After J came home that fall of 2005, things went back to normal, at least on the surface. We still laughed, played, went on dates, and had a lot of fun enjoying one another's company. We still functioned as a family as we used to… went to church, ate dinner around the table every night, still had lots of family time, and ended every day tucking the boys in, giving lots of love, kisses, and prayers.
Underneath it all, I was struggling with the insecurities that betrayal brings, and he was still struggling with guilt. Guilt that war brings, and guilt of the way he treated me.
It was a sweet Christmas, and I had hope that one day we would be completely healed of everything that happened that year.
January 2006 came, and with it came more training, and another deployment back to Iraq.
Training was LONG and hard, for they only had 9 months to train before leaving again to new terrain. He was literally gone all the time. I was scared. I wasn't sure how either one of us was going to handle 16 months of separation after just coming through such an intense year.
The long training trips proved to be very difficult… he began drinking again on every trip. He would go away, drink (avoid me the entire trip), and then return home as if everything were perfectly fine.
He didn't drink at home, so I wasn't to ask him about what went on during his trips. If I did he would get very angry, and have major fits. This caused me to resent him due to the fact that he could do as he pleased, but I was expected just to sit and be quiet, smile, and welcome him home every trip. If I were to ask ANYTHING, he would explode and shut me out for days. A simple question such as "What time will you be home" sent him over the edge.
With every trip the drinking became greater. I would get phone calls all hours throughout the night, into early morning. He would be at a bar, hundreds of miles away, and I would hear woman all around him. He said things that I'm sure a counselor would refer to as "verbally abusive", yet when morning came he was back to being "J". He was back to "loving me", and was "sorry".
That was that. We weren't to talk about what goes on during the drunken hours, just as long as all was "fine" on the home front.
The summer of 2006, he came home from a trip very drunk. He forced me to stop and get him alcohol on the way home from the airport to keep it going. Drinking at home wasn't something he usually did, so seeing him like this was unusual.
It was late evening, so I decided that it would be best to just put my babies to bed early. After they were asleep, he started talking his "drunk talk"… about women, and everything else. He admitted all his infidelity, and even elaborated on the details. I became furious… I snapped. I ripped the curtains off the wall, flipped the coffee table, and told him I was leaving him. I went outside and threw the new, beautiful ring he just bought me for Mother's Day, because I told him that it didn't hold any meaning to me any more.
He got very quiet, and just sat on the couch with his beer.
I packed the boy's clothes, diapers, woke them up and put them in the car. I stayed in a hotel that night. I waited until he went to work the next day before returning home to pack our remaining things, and left. I went to stay with my mother in law in a different state.
The first night there, he called me. At first I didn't answer. He tried all hours throughout the night, and continued to call my mother in law's home phone repeatedly. There wasn't the option to turn the ringer off on that particular phone, so I answered to keep everyone in the house from being up all night. He was at our home drunk, and crying. He said he was scared, and he hated being alone. He said every time he closed his eyes the faces of friends lost would be there, and talk to him. He just kept saying how afraid he was being there alone, and that's when I realized that this was much more than just a "husband turned complete jerk" scenario, and that we were dealing with something much deeper.
You see, this was only the 4th year into the war, and PTSD wasn't often talked about . It's something we referred to when we were talking about our Vietnam Vets, but not today's soldiers. He didn't talk about the feelings he struggled with on the road, therefore I didn't realize just how afraid he was, and how much he was struggling with these feelings. In my mind, I just assumed that all the time he spent away from home was paying its toll, turning him into a selfish, cheating, lying, drunk. I was young, hurt, and naive. I didn't stop to consider the true causes of the changes in him.
That night on the phone, I promised him that as long as he was at home, that would do my best to keep it his "safe place", and I would NEVER leave him alone again. The following morning I went back home, leaving my kiddos to stay with my mother in law for a couple of days. We had plenty of alone time, and this time he opened up, and shared with me the things that were weighing so heavily on his heart.
I wish we had time to heal, but with his job there isn't much time for that.
He deployed that September 2006.
Our relationship was slowly healing, but he continued drinking, even overseas. Still, he stopped pushing me away, and for that I was very thankful.
Iraq, April 6, 2007
J and the guys went out on what seemed to be just another op. However, it proved to be much more than that.
Without going into many details, J and his men were attacked and were under heavy enemy fire. They lost a very good man that night, a true hero who is still missed today! During the firefight, J's chief was shot a total of 27 times. J and another man were first by his side. J had his fingers in his chief's wounds to stop the bleeding, and together they helped patch him as best they could and loaded him onto a MEDEVAC helicopter. He watched them fly away, not knowing if he would ever see his friend alive again. They thought they were going to lose him, but praise God he had another plan! He was able to come home to his sweet family, and lived to tell about it!
He and another man carried his friend's lifeless body to the Bradley Vehicle.
J couldn't help but reflect on his life during that helicopter ride back to base. He felt God pull strongly on his heart that night. He felt the pull, felt the peace and even acknowledged the one who sent it, yet never totally surrendered.
He came home that May, and tried to act as "normal" as possible. We went to Bethesda and spent some time with a few of the men that were hurt that night, including his chief. The guys talked, and tried to make sense of everything. They tried to heal the best they knew how. But there were big scars left behind. Nightmares. Anxiety. Feelings of guilt. "Demons" is what they would call it, that haunted them no matter where they'd go. There was no escape.
J did fine while he was at home, but we both knew it was just a short time before he would be on the road again.
Training came fast. The first couple of trips were uneventful; no drinking, no signs of anger. He called me every night to tell me how much he loved me. He tried to act as "normal" as possible - J saw the problem that was in his life, and he was doing everything in his strength to fight it.
But that was the problem. Whenever we try to do anything in our own strength, we will fail. This battle was too big for J to fight alone. He needed to admit his human weakness, and fight this battle through God's strength. He needed divine, supernatural power to get him through these battles; strength that you can only recieve from God Himself.
You see, it doesn't matter what your job title is. What you've done holds little value in the big scheme of things. It doesn't matter how important you think your job is, how strong you are, what your level of education is, how successful you are, or how much money is in your bank account. In the end, we are NOTHING without God.
Until a man/woman can admit their weakness, and humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, there is little we can do in our own strength to fight the battles of this life. We will fail trying.
The strongest of men must first admit their weakness if they are to win the war.
To be continued…
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