reality of the war, and encourage them to support those serving in it. We like our son will hold the motto “Follow Me” close to our hearts and encourage everyone to follow us, follow us and know these brave men and woman who serve in our nations armed forces, know these brave men who serve as our combat troops, send them packages, pray for them always, and we will never allow the people around us to forget for we are Infantry family and we are strong and faithful.

 I am the Infantry family

I am my soldier’s strength in war,

His home in peace.

I am the heart of my soldier

wherever, whenever.

I carry his burdens in faith and honor

 And hold him up to God.

I am a Prayer Warrior.

I am what my soldier expects me to be,

A source of strength for him

in his race for victory.

I have strong faith in my soldier

I am determined to always be his rock.

I am courageous; never will he see my fear

Never will I fail my soldier’s trust.

Always will I labor on

Through the fear, to the objective, to bring him safely home.

I yield not to weakness, to fear, to anxiety, to fatigue,

For I am mentally tough, spiritually strong, and morally straight.

I forsake not my soldier, his mission, his comrades, his sacred duty.

I am relentless

I am always there for him and his brothers

now and forever

I am the Infantry family

Follow me!

 Let the ride commence! We are ready! We will endure!

 God bless our troops, God bless our Infantry, God bless our military families. God bless and keep all those who are currently on the ride, praise God for all those who have returned from the ride, and strength and courage to all those preparing to strap in.

The Lord be with you my son, go forth, knowing that there will not be one day, not one waking moment, that you are not being brought before the throne of God. We love you son....Godspeed!

 

 Update: November 2, 2013

 Our beloved son came home. He was wounded in an IED blast while serving this tour, he received a concussion, was in the hospital only a matter of days and was back out on patrol.
 He lost friends, and friends lost limbs. It was a hard deployment. He came home and we are so very grateful for that. He was diagnosed with severe PTSD and mild TBI just shortly after his return. He is now out of the Army and trying to put his life back together. We are proud of him, more than he will ever know.

In Sweeps the Darkness and Fear (More musings from an Infantry Mom)

 Another deployment is looming over our heads, I have been pushing it to the back of my thoughts for months now, and yet I simply cannot ignore it anymore. What was once a shadow of things to come has become large and black and terrifying and simply cannot be ignored, it will no longer fit into the bag I carry, where I stuff the things that bring me fear.... so I must confront it.

  I thought I was ready for this one, after all, we have done this before, and it should get easier each time right? I was wrong; I am far less ready than I was for the first one. I have a very bad feeling about this one. Is that a premonition or is it simply my fears playing games with me? I truly do not know.

  I pray and pray, and yet cannot find peace with this feeling. Over and over in my mind plays a phrase right out of the King James Bible...."gird up your loins"... What does this mean? God, are You trying to tell me something? Trying to prepare me for something? I do not want to listen if You are; I want to shut out that voice. Why is that phrase in my head? Is it something stuck there from some old sermon I listened to? I continue to ponder. .

  If the voice is You Lord, should I not feel some peace? Or is my lack of peace my failure to listen an acknowledge Your warning?  Is it even possible to have peace with such a thing bouncing around in your head? If it is You, are you telling me to prepare for something bad, or just to be ready for the deployment?

 I am not a weak woman, not prone to tears. All my life I have pushed forward, through the good and the bad, but this I believe thus far is the most difficult time of my life. I am helpless, unable to stop the events of the world as they play out, unable to go in place of my son, unable to protect him, I am truly at my most helpless, for I must rely upon my God, my faith in Him, and upon the training my son has received, and upon his brothers who walk with him. Perhaps that is my problem, I have always faced my fears by action, sure I pray for guidance, for peace, for intervention...but I go and act.... and there is no action for this one other than to fall to my knees and pray.

  I dread this deployment; dread it to the very depths of my soul. Dread the waiting, dread that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know that one has fallen, is it mine? Oh God let it not be mine, Oh God let him be okay, and then you hear the news, you see the name, it is not yours.... oh such relief, such joy...but only for a moment. Then comes guilt and sorrow, how can I rejoice for the life of mine, when somewhere a woman, just like me, falls to the floor in agony and grief. Oh God I hate that feeling.

 All these emotions take place inside, in private, I have not found many who understand who have not walked it, it is pointless to speak of it, pointless to try and describe it, it truly seems that unless you have been there, people, no matter how close they are to you simply cannot understand.

 Everyone that knows anything at all about the military, knows that our Infantry troops have a difficult job, they patrol paths laden with bombs, they fight it out with our enemies, they kick in doors, they live and work in tough conditions, blazing hot temperatures, laden with clothing and equipment, or freezing cold temperatures, where they are damp and cold. They sleep in holes. They eat a lot of MRE's. Miles and miles of running and fighting, laden with gear, running through fields where any step might be your last. They are tough, and we are very proud of them, their strength, their courage, their dedication to each other and to their mission, their tenacity, their will.....and yet consider for a moment the role of the Infantry wife, the Infantry mother, the Infantry child..we must go about our daily business, keep the faith, go to work, to school, to church and do all this knowing that our sons, our husbands, our fathers are right now at the moment we are working, or learning, or worshiping..at that moment...in harm's way, perhaps walking through a field laden with IED's, perhaps under fire from the Taliban.

