Beautifully Broken

back to the COP. First, we were walking through a field and took what seemed like a good bit of fire, but we couldn’t see where it came from. Then, we bounded to cover and decided to assault the grape huts. While our flanking element was moving, we took contact again. Then, we moved across the field to our flanking element. Once we moved across and set up support by fire, our ground lock vehicle took five precision rounds to the driver’s window. That makes me nervous that now there is a sniper in our area of operation. I thank God every day for keeping my men and me alive. Nobody has been hurt yet and it’s a miracle. I feel like it’s only a matter of time. Either an IED is going to get someone or someone is going to get shot. I pray for my men so much. I love every one of these guys and do not want to see them get hurt. I don’t know what goes through my mind during a firefight. It worries me that I don’t get scared. All I think about is finding who shot at my guys and sending lots of rounds in their direction so they will stop shooting back.

PAIGE

As Josh shared his first entries from his journal, I couldn’t help but try to piece together what I would have been doing at the exact same moments he was writing. April 10, the day between two entries, had been my first experience with the blackout email. A week later, I had been coaching in a volleyball tournament when I saw the email with that dreadful subject line—“Loss of an Arrowhead Soldier”—and I had to sit down. I must have looked like I had seen a ghost. One of my players asked if I was okay. I said I was fine and stuck my phone in my pocket as we walked onto the court to warm up for our match. I had been so determined to live in the moment, which might have been the first time I had ever done that in my adult life. That’s kind of terrible, isn’t it? Most people can remember the atmosphere of their wedding dance or winning a college championship, both of which I had done, but I spent most of my brain space trying to figure out what’s next. I couldn’t really live in the moment of our wedding dance because Josh and I had only two days to honeymoon and we needed to be hitting the road, not dancing. I couldn’t really live in the moment of winning a volleyball conference championship because I was so fired up about where we would be seeded in the NCAA Tournament. The first time I had ever shut out the problems around me was when I just could not bear to receive more bad news about Josh’s deployment.

Throughout the entire deployment, the longest we ever talked was fifteen minutes. I lived for phone calls and emails from Josh, especially after a communication blackout. I cared less and less about what I had to step away from to answer the phone.

I always pretty much screamed “Hey!!” into the phone every time I answered.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?” Josh would calmly say as if he were calling me on his lunch break somewhere in downtown Tacoma.

We had promised each other to keep conversations light and encouraging, but as time went on and Josh’s unit kept tallying casualties, our phone calls became awkward. What was the point in asking “How’s it going?” two days after someone in the other company was killed? From a duty standpoint, Josh couldn’t tell me anything anyway, but I believed the emotional consequences of bringing up someone’s death or serious injury could mentally throw him off, putting him in a bad mental state the next time he needed to go out and be focused. There was so much we couldn’t bring up, so we talked about volleyball and traveling and Cooper chewing the couch pillows.

The cycle had been torture. Josh would call early in the week to let me know he had a mission that week and wouldn’t be back on the base until the end of the week. They would leave for the mission; I would get a communication blackout email; Josh would call me when he returned, both of us aware that yet another member of his battalion was either injured or killed; and we would make small talk. We would try to text and message each other through different apps. I was not ready for our conversations to be all about avoiding the obvious. I was not ready for the emails. I was not ready to be alone. I was not ready for Josh’s family to ask me how he was doing. I was not ready to pretend like this whole thing was about letting the time pass. Trying to do things to occupy my mind was the most emotionally taxing thing I have ever done. How can I endure this for another nine… eight… seven months? Wow! It’s already been two months! Ugh. It’s only been two months…

CHAPTER FIVEINCOMING

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who shall go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

—Isaiah 6:8

PAIGE

Following March 22 my prayer life was dormant. I don’t mean that I didn’t pray, but there was no life in my prayer. I asked God to protect Josh and his guys, but I felt like I was asking for something that God was already in control of. What was my prayer going to change about anything? Deep down, I just felt like saying, “God, You know more about it than I do, so just do whatever You think, I guess.” My prayers had no expectancy behind them. It’s not that I didn’t believe in God’s power; I just didn’t believe my words could activate it. I