Posted on 05/15/2021 7:24:09 AM PDT by Mrs. Warrior
When my husband was getting ready to fly to Iraq to fight in the war, at the airport I was seized with fear that as he walked away it might be my last time to hug him. I started to cry. My husband had told me that “the Lord will walk between you and me”. Our son went from a young man to a responsible man. He told me “let me drive you home mom”.
Shortly thereafter I put up a wooden cross in the front yard and painted on it the “Lord has already won this war”. I prayed to God for my husband's safety and for grace to raise three teenage children alone in his absence once again. Such is the situation of so many of our military families.
During a fire fight a terrorist grabbed a child and used him as a shield. My husband as a leader and Christian prayed for a battle ground miracle and God made the terrorist put the child down and the situation was resolved appropriately. In the midst of hate love had a victory that day. During that tour my husband rescued a contractor who was in a vehicle in front of him that ran over a land mine but the blast impact gave him a head and neck injury as well.
We had just recently purchased our home and then the war came with children in college and work, I had to use a push lawn mower and I over exerted myself and wound up with pneumonia and congestive hear failure later that summer and found myself in the ICU. The Red Cross notified my husband and he was sent home on emergency leave. In the course of a few days he went from combat to being back home; we could see that the cost of having to see the worst side of human nature yet again took its toil. My husband returned home on our 21st anniversary.
We both had to learn to let the love of Jesus heal us from our injuries and we planted a Rose of Sharon bush to remind us that on our farm the enduring faith and promise to love through the good times and the bad . Later, after I was assaulted and had a head injury, when pain becomes the next enemy to attack us, we take communion every day to proclaim this was paid for by the body and blood of Jesus.
During that Iraq deployment, while I was recovering from the effects of heart failure my kids started to drive on their own and our girls met the future spouses that would wind up being harmful to them. Our eldest girl joined the Air Force but as it turned out her husband to be urged her to do so for less than selfless reasons, as he had serious medical conditions and was un-insurable otherwise. She had patriotic reasons for serving but later when she came home from a deployment during the Iraq war, her marriage had fallen apart.
Over time we watched our children go through broken hearts and divorces and child custody battles and we stuck together as best as time and distance allowed. Our family had attacks against the God given values we had, and we all had to put our broken bodies and hopes at the Cross.
The battle on foreign soil was won by amazing service members who I thank for giving America her freedoms; we personally know the price that was paid for it.
Later when we retired from the Army a new battle and administration had to be fought to obtain our earned service and combat related disability benefits. Our warriors put it all on the line and time and hard effort continuously wear on their bodies and minds. We prayed and hoped for justice and praised God for our benefits of having everyday grace and joy.
When the Covid first hit, the installation closed down the Post Exchange and all facilities. The staff were treating my husband and other veterans and service members like they were the germs. I was determined that he was not going to be treated that way. They were also saying that you could not mention God on post, I went to the PX and I did some feisty preaching with the power of the Holy spirit. I said “in the six feet that I am standing on this is my America and we paid for it, and you people are my military family”, “I will shout to you I love you God loves you”. “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray then I will hear from heaven and heal their land”. They opened the PX again.
Another battle for our God-given freedoms that are written in the constitution is being waged. I have learned from being a veteran prayer warrior along with my husband. There is a flock sheltered in Godly homes in the hills and valleys and towns and cities all across America; and we dwell in green pastures with restored souls and we send our thanks and love over the internet waves.
When our family recently gathered in the sun room we built I told the story of Jesus in the garden; how Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant and how Jesus had to tell impulsive Peter “in one one ear and off with another”. Graciously Jesus healed the man's ear, He stated “I have thousands of angels to deliver me, but for this time I am a lamb slain for the sins of the world”.
When the time comes for the catching away of the sheep, separating Godly righteous individuals in Christ, at the Second Coming Christ will deal with nations with a rod of iron; when the lamb becomes a lion and the final battle of Armageddon. Our efforts to make secure the eternal destination of our family's souls and others that we can reach by our testimony. Our future is in a new heaven and earth where righteousness dwells and will be the benefit to those who trusted the Shepherd who was the lamb that was slain but is alive evermore to give us abundant and eternal life.
Thank Ya'lls so very much, Mrs Warrior,for sharing all this testimony of trials and tribulations.
Beautiful testimony. To be evenly yoked is such a blessing. Thank you for sharing.
