Army: Afghanistan number 11

Post 11: Week 15
Ok, so I know, it is about dang time that I posted again.  Today, I want to start with a few shout outs of things I have missed back home in the states.  First off, I want to congratulate my sister on completing grad school and heading out to Wyoming to to be the assistant stage manager for a musical called South Pass  that my dad will also be staring in.  I also want to congratulate my brother on his high school graduation.  I know he is waiting expectantly on a couple of job offers and is also looking at going back to school in the fall.  Whatever he chooses to do does not matter to me, because I am very proud of him.  These are just two big moments in my siblings lives that I am unfortunately missing as I sit in the sand box.

But on another note, I am moving to a different base next week.  Our battalion is jumping locations and I am trying to plan/ manage a lot of moving pieces (with a lot of help of course).  But I just got back a couple of days ago from our leader's recon and am feeling pretty comfortable with the plan.  That being said, my next update will not be until I am settled in my new location.  So here is my update:

Physical: So, somewhere along the way, I have lost approximately five pounds in the past couple of weeks.  I am feeling really healthy and good, even though I am noticing several knots reappearing in my neck and shoulders (see old post for reference).  Kevin sent me some peppermint oil though, so hopefully that will help and I can avoid some very painful headaches.  As for PT, I have been mostly focused on push ups and situps but not nearly in the frequency with which I need to be. Now that the highs are in the 100's every day here, I feel like my desire to work out has diminished greatly.  Plus, I really need to get packing so that I am prepared to move next week. Hopefully while I am packing and unpacking, I can find my motivation to work out.  I am sure it is around here somewhere.. it is just a matter of finding it.

Mental: So, now that I am getting farther into Lean Six Sigma and I am understanding the class materials better, I am taking a second look at my data and doing a bit of recapturing.  The jist of what I am doing is trying to take as many trucks off the road as possible and creating efficiency in our movements.  Taking trucks off the roads takes Soldiers off the roads and I think everyone can understand why we would want to do that.  But aside from that, putting trucks on the road costs money, usually to the tune of several thousand dollars for each trip.  So what I am looking at is getting the right stuff, to the right location, the first time.  And I finally feel like all of that is starting to come together.

Emotional:  I don't even know where to start with this one.  Work has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but that is hardly surprising given our plate right now.  Relocating a battalion is no simple feat and this one looks like it will be taking a majority of my time for awhile. But at the same time, I have been relaxed.  I am really at a place of comfort in my job.  Nothing I am given feels challenging any more and I have confidence in my success.  I am ready for the next job or task the Army has for me and I look forward to it.  As far as being a wife goes, I am experiencing frustration at living a different life than my husband.  I normally cycle through this every now and again after I process the inevitability of the situation.  There are days when I am very ready to be home and there are days when I am really glad to be here.  I can say that there are a lot of people I look forward to meeting when I get home, to include families and babies.  There are new people in Kevin's life that I am very interested in meeting and some that I have only communicated with online.  And of course, babies are just babies and I look forward to holding them all!!!!

Financial: So, I just sold off another stock today at a 15% profit.  Unfortunately, that leaves me currently stock-less and between trying to get ahead on my Lean Six Sigma project while also preparing to move, I don't think I will be picking any new ones up in the next couple weeks.  But, since earnings reports have lulled, I am not too worried about it.  My overall gain since starting just over 6 weeks ago has averaged to 20% or so and I am good with that.

Spiritual: So, I have been praying and reading my bible every night for the last three months and I am very grateful for how much growth I have seen.  When I look at my prayers from when I first got here, I can see a lot more selfishness and a general brevity.  Along the way, God has taught me to spend more time thinking about him and less time thinking about myself.  And I have learned  a lot of humility in praying for forgiveness of my sins, my shortfalls and my weaknesses.  It has given me a new found love for other people as I realize how much Christ has saved me from myself.  He is made perfect in my weaknesses so why I am not willing to admit all the more that I have so many of them.

