Regardless of our differences, both ideologies left us feeling like God could not be approached. I didn’t think I could approach God because prayer felt like I was telling Him what to do. Josh didn’t feel like he could approach God because his prayer wouldn’t change anything. By default, our faith was nothing more than a subtle wave of the hand to God. We were grateful to exist another day, and tipped our hats to whatever God thought was best. We would just tend to our business and let Him know if something big came up.
I sat in my seat twenty-five thousand feet off the ground, pondering how I didn’t know if I would ever see life the same way Josh did. My people-pleasing personality went so far beyond wanting others to be happy. Not pleasing meant disappointing—a dagger straight to my heart. Mistakes were labels that I couldn’t shake. Scars that people would spend the rest of time forgiving me for. Then, I thought that must be proof that I had broken one of those faith-based rules. I had spent the better part of the day after hearing the news calling about a dozen other people and fielding their emotions and concerns. I had bottled up my own emotions and had no productive way to process them.
I huffed a sarcastic chuckle as I thought back to the day Josh told me he was joining the Army three summers ago. When Josh had told me he was joining the Army, I told him to go for it because we were broken up at the time. I thought it was a noble response to losing his girlfriend and failing out of college. I had been one semester away from graduating from college with my elementary education degree and had graduate school lined up, so I encouraged Josh with a “good for you” response and walked away, thinking it would never be my problem. I planned to make a career out of college volleyball. I would study sports management for my master’s degree to position myself for life in sports beyond coaching. I played for a championship team and was a third-generation Beasley attending Jacksonville State University. But Josh had continued to tug at my heart despite my best-laid plans. When I encouraged Josh to enlist, I thought I was pushing him toward a good plan for his life and getting him out of the way of my plans. Even when we got back together and eventually married, I believed that if we worked hard enough, we both could achieve our dreams for ourselves. How could something so well-intentioned have developed into this?
And now there I was, traveling to see my Army specialist husband in a hospital after he had been blown up by an IED. My, how the tables had turned. I had just gotten into a good groove, living life as a military spouse with a deployed soldier. Now what does normal look like? I wondered as the plane’s wheels made contact with the tarmac.
CHAPTER TWOTHROWING OUT THE RULEBOOK
Then even the bravest soldier, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will melt with fear.
—2 Samuel 17:10
PAIGE
I felt so relieved to see Cathi at the bottom of the escalator in baggage claim at San Jose. Thankfully the airport was less than half an hour from her apartment. She understood my antisocial demeanor and didn’t demand anything more out of me. We both meandered around baggage claim and avoided eye contact and conversations until we got to our carousel. I’d just completed leg one of a journey, and only God knew how many more were to come.
Because of Cathi’s precise questioning, she had learned it was going to take a while to get Josh back to the United States. The time depended not only on Josh’s physical state but also the complexity of transportation. Every vehicle and aircraft had to function like a satellite hospital. The pilot must know how to fly a plane and stabilize a patient. A nurse must know how to stabilize a patient and fly a plane. Even if they could get Josh back to the States as fast as possible, it would take at least five days. Learning all this from Cathi as we boarded our next flight to Atlanta, now together one step closer to Josh, I felt like I had spent a month just trying to survive my afternoon. Thank goodness Cathi kept her head, because she was able to book us a flight to the Southeast to be near our family until the Army decided where Josh would go next, while querying our messengers for more information on Josh. We would take a red-eye to a connection in Atlanta and then a short flight to Birmingham, Alabama, about an hour away from Josh’s hometown. Unsure of when he would actually make it back to the United States, we learned that Josh’s injuries were too severe to go back to the hospital at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. His