I remember the photo of the Iraqi woman with purple stained fingertips after voting, I know that by force of arms for a brief time human rights as articulated by Eleanor Roosevelt in her Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN held center stage in Iraq. So what went wrong after this sort of incredible sacrifice? This long post from an essay I wrote is significant, because those who served need to retain the proper appreciation for their efforts. It was important for me to write the essay, because Iraq was my son’s war.
“In the current time, I would say the guys in utilities create the environment for winning the war, but then the folks in suits have to secure the final victory. Mao Tse-tung, echoing Sun Tzu, said “It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed”. War and politics reside on a continuum. They are not a dichotomy. War as overt and covert conflict invests and surrounds traditional diplomacy with the force to bring meaningful change by frustrating plans, breaking alliances, isolating factions/regimes, and engaging the enemy’s mind with scenarios where war as overt conflict becomes the ultimate arbiter. Once again politicians and their acolytes in the State Department failed to respond to this reality thereby disregarding the sacrifices of our armed forces, which had created an environment for victory.
The outcome was the Bushes fault. Yes, it did take both Bush presidencies to secure defeat and of course we could never have expected Obama’s administration to have brought up Article 25 of the Status of Forces Agreement to mitigate the problem as it was developing.
Under Bush #1, Iraqi Arabs revolted with United States encouragement to be then abandoned as Hussein’s forces launched a successful campaign murdering tens of thousands for final repression and retribution. Bush #1 made a speech hoping to incite a military coup to topple Hussein by saying, ‘There is another way for the bloodshed to stop and that is for the Iraqi military and people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator to step aside and then comply with the United Nations resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations’. As former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency he knew that such information should have been transmitted covertly to a selected few.
This probably sealed the fate of a unified Iraqi government, because this deception and inaction was so egregious it overcame millennia of animosity between the Semites of Assyria/Iraq and the Caucasians/Aryans of Persia/Iran. The abandonment of the “Swamp Arabs” by Bush #1 in their hour of crisis evoked a deathless memory which crippled subsequent efforts. Had the United States never promoted the open revolt or behaved with integrity when it did sponsor it, then Muqtada al-Sadr would have never had a forum to become one of the most influential religious and political figures in Iraq, despite not holding an official title.
This act of intellectual dwarfism leading to negligent homicide reminds me of the Warsaw Uprising. The Polish Resistance rose at Joseph Stalin’s encouragement as the Red Army closed in on Warsaw. The army then stopped as the Germans regrouped and demolished the city in the next two months. The Nazis inflicted nearly 200,000 casualties in defeating resistance fighters and slaughtering civilians mainly by mass execution. Therefore Bush #1 accomplished through gross negligence the same result Stalin achieved by malicious intent. In both cases those individuals who could have been vital in the effort to establish a new government were eliminated.
After the coalition annulled the unilateral armistice and invaded Iraq, an Iraqi interim council of 25 ethnically and religiously diverse members produced the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) as a basis for a new constitution. Its’ 39 articles were unique in the Arab world for conceiving republican, federal, democratic, and pluralistic government guaranteeing rights for speech, religion, private property, etc. for all including Christians, Jews and former Ba’athists. Here was an opportunity to replace disappointment, fear and brutality with hope and opportunity. However, in 2004 Bush #2 marginalized this extraordinary indigenous effort, and the people involved, when approving a new interim government. The US substituted a UN scheme compatible with traditional Arab authoritarian rule.
These two failures prevented an Iraqi government emerging that would have been different from ours, but revolutionary within the Arab world. A government based on the TAL and promoted by its creators, which without Bush #1 intervention, would have included leading Shia believers, could have provided the opportunity to disrupt the legacy of over 1,000 years of brutal, despotic governments dominating the Arab peoples.
United States politicians squandered an opportunity for a lasting victory for the Global War on Terror. Here was an opportunity for families, tribes, and ethnic and religious groups to discover a method to protect essential individuality within a national structure no group would dominate, and which would deliver terrorist factions into outer darkness. One should not expect a similar opportunity to occur for generations."
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (the little red book)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml
1991 uprisings in Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq
Muqtada al-Sadr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqtada_al-Sadr
Warsaw Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising
Summary of Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/copy_of_transitional-law/view
TOO LEGIT TO QUIT https://world.wng.org/2004/06/too_legit_to_quit
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