Army: Afghanistan Number 10

Post 10: Week 13

 Ok, I know I have been slacking the last couple of weeks, but I am finally getting back to writing again.  It has been a crazy last couple of weeks.  I have been working on some big projects at work between creating a brief for our brigade commander (and eventually his boss) and working on lean six sigma.  Plus rocket attacks, lack of sleep, football games, cook outs and everything else in between.  It has been a busy couple of weeks.  Plus, it has been nearly in the 100’s around here, and with the heat has come a new form of laziness. I am not looking forward to how July will feel around here.  But, cookies from the St John’s Lutheran church, and cards from the cedar ridge elementary school and tri-valley school (from Bloomington, IL: see pictures), plus a video chat with my pen pals (a fifth grade class from Everglades Elementary School in Okeechobee, FL)  have all been refreshing to my spirit and have given me renewed strength even in this crazy heat.  But, true to my style, here I go again.

Mental: Oh Lean Six Sigma.  This has been a chore.  I have been pouring over a spreadsheet that started with over 40,000 lines of data for my measure phase.  The spreadsheet tracks how we move containers around Afghanistan to include which carriers we use and how much they get paid.  I ended up pulling 400 lines of data out of it, focusing on only the lines that had been completely filled in.  I have been paying special attention to how far something travels and how much we are paying to move it.  Our Master Black Belt (instructor) put my data into minitab (program used to create histograms, pareto charts, etc.) and I am now moving into my analyze phase.  It is hard to know what to focus on and what not to.  There seems to be a lot of things that don’t add up or don’t prove some of my original assumptions about how we move things around. 

Physical: So, as shameful as this is, I haven’t been doing much PT recently.  Any free time I have gotten has pretty much been spent relaxing.  After the last couple of days of getting 9 hours of sleep (amazing right?!), I plan on doing some yoga tomorrow morning, and starting to get back into a regular run/ workout routine so that will be good.  I have been learning to play football and am actually not bad at throwing.  My accuracy has increased a lot and I enjoy the excuse to be outside.  I also have learned what an in, out, slant and hook are.  I guess that’s what happens when you spend this much time with a bunch of guys. 

Financial: So… I may have gotten a tiny bit greedy, but not really.  I currently have one stock that is not performing where I had hoped it would and missed my target price before falling. There was another one that was in the same boat but I ended up selling it for about a 5% profit.   I haven’t lost anything  yet, but on the one I am hoping it will build up a little bit more before I sell.  I set more reasonable limits and am expecting to sell it in the next couple of days.  The hard part is knowing what to invest in next.  Fewer and fewer earnings reports are coming out and that has been my primary method of choosing.  Normally, I look at the earnings report dates and focus on stocks that have EPS greater than 1.00 and are below $30/share.  I may need to rethink this strategy as the earnings reports become scarcer but we shall see. 

Emotional: So, I wish I had something brilliant and inspiring to say on this one.  I wish I could say that I had some marvelous epiphany and had great words of wisdom to share on this one, but I don’t.  All I can say is that I still am struggling to find how to be a good wife when I am in Afghanistan.  I know I am making some progress, but it never feels tangible.  I know even blogging has not only helped my husband to see where I am at, but has made it easier for others to share with him and join in our struggle.  But at the same time, I feel absolutely torn in many directions. Having just past the 1/3 mark, the next 2/3 feels like it will take forever.  My desire to be home and move on with my life is strong and yet, I like it here.  I have found joy in my circumstances and wonder if returning to my previous distractions will take me away from that joy.  I am afraid of losing what I have gained and I am already concerned that the change won’t be lasting.  I have grown as a person immensely here, but I still don’t like change.  It is easier to maintain everything if my circumstances don’t change.  I think that is my hardest emotional struggle right now.  I feel like I am trying to run in two different directions.  I want to stay here and live in the joy I have found and I want to be home and live in the happiness of my home and my marriage and my comforts. 

