memorial day - memories

i had to go through album after album on facebook to find this. it's not even the picture i wanted, but it will have to do.

that was taken four years ago when my brother was leaving for iraq. let's see here: that would've made him 22 years old (i think?) even four years later, i barely know anything about my brother's tour --- in what i believe had to have been hell. i know he fell in love with this dog...

and i know he ran missions that helped bring resources to little children. i wish i had a picture from those, but i can't find any.

i don't think i ever saw a picture of my brother carrying a gun, but i know that doesn't mean it never happened. i'm sure it did.

i think about all the things that i don't know about what happened while he served in iraq; i think about all the things that i would've been too scared, too young, too incapable of doing. i also remember that there was so much good that did happen while he was there --- between writing to his now-wife, melissa --- to finding god in the battles and the hell that it was --- and i am thankful. i am thankful, not only for his service, but the fact that he had an opportunity to do those things because he came back a better man. it was almost like he left a boy, and came back a man.

any boy can carry a gun; only a man can fight in a war, come back alive, and continue to live.

i want to say thank you; thank you to my brother, to the "hobbits", and to all the men and women who have given their lives to the service of this country; not alway given through the ultimate sacrifice, death... but through the training, the war, and the suffering that endures. it not just death in which lives are given away --- it is in the mental, physical, and spiritual ramifications of the military. men of faith can walk away from a war with none; and men of no faith can walk away born again; men can leave for their tour with both arms, and come home without one; men can leave for war sane, and return suffering from PTSD, insomnia, alcoholism, night terrors...

thank you for the gift of freedom. thank you for the gift of your lives, that i might continue to be free - to be able to have as many babies as i want, to home-school my children,  and to raise them in whatever religious setting that i please.

god bless.