The Soldiers of the 80^th Division are returned home!  Over the last month, I was part of a team that welcomed our 700 Soldiers home from Iraq.  They had spent nearly a full year training the Iraqi Army.  Some had worked in palaces and slept in hard-top buildings overlooking man-made lakes; others had worked out of their vehicles and lived in Iraqi dwellings in the countryside, providing for their own creature comforts and security.  It was something to hear their stories and it was a privilege to minister to them and help them prepare for the return home.

     Wherever they were in Iraq it seems, they were all used to the distant thumping of mortar rounds.  One friend in the division is from Ghana.  Now a U.S. citizen, Mathew (spelled with one “t”) is an officer in the Army Reserve.  We had spent many long nights in prayer together the previous summer.  As we sat for lunch on his first day home, we talked about the experience.  His job was to travel around the Baghdad area installing ID Card machines and teaching the Iraqis how to use them.  One of the challenges of the Iraqi Army is keeping track of its Soldiers, who often bounce from battalion to battalion to sign up and receive the enlistment bonus again and again.  He enjoyed his job, but the travel was dangerous.  He was constantly aware of the protection of the presence of God.

     As we ate, he jumped a bit.  I didn’t know what it was that startled him. 

     I didn’t notice anything that might make him jump like that.  After about the third time, I asked him if he was okay.  He motioned to a stand up freezer in the middle of the dining facility.  “When they take the ice cream, they let the door slam.  That’s what a mortar sounds like when it is far away,” Mathew said.  Thump.  Thump.  I heard it then.

     My friends are only now counting the cost of their participation in the Global War on Terrorism this year.  Now that they are home, they can see how they have changed.  Some of my younger Soldiers are returning to college life, but they already know that they will be different.  No more late nights in crowded dance halls—too much noise, too many people, too much to distract you…too dangerous.

     Older Soldiers are feeling the pangs of family separation.  They got used to being apart, but in the next few weeks they will add up the losses.  They missed Christmas at home, they missed a few birthdays, they missed a vacation to see the parents (well, that one might not sting too bad!)—they missed, and they gave up, and they lost.  But their sacrifice meant something and they all felt different to me than when I sent them off.  They were bigger men, and stronger.  They had endured.

     Now I’m returned to my home also.  I was never too far away, but I was also not at home.  I lived about an hour and a half from home all year, and only made it home when I had two days off.  So I’ll count the cost too.  I missed a lot.

     God has been teaching me about endurance.  T. D. Jakes offered a men’s ministry series called “Resistance Training.”  I happen to have it on my iPod, and I’ve listened to it a few times over the year.  Jacob, in Genesis 42:36, cries out in sorrow at the fear of losing his sons, “All this is against me!”  How often we come to the conclusion that everything happening to us is for our pain or our suffering.  Affliction and hard times are at our door.  Only sorrow visits our house.  But in those moments, we are being strengthened.  As we push back, our muscles build and we grow stronger. 

     God challenged Jeremiah when he felt stretched saying that if he could not keep up with the foot-runners, “how will you compete with horses?” (12:5).  God has large intentions for us—big plans with big battles in them.  Will we be strengthened or dejected in our struggles? 

     Pray for our Soldiers.  The battle still rages for many in Iraq, and the battle to regain lost time and strained relationships is only just beginning for my Soldiers.  Pray for strength, pray for victory, pray for joy, and pray for peace—peace abroad and peace at home.