Spiritual:  I have continued in my scripture readings daily.  I am trying to now read at least twice a day.  I am trying to read through the new testament again as I am reading through the old.  (The old levitical laws of throwing blood around altars still grosses me out, so I found balancing it with the new testament gives me a stronger desire to keep reading as I find the hope the new testament brings).  And my prayers have changed for the better too.  I have been trying to spend more time focusing on asking for forgiveness.  I have never been oblivious to my sin, but I have never taken the time to truly reflect on it and thank God for his mercy and forgiveness and for giving me the power to overcome any of it.  What made me realize I needed to do this was really thinking about Is loving people and wanting to love people better in all circumstances, not just when it is easy.  But I also made the connection to Luke 7:36-50.  It is when Jesus tells of how those who are forgiven little, love little and loves who are forgiven much, love much.  But the difference between those two people (those that are forgiven little and those that are forgiven much) is their attitudes.  If I am never spending time reflecting in how much I need forgiveness, or I take it for granted, I am not going to love very much.  And it is not that I need forgiveness any more or less than the next person because we all have the same need for forgiveness.  God isn’t saying that some people get more forgiveness than others.  The difference is in our attitudes towards God and our realization of how much WE need HIS forgiveness.  I need to spend more time contemplating the things I have already been forgiven for and not take for granted that fact that I am forgiven.  And when I ponder these things in my heart. I can see more and more of God’s love for me and humanity and my desire to live in joy and peace and love other’s grows exponentially.  I need to be forgiven much so that I can love much and love genuinely. 

But there is something else I have been realizing too.  Since I was 14 years old, I have pretty much always had a guy in my life.  And I have always let my faith be dictated by those men.  If they weren’t as spiritual as me, I would hinder myself to “let them catch up” and I, without realizing it, refused to grow in my relationship with the Lord without someone there to grow with.  Even as I got married, I have never wanted to strike out on my own and have my own relationship with the Lord.  I have always rather been dependent upon my husband to fill that need (which isn’t fair to him because it makes him responsible for something I am accountable for).  Since coming to Afghanistan, I am finally stepping on my own, without input really from anyone.  I am running as if to finish my race well and have grown so much since I have gotten here.  And even though I have had multiple conversations (and arguments) regarding faith and the gospel, it hasn’t really caused any growth for me.  It hasn’t encouraged me or discouraged me towards the Lord and I believe it is because he doesn’t intend for it to.  The longer I am here, the more convinced I am that God pulled me out of my comfort zone to finally teach me to rely on him first.  I couldn’t let go of that control and so he put me in the situation where I would have to.   But there are people here I could rely on for spiritual growth, this time it is only about me and Him.  I no longer feel or see a connection between any one person’s spiritual growth and my own and never have I been more FREE.  Never have I been more at peace nor found more joy in my circumstances.  And it is not that Kevin’s spiritual journey isn’t relevant to me; it is that I am no longer dependent upon it.  And my concern is that, upon returning that I would lose what I have found.  That my strength would again be found in my husband and not from God.  I want to protect what I have found and I want to keep it.  I think most people feel that way when they do mission trips (I know I did).  At the end, you don’t want to go home because you don’t want to lose the growth you found because you have never been so reliant upon him and you know that once you get home and back into your routine, you will likely lose it because you won’t have needed God in the same way that you did before. 

But, I have 6 months to figure out how to let this time change me radically and how to make it so strong and firmly apart of who I am that changing my circumstance doesn’t shake who I have become. 

Life: Trusting the Lord with my everything

Ok, so I feel like it is about time to break from my usual blogging routine and write something new and closer to home.  No worries, I will still be posting my regular update next week as usual.  But recently, what has been on my mind a lot is my relationship with my husband and relationships in general. 

Within the last couple of weeks, multiple guys in my unit have had their relationships end and multiple people are having marital stress.  This is the strain of the 1/3 mark.  We are at our first milestone for time but we still have 2/3 to go.  And that is a stressful time for families and friends.  It is a time of reflection on how hard the last three months again and causes angst when realizing we have six to go. 

