*This article first appeared on my Substack. Check it out - plus many more - at the link below*

I was in college back when the Middle East conflicts had reached a second or third-round apex. In 2014-2015, Iraq was pretty hot (again), Afghanistan was warm, Iran was always in the background (as always), and, most relevant for me, the terror group ISIS was ramping up activities in Syria and the surrounding territories. I had friends who were in the military, relatives who had received Purple Hearts in these and other conflicts, and a developing mind who could not help but watch it all unfold - as the whole world did - in almost real time. It was a Hell of a time to be a young man with a bad temper and a proclivity to watch the news. Among the events monitored from the safety of my dorm was one that would hit home pretty hard - and would bear surprising weight years later as my wife and I began to build our own family according to God’s design.

 2015 was, as I said, a tumultuous time in the Middle East, but especially so for Christians. The up-and-coming terror group called ISIS (ISIL at different times, depending on US political affiliation talking) was singling them out in the Syriac regions, martyring them, and creating video productions of the executions. These productions were graphic, explicit, and, most disturbingly, relatively well constructed as far as video goes. And to narrate the entire affair was one whom the world knew as “Jihadi John,” a masked spokesman who issued his threats against the Pope, America, and the Infidel almost always while clutching what looked (to me) like a steak knife. I will spare you the description of how that knife was employed mere moments before these addresses. This much to say: if you were unfortunate or foolish enough to watch these videos, the images stayed with you. 

 Now I, hothead that I was and emotionally invested in these events (for reasons I will share momentarily), spent much more time than was healthy watching these videos before the internet took them down. And yet, even after YouTube restricted them and banned them (which took a surprising long time to do, by the way), you could still find these full videos on various fringe websites were you given the means and drive to find them. And those haunting images burned themselves into my mind such that I simultaneously felt helpless to defend these Christian martyrs and yet was interiorly urged to seek them out. “If I cannot kill these murderers,” I told myself, “I will at least make sure that their victims are not forgotten or unnoticed.” And so, egged on by my anger and encouraged by a few others who were also emotionally tied to these events, I fooled myself into thinking the damage I was doing to my psyche was for the greater good. And I will confess: to this day I cannot hear certain songs without feeling a rage well from within my bowels as those images reappear in my mind. 

 Not everyone was blessed to have these videos accessible only by remote internet search, however. I am not inclined to share much more about this particular factoid at the moment, save for this. A local church I was accustomed to attending was, as it happens, also attended by several Syrian immigrants, each of whom still had family in Syria while this was happening. Some of these individuals even, as I have been told by one who would know, had family members who had been featured in the videos described. And had received personalized copies direct to their address. On occasion, I was told, with every new video, you could see some cousin, nephew, brother, or sister sitting quietly at the back of the church weeping as they mourned the (now witnessed) death of their loved one. 

 This was enough to, in my mind, justify my fevered searches for these videos online. Vengeance or remote companionship, I told myself, as time and again I saw the horrors, set to the music, perpetrated by humans of all ages to humans of all ages. And in January 2016, as I was at a friend’s house in Rock Hill, SC to play some games, the TV showed ISIS confirming the death of Jihadi John from the November 12 drone strike, I am not sure you would have been able to find another soul more jubilant than I.

 Jihadi John now gone, no more videos that I know of were released. At least, his death was the capstone event I personally must have needed to find catharsis enough to graduate. 

 I finished up my college years, married the love of my life, and moved to a new territory. There, with a new wife, no job, no marketable skills, and (from other past experiences) a strong sense of the need for healthcare, I turned to the military myself. I joined the National Guard, which has been one of the most beneficial decisions of my adult life. I cannot stress how much the Guard has helped my wife and I: from healthcare issues to home-buying, paying off loans years ahead of schedule to weekend retreats, (and not to mention education benefits!) there have been plenty of things that God has provided us from this experience. But underlying my military service was always that subconscious chase for vengeance: I had seen loved ones from (what I considered) my religious community be executed. So, I chose a job that (at the time) had a pretty high deployment rate but wasn’t strictly combat, and settled in for what I thought would be the inevitable call to pack my bags.

