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Showing posts from June, 2015

Grateful

Do you know that joy is a choice? I knew it in my head. Somewhere in the midst of eleven long months of deployment, I learned it. But it hadn't really hit my heart until a sunny day in the month of May - a day which could have been my last. I was out on a kayak with my daughter when the wind flipped us over. It wouldn't have been so bad, except I didn't have a life jacket on. I'm not really sure how many times I went under water. All I know is that there came a point where I knew I had a choice: hold on or die. There was no room in my mind to think of calling for help. All I could focus on was surviving that  moment. Every ounce of energy I had was poured into gripping that kayak, into keeping us above water somehow. There came a moment when I was laying on my back holding onto the kayak. Water was washing over my eyes, but I didn't care - all that mattered was that my mouth was above water. All I cared about in that moment was that I could breathe. It w