But for Kevin and I we haven’t seemed to hit that wall, or any since I got here.  I think the difference is in faith and expectations.  In my last blog, you can see shadows of these thoughts in my writing.  But I want to spend more time on them then I did.  So, this blog will be solely focused on the spiritual journey of one traveling so far away from home, into a war zone, with complete peace regarding a life lost back home. 

So to tell this story, I will begin with my expectations.  My marriage is no longer what it was.  I cannot honestly say that it is better, and really… it is probably worse.  To go from living with someone and doing life with them daily to being restricted in communication will do that.  I do all of my work on classified networks and cannot share most of what I do.  I can give some generalities, but those are not conducive to day to day updates.  My husband and I live two very different lives.  He has joined two new organizations since I left and is taking two grad school classes.  His schedule is full of new activities and new people and I am not a part of that world.  I am surrounded by new people, doing a new job in a new place.  It is nearly impossible to describe to someone what life is like over here.  It is hard to explain that rocket attacks aren’t scary, they are just inconvenient when I am trying to sleep.  And if they happen while I am at work, they get completely ignored.  Saying we live two separate lives is an absolute statement of the obvious. 

But what seems to be different for us, is that we expected this.  Most people go into a deployment trying to maximize the amount of time they spend talking to their spouse so they don’t lose that connection with them.  Both parties try to hinder their growth so that they do not grow without the other person.  They fear that an inevitability of that growth is that they will grow apart.  But what they fail to realize is that, despite their best efforts, they will continue to grow and it won’t be deliberately towards each other.  My guess is that these people will struggle when we return because they haven’t accepted that growth occurred and they won’t until it is thrown in their laps.

But this is what I expected. I mourned the loss of my marriage for what it was before I even left.  The hardest part of leaving was knowing that everything would change and that I wouldn’t be able to control it.  Truth be told,  I doubt there was a day in those last couple of weeks where I didn’t cry and mourn over the loss of intimacy with my husband that I knew I was going to experience.  But that grew into an acceptance and a new expectation that was based on faith. 

A few months before I left, my small group at church did a study where we read through the new testament in 8 weeks.  As I read, I was constantly floored as time and again, I read Paul’s letters to people he had never met confirming his love for them and making statements like “I pray without ceasing for you”.  Now, I have never been a pray without ceasing kind of person.  Perhaps I have never found myself in a truly desperate situation.  Perhaps it is because I am still trying to control my own life.  Perhaps it is because I know that prayer is about changing my heart not God’s and I never really desired to change.  As I pray more fervently here, I can definitely confirm that prayer changes our hearts more than it does anything else. 

But back to where I was before.  Every time Paul expressed love, he described it with prayer.  The connection he formed between himself and those he didn’t know was somehow linked to prayer.  And this thought stuck in my mind like it was super glued there.  I finally realized, the best way to love people is to pray for them.  To spend time before the Lord over them would change my heart for them.   But how this applied to my marriage was a fight I had to have first.  I knew what God was trying to teach me.  That if I wanted to love my husband, I would need to deliberately lift him up in prayer and give him and our marriage over to the Lord.  The only thing that could connect us over the distance was going to have to happen at a higher level than we can handle.  But I didn’t want to let go.  I didn’t want to leave the situation to the Lord, I wanted to control it.  I wanted to keep my marriage exactly where it was and control it.  I was already making elaborate communication plans and I wasn’t going to miss a second in my husband’s life. 

The further I planned, the more I realized it wasn’t going to work.  There is nothing I can do to keep my husband safe back home just like there is nothing he can do to keep me safe here.  And I would have to be on the phone with him all day and night to keep up with his life and he with mine.  It wasn’t going to work.  And God already knew it and had given me the answer.  I needed to give my husband and my marriage over to God and trust him to manage it.  I had to have enough faith that God knew better than me; which should be much easier to admit than it ever ends up being.