 That call did come. Twice. Both times to the Texas/Mexico border. Those calls were hardly the Syrian vengeance tours that I anticipated. And I will not go into those deployments in too great detail here. There was intelligible proximity to danger, and there were hardships enough to deal with, but they were not the heroic doling out God’s justice upon executioners of Christians that I always envisioned myself doing. But it turns out that that was God’s intention, anyhow.

 Two deployments in a 5-year period is a lot by almost any military metric, even if they are not to a combat zone; it is especially so for a National Guard Soldier. The National Guard typically operates as a one-weekend a month, two weeks in the summer force, ready to stand by in case of emergencies or federal utilizations. I, having the drive I have already shared and in communion with my wife, volunteered for the second one. So it is not as though I am a victim in these deployments. If anything, I am a perpetrator. And besides, I have already shared just a few of the amazing benefits that frequent deployments have, in the long term, blessed my wife and I with. 

 All this being said, just because I signed up to do a job that both needed to be done and less than 1% of the population wishes to do does not mean that it was easy, enjoyable, or without cost. Families are supposed to live together, and spouses are called to live in unity and in the home with each other. The separations were incredibly hard, the reunifications sometimes rocky, and the baggage lingering. If you are interested in some of the finer points on this front, be sure to return over the next three weeks or so to hear my insights, relating it to several popular media pieces you may be familiar with. At any rate, perhaps most tragically of all, physical separation means postponement of building a family life. 

 My wife and I always knew we wanted to open our home to foster care and adoption. It was a conversation we had even before we became engaged. When, in our first few years of marriage, certain health issues brought children into the forefront again, our conversation about adoption became that much more proximate. As we began to explore the process, we found inspiration from a specific John Paul II quote, (the exact citation of which escapes me) encouraging families to allow God to build each family in the way and by the means He sees fit to do so. But, as you can imagine, having one spouse gone all the time can throw a wrench on building a family regardless of the method. So while both the deployments allowed each of us to take advantage of Tricare in order to address the underlying issues related to health, it was, for a long while, a hard inhibitor to our pursuing an adoption license. And, to make matters worse, administrative errors from the different agencies we were working with at various times caused our progress several day-zero restarts - to include the many, many hours worth of required trainings. All this to say: pursuing adoption, for us, has been intentional, sacrificial, and long.

 In the midst of my last border rotation, I picked up a promotion - to a unit which promised proximity to that deployment I had been chasing. After my promotion order posted, I received a phone call from my new unit’s readiness Non Commissioned Officer. He told me that the unit was scheduled to deploy overseas - but ship date was a mere 7 months after my return from my current. Since I was already engaged, I had the option of sitting it out or going. 

 I looked at the list of Soldiers gearing up. Some names I saw were friends from my first unit and first deployment. I could imagine myself finally having the type of military story I had dreamed of having, of hanging my hat on something no one would question the validity, political stance, or difficulty of. I envisioned myself along with a few old friends braving the desert, getting the chance at heroism - and, there was a tiny, tiny part of me that would not have been mad to relive my aspirations of vengeance for the executions of community family members years before. 

 I couldn’t do that to my wife. Nor could I do that to, as we used to say, “our hypothetical, abstract, as of now non-existent children.” We had come so far, worked so hard, and dealt with so much in the process of introducing children; I could not in good conscience pursue that life anymore. God had, for the longest time, both militarily and in my civilian career, distanced me from that kind of life. At that moment, I knew that chasing those heroics had to be over.

 I did not place myself on the deployment list. I felt like the dirtbag who gets left behind while others go and do hard labor, but there are times where emotion simply does not reflect the metaphysical reality of the situation. For at this moment, not providing for my own family was not sufficient; actually building that family with my wife had taken a drivers seat. And, as it turns out, not long after that phone conversation I took a job which took me out of that unit into a role which is permanently stationed Stateside.

