Afghanistan: Number 25 (My last post from Afghanistan!)

Our transfer of authority ceremony

Alright everyone.  This is it.  I am going home.  Many of you have asked if I know when.  The answer to that is yes, but I cannot share it.  I can share after we have moved, but will not be able to tell you our next movement dates or times of anything like that.  Once I get back into the U.S. will be a different story, but for now, just know that within the next week or so, I will be home!  So here it is, my last post and the end of this part of my journey.

Playing volleyball in our free time...

Mental: I am having some frustrations in this department honestly.  I have not completed my second black belt project because I am still waiting to receive my data.  This is through no fault of my own and I can honestly say that I have no grand appreciation for the speed at which contractors move.  However, I did have an interview last Friday with a Brigadier General and have been officially endorsed to go to school and certify as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.  Unfortunately, we are still awaiting the exam results to go with it, so once we get the score key (a huge debacle because of the furlough), my qualifying exam will be scored and I will submit my packet.  Then there are about 5,000 more hurdles to go, but I plan on just taking them as they come.  Lord willing, I have a tremendous amount of potential in this area.

Physical: As you already now, I received the highest score possible on my Army Physical Fitness Exam just a couple of weeks ago (a 300).  My other goal of the six pack... well... I guess I will call it success.  I don't need to flex for it to be visible, but I am not seeing a lot of definition.  It's probably from all the ice cream I eat.  Regardless, I am at the lowest weight I have been in the last four years or so and am overall happy with the way I look and feel (even though I was also happy before).  I still intend to try to keep up the momentum when I get back and keep my run time down.

Can you tell I am not very good?

Financial: Well, my stocks have been up and down this week.  Both of my stocks have been near or surpassed their 52 week highs this week and then have dropped back down into a respectable range.  I am still planning on holding onto them.  I'm not the most financially savvy person I know, but both stocks are looking pretty strong and are significantly higher than what I bought them at.  Hopefully I don't forget about the too much once I am back stateside.

Seriously though, I had no idea  what I was doing.

Emotional:  This is a weird one in preparation for coming home.  People don't seem to understand that going home for a Soldier is in some ways, more difficult than leaving.  We train and prepare to leave but don't do much for coming back.  I haven't been alone or had a day off since I got here.  Going home, living with my husband, having to cook for myself and grocery shop and pick out clothes and drive myself around are all going to be transitions for me to get back into the hang of things.  I might never be alone here, but I haven't had to share my life with anybody either.  There is no one I had to talk to and take care of at the end of the day.  This is not to say at all that I am not completely excited to come home, because I really am, but it is a forewarning that this is a transition for me.  Getting back into a schedule will take time and patience.  On a somewhat similar note, I have been praying recently that God would help me fall more in love with my husband than I have ever been before.  This has been my constant pray over the last week and I can already feel it being answered.  I cannot wait to get back to my love, my groom, my companion, my husband.  To see him, to touch him, to be touched by him, to speak with him freely, to sleep next to him, to be with him... I cannot wait.

Spiritual: How good are you at being still? As in Psalm 46:10 "'Be still and know that I am God'..."  I am not very good at being still.  I have had issues being still my whole life.  Call it ADHD, call it hyperactive, call it over-thinking, over-analytical... Whatever name you want to give it. I don't think I have ever truly been still.  And honestly, I am not sure I know any women (or even men) who have told me they figured this one out.  We seem hard-wired for multi-tasking and calming chaos in our homes.  Our jobs and our lives seem to never demand stillness.  I used to even confuse stillness with laziness, but have since realized that it is actually the opposite.  But I digress.  Let me first say that my to do list for getting home is a mile long.  I am trying to get into school for my Lean Six Sigma Master Black belt, I am running against the clock to get a new job, the cabinets in our kitchen need redone, I want to build a green house and start a garden (some day down the road I want to have chickens and some day further after that, I want to try bee keeping), I want to do some minor landscaping in the back yard, plant some trees and bushes, buy a gun, get my concealed carry license, build new shelves in our closet, continue building a multi-media server for our house, create a planter outside my bay window, create cushions to sit in the bay window, potentially add a shower to our downstairs bathroom, build a fire pit, go to Illinois, go on vacation to Mexico, learn French and get LASIK.  Now, these are things I am thinking about for my next year home, but you can see that I have a lot of plans in front of me.  And I was nearly giddy trying to pick which one I wanted to tackle first (and when I say one, I mean a minimum of 3 because that's how I operate). I haven't had a day off on this deployment and if I am not running around doing something, I am sleeping or talking about the next thing I am working on.