But part of my struggle with giving it to God was accepting that it wasn’t going to be what I wanted, or thought I wanted.  I knew that by giving my marriage over to God meant accepting whatever he had for it and trusting that it would be good and for my best.  And more than anything, it meant accepting God’s promises are true.

When Kevin and I first got married, I remember being told that if we both sought the Lord first in all of our circumstances that we would have the strongest marriage.  What I had really been doing was putting my marriage first.  I was more concerned with making sure I had a good marriage than I was concerned about my relationship with the Lord.  I wanted to make sure that Kevin and I were growing closer together and then generally more towards God instead of the other way around.

When I gave control over to the Lord, I acknowledged I would have to give that up and just run towards him.  This is really why I have set very specific goals for myself and for my improvement.  It is why I have been praying and reading my bible every day.  It is why I engaged in spiritual conversations frequently and go to church and bible study.  It’s why I am attempting to memorize verses and put the Lord first in my actions.  I am in a dead sprint to finish my race well and I have accepted this race doesn’t end in November with this deployment. 

I have placed my faith and trust in the Lord.  I have accepted that God has everything in control.  This has given me more freedom than I have ever known.  I am without anxiety or worry.  I can trust in God’s providence to get me through and back home to my husband.  I trust that God’s word is true and he only wants the finer things for me.  And I know that Kevin and I don’t have the marriage we did.  We have lost something amazing.  But as we both move more intentionally towards the Lord, we are growing together in a way that we cannot see.  When I get back home, Kevin and I will have a second honeymoon of sorts.  Our marriage will feel new to us again and we will continue from there.  Because we have both moved fervently towards the Lord, we will make leaps and bounds in our marriage when I return.  I understand that this is because I don’t have a contract of marriage with my husband.  I have a covenant between my husband, myself and the Lord, and the latter is what holds it together.  Our newfound reliance on the Lord will renew our marriage in a way that nothing else could.  And though I do not know what that will look like yet, I have faith and trust that it will be good.  My expectations have changed based on my faith in God’s promises. 

And though sometimes, I know that my concern over my marriage may look like apathy to some, nonchalance to others, and everything in between.  But what those people have missed is that my love for my God and my husband exceeds their understanding.  That love is deeper than anyone knows, but I hold it out for the Lord with an open hand.  There was a point in my life when I was concerned I would lose my faith if God ever took my husband from me.  Now I am pretty sure that I would be devastated for the loss, but I could still move towards God to supply my comfort and strength.  I am not sure I could handle it as well as Job, but I would make it through. 

Army: Afghanistan Number 9

Well, here we are.  Week 11 post 9.  It has been an interesting week here in Afghanistan.  As we move into the warmer months, the spring offensive is coming under way, which means more rocket attacks in general.  The alarms having been sounding more frequently here and has been interrupting my (and other's) much needed sleep.  That probably the biggest change between my last couple of weeks.  So I shall continue this post in my normal style.

How I feel most of my time in class! (Not really true though)

Mental: So I have moved into the data collecting phase of my lean six sigma project.  I am really going to two directions; how long does it take to move a container from the time of first request to first movement and what types of containers end up at the yard.  The second part is hard to explain, but basically, containers are packed in all sorts of ways before they are sent.  One option is that our teams pack it properly so it moves out of country faster.  The second is that the unit packs it as nicely  as they can, but still don't get it quite right. And the third is basically the unit just throws a ton of stuff in containers and sends it off to close a base quickly.  The second two involve time unpacking, repacking and resending stuff.  So I am looking at processing times for each.  I will be spending time pouring over spreadsheets this week as well as spending time seeing how the containers are processed.  It will be a large amount of work, but I am just glad to actually feel like I am actioning something now. 