 As my wife and I worked through the struggles of reunification after separation, we were also preparing our home to welcome a child not so “hypothetical, abstract, and non-existent.” Our son came to us within that first year of being home. That first year, there were many firsts - for him, for us, and for all of us together. Though I will not share some of the finer points of the struggles that followed, I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard, been so rewarded, or reminded so harshly that I went out of my way for this life. Intentionally choosing with my wife to become parents, and watching her tenacity in all the struggles that led to this path, has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. 

 I thought at the time that the story would sort of end there, a “happily ever after” sort of thing (even if happily ever after looks like being content with chaos!). But God had one more trick up His sleeve for me. He had led my wife and I down this path to parenthood and asked us to choose it quite emphatically; now, He would ask us once again to be committed to what we had already chosen.

 This last test came one weekend where my wife and I were required to attend training in order to keep our license. These trainings are state mandated, cover a variety of topics, and are essential in order to keep your license. So, my wife and I always go - even though there are some predictable elements to these trainings. Typically, there is a block of training about protecting the identity and cultural heritage of children; inevitably there is someone or other who insists that someone like me is incapable of understanding nuances and importances in the hygiene needs of other demographics (as if Google, friends, and experience were not a thing.) Usually there is someone who asks, “can I speak honestly for a moment?” After which you just know they are about to insert two or three swear words into their next sentence (as if somehow swearing makes you more genuine). So on and so on go the predictables; so on and so on my wife and I sit there, taking maybe one nugget of helpful info from the 6-8 hour training, and then happily go home.

 This particular training, however, the unit I was supposed to deploy with was the object of an attack. The particular location they were based out of received incoming fire, with several of them becoming wounded. None of that unit were casualties, but they were on hand to minister and aid the more seriously wounded in adjacent units. It was a nasty affair; lives were tragically lost, and my old unit’s time in theater was extended.

 In that moment I could not help but see myself as the dirtbag who copped out. I was supposed to be there. I knew Soldiers who were there. I chose, my brain went, myself over the needs of my comrades. And, as if to add insult to injury, rather than helping out where heroism was needed I was sitting in this room, listening to yet another person speak “honestly for a moment,” and trying to keep my cool “so that the state would allow me to have children” is what my agitated brain told me. 

 That last part isn’t strictly true, by the way. To anyone wanting to adopt, DO IT! And trainings are not held over your head in such a way as “do this or we will take your kids;” that is just how my brain capitalized on the tragedies of others to make it about myself.

 I had a hard time reconciling what had just happened. In truth, I cannot communicate to you the thought process, the effort, and the struggles that weekend - and the following weeks - had in store for my wife and I. All I can tell you is that God’s grace used this narrative of events to highlight the decision my wife and I had made those years before (the exact year of which, incidentally, was the same year our son was born unbeknownst to us). Parenthood for us was intentional; alternate monitoring (that is, watching the sidelines for what is happening that we are missing or might be better options than our current fare) simply could not stand. No matter how perfect the situation outside of our family might look, no matter how much alternatives aligned with our desires, original longings, what have you, none of these were real. Real life for us was now tied to our first child; we were now most ourselves when we were his parents.

 There have been several instances since that weekend where, in a previous life, I would have been the “first responder,” whereas at that moment I was incapable of rendering aid with a child on my arm. But there has always been someone else there to respond where before I would have. Those are others stories, now. I am, to the world, largely a bystander in these situations, for what seems like the first time in my life. And that is alright by me. My son needs a father - not a hero. He needs someone to be present when the world around us crumbles, to ensure that he is safe and, ultimately, that he is best set up to recognize and accept God in this world. But more than that - and perhaps most humbling of all - my son does not need merely someone; he needs me, specifically, because I am his father. He needs me to be present, not perfect. And God Himself knows well - as does my wife - that I am far from perfect. But, here as I write this as it is every day, there is no one else. Nor is there anyone else but my family and my beloved, long-suffering wife whom I desire to be needed by. 

Have you read Remembering Freedom yet? It is a book for the modern defender of truth. Designed to be both engaging and practical, this book articulates abstract concepts while providing real-life stories from married life, military deployments, and more to illustrate how “abstract” things look in the real world. If you are looking to enter into discussions, or if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, Remembering Freedom is the book for you.