So you can probably see now where the Holy Spirit intervened as a blessing to my dear husband (who was probably overwhelmed by my planning).  Still is not my forte.  Still is not watching t.v. or going for a walk.  It is literally still.  It is stopping the mind from wandering and planning, stopping my mouth from moving and just living at peace.  Others might call it meditation or clearing the mind, but really it's stillness.  And we don't really get any of this as a culture.  Stillness is most clear to me in my understanding of God's command to take a Sabbath.  Rest. Be still.  Remember God's still got this.  I used to think that still was passive, mostly because that helped justify my lack of being still.  Then I realized how active a task it is.  Ask a five year old (or me for that matter) to sit still.  See how long that lasts.  It is a rather arduous chore.  Better yet, I can't seem to truly clear my mind for more than a minute at a time.  But I bet if I worked on stillness that time would get longer.  If you read Psalm 46, you see that our God is very active.  It is in our stillness that we can see that it not us, but He who is running it all.  It is in our stillness that we come to know God.  Knowing God is being able to see Him, His heart, and His movement in our lives.  If I am always moving, I confuse myself into thinking that everything is my doing.  It's my "thanks God, but clearly I've got this one," kind of moments.  My activity causes me to get distracted by MY thoughts and MY actions and MY works in MY time.  Stillness is a time to reflect on GOD's thoughts and GOD's actions and GOD's works in GOD's time.  I am my own biggest distraction from God.  I create a whole world of distractions that I call "productive" "necessary" "useful" "important" etc.  So instead, when I get home, I am going to focus my time on learning to be still first and incorporating that into my Sabbath's and my every day life.  One thing I do know, if I can't figure out how to be still as a wife, I am really going to struggle to figure it out once we have kids.  I am ready to be still and know that He is God.

Afghanistan: Number 24

Clearer view of mountains after rain

Alright, so I am a few days late.  This was kind of intentional, as I didn't want to post on my birthday, which was Sunday.  I turned 25 and as you might imagine, it was really just another day in Bagram.  It was a normal Sunday, in that I got up, video chatted with Kevin, had the morning off, went to lunch, then work then church after dinner.  Unfortunately, we had a rocket attack that night that was probably the first one that actually scared me, but at least it happened after midnight and not technically on my birthday.  Aside from that, it rained on my birthday, which is the first time I have seen rain since June (it technically rained for a few minutes last week, but I didn't know it was happening, so I didn't see it). But all in all, it was a regular day in Afghanistan.  So here goes another post for Afghanistan, knowing I should be home in just a few weeks.

Physical:  No new updates on this one, and there probably won't be much the rest of my time here.  Now that I have maxed my APFT, my fitness goals are pretty much complete.  I am probably in better shape than I have been in a long time, but I have never really been out of shape so that isn't saying much.  The goal now is to maintain when I get back, and that will be very difficult when I am back to the land of good food.

Financial: So there isn't a ton new to report here.  I did learn something new the other day though.  Basically I learned that if I hold onto my stocks for under a year, I am taxed on my gains in my current bracket (25%) but if I hold onto them more than a year, they will be taxed at 15%.  So I think I am going to try to hold onto both my stocks for the next year if I can.  And since I am getting so close to going home, I think I will even share what those stocks are.  One of them is Home Inns & Hotel Management Inc (HMIN) and Yandex (YNDX) which is basically the Russian version of Google.  Both are doing well for me and looking pretty strong.

Mental: So Lean Six Sigma is going well.  I am working on a second black belt project right now that basically covers proper planning within the Army.  Overall, I am showing that proper use of Army planning and design models paired with Lean Six Sigma can save the Army a lot of money compared to just picking projects not aligned with already set planning efforts.  My second project is going to help me get certified in Lean Six Sigma on the civilian side, since I already have my certification all settled on the military side.  This is also going to help me pursue my Master black belt.  Really, in the next week or so, I need to brief a General Officer from our division my path and plan for certification.  If he approves it, then I will be going to school for it next year, most likely.  If not, then it is dead in the water and I will just maintain my black belt.

