They say that what you need when a loved goes into a combat zone is faith, hope, and strength. All of those you do need, but the two things everybody forgets to tell you that you need is love, and God.
While my dad was getting ready to deploy and while he was gone the family spent almost every sunday at church. They always made a special prayer request for my dad and our family.
It was a ritual, our Sundays, we would wake up, get ready for church, go to Sunday school, then go to service. During service is when they would have the special prayers. They would pray for those who were sick, those in mourning, those who were tight on money, then, lastly, they would pray for "The family of Jim Hat while he is in Iraq." After that we would eat breakfast, then go on and do whatever we wanted.
Another thing that we waited for every day was a phone call. The phone calls were usually a couple minutes long for each person he was talking to. The phone would go Kirstee, BB., Me and sometimes Bryan. I rememebr days when we wouldnt get the phone call. Those were the scarriest days in all of my dad's deployment. When we didnt get a phone call it means someone was killed. That someone couldve easilly been my father. Thankfully, it never was-physically. Mentally he was a whole new person. When he came home he wasnt as carefree as he was when he left. It wasnt always about laughing and playing around, it was about buckling down and growning up, even if I was only in sixth grade. I remember he would talk so much about the future that I would lock myself in my room and look at colleges to go to almost every night.
But what really got us through him being deployed was the love we had for each other. When I was scared I would go to Kirstee, Kirstee would go to Pastor Doveson, B.B. would go to me when she could, we went to different schools towards the end of his deployment. But Bryan, I dont remember where he would go. Maybe he didnt go anywhere, maybe he went to his dad, I simply do not remember.
Love and God, two things that are so close, two things that hold a family together, two things that got the family through Iraq.
