worth fighting for

Okay, I'm breaking the rulez. I am writing too many blogs (two many blogs) tonight. But I have a heart that is just bursting with so much that I want to tell you.


I've never been patriotic.

Don't shoot, don't shoot!

And you know what else? It's been really hard to have any of those feelings when I could be so so bitter to this whole war, and to the simple and sad fact that every single day while Brandon is gone, I worry about these things that no wife should ever have to worry about. (I'm not complaining, and Brandon never complains, in fact- the knowledge of these pitfalls make me so much more grateful for what I HAVE.) (even if I don't have him). These are brandon's living conditions.

1. A broken heater in -20 degree weather in a tent in the desert
2. A sleeping bag built for 0 degree weather only.
3. Men who he loves more than he loves himself
4. Food in a bag every day
5. patrols through foreign villages with a variety of people who hate him and his country
6. night watches that allow him to "sleep" during the day while everyone else is blowing things up, shooting, and running around.
7. Letters about once a month
8. A broken phone

Brandon, are you eating? are you sleeping? are you happy? are you sad? do you know how much I love you? are you warm? are you safe?

But you know something?
I've really had to find a reason why this war means more to me than just because my husband's life is on the line
I feel like this quote describes how I'm learning to feel about the war.

" War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much, much worse.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety is a miserable creature; who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

I'm not saying brandon is better than you. or me, or anyone else.

But I do think, that our generation is under-informed, impatient, ignorant- and selfish.

Again that's a generalization- I don't mean all people are that way- and I don't KNOW all people.


Last night brandon called from a different base where he was attending an Intelligence brief. He told me these comforting, soothing, peaceable, fantastic words.

"After this, I don't ever want anything to do with the military again. I want to grow my hair out, buy a vw bus and wear bell bottoms for the rest of my life."