Emotional:  So this one has been pretty good.  Life has been pretty easy going recently and I am very thankful for that.  I am also very happy that my replacement is here and we are officially starting our change over training.  She is catching on quickly and I think that change over process should be pretty seamless.  Once the new unit officially takes over in a couple of weeks, we will start heading home.  I think during that time of travel, I will be doing some automatic blog posts.  I am planning on doing a "stuff I learned on this deployment" post.  I am working on it now and am just debating whether I should break it up into a miniseries, or keep it all together.  Once I have everything written out, I will probably decide which to go with.  Honesty, I have learned a lot while I have been here.  Things haven't been easy, but I know that I have learned a lot from the experience.

Spiritual:  So I have been continuing in prayer and reading.  In my prayer life, I have been praying very consistently for certain individuals throughout the deployment. I am not seeing any sort of answer to that prayer, but I am glad to have stuck by a spiritual discipline for over 200 days.  In my reading, Kevin and I caught up to where we intended to be.  We started reading through the bible chronologically in March and it is broken up over a year period.  So back in July, we decided to read two passages a day until we got caught up to the right day.  Oddly enough, it just so happened to work out that we were caught up on my birthday.  We enjoyed reading so much, we decided to continue doing two-a-days.  Which should have us done before the end of November.  

Afghanistan Number 21

Alright everyone, I know I have been slacking and haven't posted in about a month, but now that things have calmed down a lot, I am ready to get back to it.  This last month has been pretty crazy.  I have been traveling, working out in one of our yards doing some manual labor, spending time with great people and have awesome conversation with my husband.  The last month of so has been drastically life altering, but also very fast paced.  I have no idea how many weeks I have been here now, but I can tell you I have about six weeks left! So here we go!

Physical: Ok, so this one is disappointing. I missed the Army ten-miler here in Bagram.  It was actually this morning, but I didn't know until 1500  yesterday afternoon (not enough time to recover and hydrate properly).  Plus, I ended up getting a killer headache last night.  So that little nugget has fallen through.  I have been working longer hours again, which was sacrificing my PT time by a lot.  So I made a new routine.  Now, instead of trying to go in the morning or evening, I go in the middle of the afternoon when I have down time.  I think I am going to try to keep this up when I get back to Fort Carson by going to the gym during lunch.  Before I left, I would travel back and forth from home multiple times a day.  To help save on our budget (updated financial goals), we are looking for ways to cut out the little things and this is definitely one of them.  Plus, it has the added benefit of me getting a good workout in during lunch. I have a PT test in a few weeks as well, and my goal is to get another 300 before going back home and eating really yummy food again.  But we will see how it all falls.

Our new 2014 Ford Escape!

Financial: My stocks are doing really well.  I am currently holding two of them that have provided some good gains for me.  Both are kind of plateaued, but they plateaued high enough that I am just keep them.  Right now, I have basically made 50% return on my initial investment.  I could definitely see myself doing this some more, but I haven't had a ton of time to devote to it.  I need to start looking at some potential new buys before the next set or quarterly earnings comes out.  Aside from that, Kevin and I have made some new financial goals.  We just bought our first car together (a 2014 Ford Escape Titanium, which we love!) and have decided we will probably not be moving again next year.  There are several factors going into that decision (like the new car!), but also the fact that I haven't really got to live in my house (or any place) for very long and I would like to take the time to start a garden, redo gutters, redo cabinets, plant some bushes and so on and so forth.  And I don't want to be rushing to do that before next spring.  So Kevin and I have decided to just say in the house we are in and try to get that paid off as quickly as possible.  We are also looking at ways to reduce our budgets.  Aside from trying to drive less, we are also looking at ways we can keep costs down and try to basically live on one income, with the other completely providing discretion to pay extra off the house and do projects and vacations and things.  Basically, we want one income to frame our spending and the other income to frame our saving in such a way that we can give money away, invest and just have fun. 

Our new garden window!

