From Unvalidated Pain
Now was the time to begin the thirty-minute drive to base where she would say good-bye to her husband before beginning her fifteen-month deployment.
"Will you just hide me?" she begged her husband, only half in jest, as he started the car. "Please!"
"No. I know you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t go," he responded with a trace of sadness in his voice. Was it a faint desire to grant her wish or disappointment that she would even consider it? "I’m proud of you."
Those were the words my husband and I spoke the last time I looked upon our nearly century-old Kansas farmhouse before I was deployed to Iraq—our last moments alone before my world turned upside down. Not for the first time in my life, but certainly for the longest. No, I don’t ever wish he had taken me up on my fleeting desire, spoken in a moment of fear that would pass once I had settled into my new temporary home. But I do wish I had never experienced the events that would change my life and any hope I had of continuing on my current path as a military officer and chaplain, and I know no other way to accomplish this except to have never taken that drive.
"Will you just hide me?" she begged her husband, only half in jest, as he started the car. "Please!"
"No. I know you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t go," he responded with a trace of sadness in his voice. Was it a faint desire to grant her wish or disappointment that she would even consider it? "I’m proud of you."
Those were the words my husband and I spoke the last time I looked upon our nearly century-old Kansas farmhouse before I was deployed to Iraq—our last moments alone before my world turned upside down. Not for the first time in my life, but certainly for the longest. No, I don’t ever wish he had taken me up on my fleeting desire, spoken in a moment of fear that would pass once I had settled into my new temporary home. But I do wish I had never experienced the events that would change my life and any hope I had of continuing on my current path as a military officer and chaplain, and I know no other way to accomplish this except to have never taken that drive.