Emotional: So, I am still confunded by the idea of how to be a good wife and still be so far away from my husband.  It's not that I think I am a bad wife or anything like that.  But what I don't think people understand about me is the fact that even when I am stateside, I am constantly trying to improve myself.  And I am always looking at how I can be a better wife.  The frustrating part is not feeling like I can do much here.  I have been trying to just speak more openly with Kevin.  Specifically about how I spend my time here.  I talk to Kevin in the mornings and after sleeping, I can barely remember the previous day or distinguish it from any of the others before that.  Plus, since I have already lived through it once, I don't much feel like living through it again.  Whatever irritated me the day before doesn't matter after a good night's sleep and isn't worth bringing up.  This is on top of the fact that I work in a classified environment and most of my day is spent dealing with secret documents, so I can't even explain what I am working on.  But, I finally realized that I wasn't sharing some key life events with Kevin because I had already dismissed them.  I wasn't letting him know how both my professional and my work relationships were progressing.  Relationships that he thought were still damaged had been repaired and relationships he thought were good had been damaged.  The problem with me not sharing this is that it doesn't help him in his praying for me.  He would pray for things that had long since past and wasn't praying for things I currently need.  So, at night, I try to consider what happened during the day that I need to share with Kevin in the morning, regardless of how I wake up feeling about them.  I think of these updates as prayer requests and then I share them with my loving husband. 

Another piece of my emotional well being here in Afghanistan has been an unexpected friend I found in one of the other lieutenants here.  He is the only other married lieutenant in my unit, has five children back at home (the fifth being born last month) and is almost 9 years older than me.  But honestly, I think the thing that draws us together the most is Christianity.  He is one of the very few people here who uses the scripture as his foundation for action.  He gives biblical advice and I think we both challenge each other to do better and be more Christ-like.  I don't get much free time here, but what I have that isn't spent in my room sleeping is probably being spent with him.  I greatly appreciate his friendship and so does Kevin, as it gives me someone to talk to since it can rarely be him.  But, while co-gender friendships have been a regular part of my life for a long time (kind of expected in the army), there is a degree of caution that has to be exercised.  I would never want the appearance of impropriety in my actions and want to avoid rumors where they can be avoided.  It is a delicate balance and one that irritates me frequently.  Regardless, I share this only to share the prayer request that goes along with it: that our friendship would remain pure, drama free, would be above reproach and not subject to any rumors that pervert the truth. 

Physical: So, I would like to say that I have been working out recently... but I really haven't.  More important to my physical health recently is my desire to just get some sleep.  And since I have been getting off slightly earlier, I have been trying to take advantage the opportunity.  But, as I am currently reflecting on the workouts I have not been doing, I acknowledge that I need to make time for it so that I will do it.  Honestly, the largest part of any change you want to make, is changing your schedule to make it fit.

Financial: So last week I started investing.  I bought and sold my first stocks at a profit of about 16%.  I had bought into the company Yandex (YNDX: Russia's google) and sold it shortly after their earnings report came out.  I also bought Arlington Asset Investment (AI) at the advice of someone else, bought in late and likely won't make anything on it.  I will sell it it likely at no profit eventually.  I have also bought into Apollo Global Management (APO) and am currently up about 4%.  Their earnings report comes out next week and it is expected to have some good news.  Truth be told, my methods mostly involve watching earnings report dates compared to EPS and then looking at the last 1-3 years to see if I think it will likely rise and by how much. 

Spiritual: So apart from praying and reading regularly, I have realized this week it is about time to start another spiritual discipline: memorization.  Last week, I realized how much of an effect sarcasm can have.  Constantly joking about certain things in a negative light not only makes others think I am serious, but becomes more of a reality the more I ay it.  So if I start joking negatively about something and keep repeating it, I start to have a more negative attitude.  So I started reading more of what the bible says about being careful with our words.  And this led me to realize that memorizing these verses would not only help me remember, but might also changed my actions as I recalled the verses in more tense situations.  So my first memory verse was Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger".  My second memory verse was Proverbs 21:23 "Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble" and today's verse is Proverbs 12:18 "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." On my wall at work is a list of verses and each day, I read them all, pick the one that speaks to me the most that day and then start memorizing it. As I memorize it, I go back over the verses I learned the previous day. So we will see how long this list ends up.