So, we're all real, real excited about Obama being president. I just checked CNN, and Barack hasn't quite gotten around to extending Veterans' Health Benefits to covering the costs of transitioning, but hey, I'm sure it'll happen any minute(The British did it, why can't we).
But something funny has been happening in the last twenty four hours or so since Obama officially took office. People keep asking me if I still have to go to Iraq.
Yeah, I still do. Obama isn't pulling anybody out, isn't planning to have it over for another sixteen months. He wasn't just hiding a policy change in his back pocket until Bush had been safely returned to the wild. We've still got all the problems we had yesterday morning. Well, not all, I did finally get a better boss.
But here's the thing, and dear reader, I'll understand if you're a little horrified. Every time someone has suggested that I won't go to the sandbox, and I feel a tiny note of panic, like a single piano key being hit in an otherwise empty house. The idea of it being over without me having directly participated, it just, well, it terrifies me.
Have you ever heard of the strangler fig? Is this amazing tree down in South and Central America. It produces these big, fat figs that all the birds love to eat, and after they gobbled a few fig they tend to poop in the tops of other trees. Well, in the first stage of the strangler figs life, it's looks like a vine. The fig ends out shoots that grow around and around the host trees, eventually reaching the soil and becoming roots.
Over the years the strangler grows larger and larger, eventually killing the host tree.
Now, what I was amazed by the first time I played in one of these trees was that even the fully grown ones are hollow. They're a giant mass of woody vines. You can climb right up the middle, and find these beautiful, wide, flat platforms of vines near the top where it's fun to sit and picnic and sunbath. Wonderful trees.
But I'm getting off topic.
My life, it seems, is like the strangler fig. For years it's been growing around this deployment. All the training the preparation, the putting things on hold... Even many of the relationships I've built have been built, at least partially, on this idea that I'm someone who's going off to fight. It's not a war I believe in, but it's something I feel like I have to do.
The idea that that host tree might fall before my vines are strong enough to support themselves, the idea that I might go down with the war if it ends before I've gotten everything I need out of it... It scares me.
Now, obviously, this is a deeply selfish truth. There are around 700,000 dead Iraqi civilians who might otherwise be alive today if not for this war. If it could end this afternoon, that would be wonderful, a boon to humanity. That would be something worth celebrating for generations. I'm not going to pretend that it isn't monstrous that I am terrified by the idea to quick end to the war. It is awful, selfish, mean, shortsighted, but it's the truth.
I don't know what I would do, could do, if I wasn't going to war for the next year. I've given up so much to get ready for this moment. So much.
All I can think of to do here is pray for peace, both in the world and in my own mind. One of the great blessings of prayer is that God understands that we are broken, and He will listen to us even when we don't know the right thing to pray for or the right way to pray.
If it's your thing, please pray for the world also, and please remember us poor broken soldiers.
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