The good and bad

Being in the Army is difficult, some times tough.  So tough that I really can't bring myself to roll out of bed.   Its those days when I have to focus hard on why I do this to begin with.  My boys, at the end of every day, I am reminded of why I live this kind of a life,  My boys.  When I get home, and they are nice and warm and fed, and have all that I could give them, they are happy, there is my reason for what I do what I do. I often wonder how my boys really feel about all of it, and for one reason or another, they are really okay with it.  "Mom, just be tough you got this", to ever insinuate that the Army and multiple trips to a war zone have not created a different person is just wrong.  I am tougher, I do sleep less, I am far less indulging, and I do realize more and more that the minutes matter, and you can't just let them slip by.  The Army has been the platform that has allowed me to be apart of  so many people lives,  of different countries, cultures, and lifestyles.  I have brothers and sisters that I would never trade for the world, brothers and sisters that have traveled to the gates of hell with me.  On any given day, the Army is the one entity that will tell you "you can be better today than you were yesterday", the one entity that will give you the tools to find out who you are and what your made of.    The people in the Army are special in their own right, it does take a certain type of person to be apart of this amazing organization.  These people are closer to me than anyone else, we know each other and can read a bad day before anything else, but the solice behind it all is that we are in it together.  Your bad day will be felt by many and theirs will be too.  I am a linguist, and as a linguist, I have the opportunity to speak and read newspapers and communicate with so many people.  I saw this in Iraq, there was not a day that passed that I did not hold a conversation in Arabic and even in Spanish.  To be apart of their lives on a very personal level, I could get no were else.  The  men, women and children, that just broke my heart, a very secret part of me that I refuse to acknowledge when I depart from my own family, they have found a way to reach and touch.  I remember my last rotation to Iraq, I had been there for a few months when my son was involved in a horse accident back home.  I wanted so badly to be with him, he was having surgery, and as a parent you hurt for yourself and for your child.  Just being with my son is what I wanted more than anything, my son an amazing young man was handed the phone so that I could speak with him before he went in for his surgery, and I tried to so hard not to cry just to let him know that I loved him deeply and he in one sentence told me " mommy you need to stay there, You will be okay mommy, you get to walk the land that Jesus walked mommy you are in the house of Jacob, you are so blessed so just walk it mommy and tell me about it when you get home, your safe and because of you I am safe".  I just lost it, I cried and he cried, but I realized something he was right, so insightful to be so young.  He saved me that day, and from that day on I have always responded to "how is your day" with the same manner, I am blessed, so blessed because I got to walk the land that Jesus walked.  I am getting ready to embark on yet another rotation, and I hope and pray that this one will open my eyes even more. I never walk away from anything without realizing that I learned something and that I grew because of it.    I have grown in ways that I can not even identify ways that I am learning about everyday, but do realize how fortunate I truly am.  I figured out on my second rotation that I only really had to be a hero in two peoples eyes, the two that drive my life and love so deeply.  MY BOYS