Weeping, Enduring and Joyful Mornings

We are prepar­ing to say good-bye again this year. We have two deploy­ments this time. Both going to Afghanistan. My old­est son is fac­ing his 3rd deploy­ment in 6 years of ser­vice. This time he will be a father when he returns to war. I wish I could say I was joy­ful, know­ing that he is doing what he loves and


Bonding, Resiliency and Brotherhood

Human con­nect­ed­ness and resiliency are believed by many to have a strong pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion. Resiliency the­o­ries are often very com­plex and com­pli­cated, and they should be. Resiliency should not be argued on a nature ver­sus nur­ture basis, but rather it is more noted as being on a con­tin­uum with­out an absolute polar on either end. Both per­son­al­ity type


Sanctification on Aisle Three, Please!

I was recently lament­ing an upcom­ing trip to the gro­cery store when I had to stop and ask myself 『why?』 I loathe some aspects of shop­ping. If I could, I would hide in my home and use Ama­zon or UPS to avoid the unpleas­ant aspects of the gro­cery store. After prayer as well as a lot of soul search­ing I have


No Soul Has Bootstraps!

Mil­i­tary wives and mil­i­tary moth­ers have a rep­u­ta­tion for being tough and tena­cious. These char­ac­ter­is­tics come in help­ful when we are fac­ing deploy­ments, sep­a­ra­tions and the demands of life, and pro­vide for us a patch­work robe of dig­nity in very stress­ful times. They can also be to our detri­ment when we pride our­selves in them instead of remem­ber­ing


The Ties That Bind

This is a photo of our fam­ily reunion. 11 weeks of sep­a­ra­tion, one phone call, and a dozen let­ters were all that filled the gap in that time. I know that there are many mil­i­tary fam­i­lies who have been sep­a­rated for much longer, and with less con­tact. If you have never had to keep a mar­riage strong and viable  —  and


A few of my favorite things…

I have been slow at work­ing on this blog. It’s been a long hard year with a lot of obsta­cles for me to over­come. I have a few things I have yet to 『unpack』 in this new blog-home of mine, and my all-time favorite pic­tures of my loved ones are cer­tainly ready to be unpacked and hung-up in the new