Mental: I finished my Lean Six Sigma project!!! Can you believe it?!  I ultimately reduced my standard deviation (Six sigma) and shifted my mean (lean).  It is now being submitted, and once that is done, I will have a DA 4187 with my skill identifier saying I am a certified black belt for the Army.  Now I just need to pull my project off my computer so that I will have it and all of my reference materials and I am done!!!!  Aside from that, I have been playing more with Microsoft excel and even with macros.  I think I might keep studying excel a bit because I am learning some really interesting things.  I am also going to try to spend the winter reading up on building my first green house and learning some fun gardening tips and tricks.  I think the fact that I haven't seen much green here has given me a very strong desire to decorate my house with lively plants.  I also have a desire to do some manual labor (building cabinets and trying to do gutters and small projects ourselves) after spending the last 7+ months sitting behind a computer.  I really enjoying working with my hands and haven't gotten to do enough of it here.  Plus, I enjoy working on our home.  Kevin has had a new garden window installed and we are having work done on our patio in the next couple of weeks.  I can't wait to get home and join him.  And I look forward to starting new projects and learning new crafts!

Emotional: So this one has been going pretty well.  I think Kevin and I have been connecting so much better as we have started discussing our plans for the next year or so.  Truth be told, earlier in the month, we were in a rather depressing rut and neither of us could really tell why.  I think Kevin just didn't like the sound of two more months and truthfully, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the idea of making decisions again.  There are limitless possibilities for the future and what is coming next that I felt kind of overwhelmed by the idea of preparing to face it.  But as Kevin and I started moving forward (Kevin got our new garden window installed on the house and is having the patio done next month), things started getting easier.  That's why we decided to by the car (which we are so excited about) and start making plans for what the next year holds.  And things are really starting to come together.  Kevin is loving his job and I am loving mine.  And though there are definitely no concrete plans right now, there is a pretty good likelihood that I might stay in the Army for longer than my contract.  We have a lot to figure out on that path, but we have decided to wait until I get home and see how I am feeling six months from now before making too many decisions.  For right now, we are both giving up control of a lot that we like to hold on to just to imagine the world of possibilities.  We have decided that both of us are going to stop worrying about what we "should" or "shouldn't" do and start focusing on loving God, loving each other and loving others and living a life that is going to bring him the most glory.

Spiritual: Well, obviously this one is tied to my current emotional state as well.  Basically, the idea of giving up control of what I want versus what I think I should want has been very relieving.  Telling Kevin that I might want to stay in the Army was very difficult, but mostly because of the church, not because of Jesus.  I feel like within Christianity, we tend to limit the roles for women into what we see as best for her family or manageable.  Telling women I am in the Army is usually stomached in the same manner as me saying I'm sick or I have cancer.  They want to tell me that's horrible (and some do) and that they can't wait for me to get out.  Even my most well intended friends ask me about deploying and having kids to just get out of it.  It is inconceivable to them that I love this.  It's even crazier to them that I am really good at it.  But I let myself fall in that box too.  I told myself I couldn't stay in and be a good wife and mother.  Every day, I think that is less and less true.  Would there be hard parts? Yes. Is moving around all the time easy? No.  But would my kids and husband get to experience things that others might never get to? Yes.  Can we use it as the opportunity to bring our family closer together? Yes.  But most importantly, does it bring more glory to God to live the life he first put on my heart as a twelve year old girl and has reaffirmed many times since? Does it bring more glory to God for me to live my life in such a way that it ties together the unique characteristics God decided to ordain me with?  And does it bring God more glory when I live out the things that interest me and help them to grow and develop my family?  It might seem simple to just say yes and move on, but I am spending time with these questions.  I am leaning more towards them than I am away.  I am breaking down my own religious rules and trying to find the truth in the center of the Gospel.  I am done telling Christ how Christians are supposed to live.  When I look at biblical women, I see women who work and serve.  Ruth was a laborer, Esther was into politics and the proverbs 31 woman ran a very successful business (and all in the Old Testament too!).  Maybe my primary job can be wife and mother even if I don't spend all my time doing those things from home.  I don't know.  We have a lot of exploring to do, but I figured I would share with you where we have explored to thus far.