It’s funny how things strike you when you least expect them. How emotions rise up, catch you off guard at weird moments. As I sit here charging up my latest gadget gift from Santa, I was uploading photos to it and one caught my eye. It’s a photo many have seen, one I’ve seen all the time as it used to be the lead in image on my portfolio. Then, a tiny prick like a needle sting welled up in my heart. It took me so much by surprise that I had to catch my breath, and the world stopped on a dime. There was my husband:
on his last night of leave in September of 2007 caught in mid-thought, head in hands. He was going back, going back to a place of dirty showers, sandstorms, gunfire, bombs, suicide, and hungry children. A place where there are no iPhones or new puppies or twitter.
Although he has been home now for a year, he quite easily could be going back like all of his buddies. They return in January, just under a year since they returned. 15 more months. And some of them it is a 2nd or 3rd tour where the odds of safe return home are stacked against them.
It is all too easy for me to forget, too easy because it is a human way of dealing with the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness that etched itself deep into my soul and heart. These are the scars of war, scars left on not just the soldiers but on their families. It is all too easy to giggle and say things like “look what Santa brought me for Christmas!” as I marvel at the wonders of my new iPhone or stare into the eyes of my new furry family member. But the true gift, the gift that I have to force myself to stop and remember even though I know it’s painful (blocking a year ago out would be the easier way to go) and joyful at the same time. Even though I know my eternally grateful heart will once again take a roller coaster ride of emotion in that remembering, in that feeling of gratitude; the kind of gratitude that comes when a birth occurs, gratitude that comes when a lost child is found–gratitude of epic proportions.
My eternally grateful heart is here beating so loud and so strong you can almost hear it, because my greatest gift is that of the life of my husband, of his love, of his family’s love, of knowing he will never leave my side again and I will always have his hand to hold. My most important Christmas wish granted by a Lord who is merciful, who would never put before me anything I couldn’t handle and who creates moments in time and gives me the talent to capture them so that I may be reminded daily when I start to forget that I other’s will not be home for Christmas this year so that my husband can be.