 One thing is certain, as we draw closer to the dreaded day, one thing is clear, one thing is unshaken, one thing I can draw upon for strength...God is in control...He reigns...He loves this child of mine far more than I...He holds all things in the palm of His hand...He lives...and because He lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives, I can face this deployment, with grace, with strength, with hope and with peace.

 When my son leaves, he will once again wear about his neck a silver necklace, it shows the footprints of the Lord in the sand, and about it's edges it says "Lord be with me in my time of need" upon the back is engraved:

 Psalm 144:1,

Godspeed son

All our love and prayers

Mom and Dad

 

Psalm 144

 

 

 1 Blessed be the LORD, my rock,

   who trains my hands for war,

   and my fingers for battle;

2 he is my steadfast love and my fortress,

   my stronghold and my deliverer,

my shield and he in whom I take refuge,

   who subdues peoples  under me.

 

 3 O LORD, what is man that you regard him,

   or the son of man that you think of him?

4 Man is like a breath;

   his days are like a passing shadow.

 

 5 Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!

   Touch the mountains so that they smoke!

6 Flash forth the lightning and scatter them;

   send out your arrows and rout them!

7 Stretch out your hand from on high;

   rescue me and deliver me from the many waters,

   from the hand of foreigners,

8 whose mouths speak lies

   and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

 

 9 I will sing a new song to you, O God;

   upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,

10 who gives victory to kings,

   who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword.

11 Rescue me and deliver me

   from the hand of foreigners,

whose mouths speak lies

   and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

 

 12 May our sons in their youth

   be like plants full grown,

our daughters like corner pillars

   cut for the structure of a palace;

13 may our granaries be full,

   providing all kinds of produce;

may our sheep bring forth thousands

   and ten thousands in our fields;

14 may our cattle be heavy with young,

   suffering no mishap or failure in bearing;

may there be no cry of distress in our streets!

15 Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall!

   Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD!

 

 

Godspeed my son and Godspeed to all those who stand with you. God bless our Infantry, both Army and Marines, God keep them, God grant them all strength and courage. God bring them home safe.

 

God bless all our troops.

 Update: 2013 It was indeed a rough deployment. Lives were lost, limbs were lost, innocence and peace of mind were lost. Our son was wounded, and we received a phone call that dropped me to my knees. The silver necklace described in the above post now rests about the neck of our deceased daughter in law, who took her own life in March of 2013. I see her as a victim of these wars, the horrors of deployment took a heavy toil upon her. My son suffers from severe PTSD, and almost a year after this deployment ended he has still not returned all the way home.


My Guys (The Musings of an Army Infantry Mom)

A conversation with my Army son last night brought forth so many memories. I remember the little boy who was obsessed with all things military from the time he was about 5 years old.

 He and I were leaving a grocery store one day, and he noticed a martial arts school had opened in that plaza, and began to beg me to go over and “sign him up”, laughing I asked did he want to be like the Power Rangers….and he looked at me, disappointed…and said “no mom, when I grow up I am going to be a soldier, and I will need to know how to defend myself”….needless to say we signed him up and he spent most of his young years enrolled in some martial arts program or another.

At nine, he found out from the neighbor kid about a Naval program for kids, and asked me to look and see if there was anything like that for the Marines or the Army…..and we ended up in the Young Marines.

 Halloween was easy for us, for every year he was some sort of military persona, a Marine, a Soldier, a SEAL. I was looking through photos and could only find one, in all his childhood where he was something other than military…….a SWAT team member…

Back to the conversation last night, and the memory it invoked in me.

You see, while growing up his most favorite toys and prized possessions were "his guys" a large collection of GI Joes, he knew each one by name; he carefully protected them, maintained their weapons and vehicles and played with them almost always over all other toys.

I recall many occasions where he would frantically enlist the assistance of his father or myself in a frantic search for a lost guy. He knew exactly which one was missing, and could describe him in detail, and would not rest until the missing guy was back with all the others.

 We bought him other toys, power rangers, spider man, ninja turtles, but all would be left in various places about the house, in disarray, or at the very least used as a special "enemy" for his guys to take out.

 Hours spent putting together various Lego sets only to enter the room to find he had disassembled it, and reassembled it as some sort of bunker or fortification, for his guys.

 Last night in conversation with him, now 23 years old and a man, I asked him why? Why another round with the Army, why this need and desire to go back again into harm's way....why can you not just stay home now, you have done your part? Why son?...........and he said.....my guys mom.....I cannot let them go without me.......I cannot stay while they go fight.....I cannot get out of the Army.......my guys mom......and the memories came flooding in.

 Years ago his most precious possession was his guys, made of plastic, so many battles were fought with them, each one who fell to hard use, or a dog's teeth, were wept over.... and yet today he has something so much more precious to him, his brothers, flesh and blood, each one known by name and personality, some closer than a brother, some not gotten along with as well as the others, some irritating,but all loved,  all precious.... all brothers...his guys.

  So soon, I will watch him leave again, into harm's way. My mother's heart once again afraid for him, my days spent in prayer for him....and for all his precious guys.

 Funny how such things turn out……

 

Update: He brought his guys home...some have wounds..but they all come home.