Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Waging Peace with Diana Oestreich

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by bestselling author, former combat medic and fellow-Minnesotan Diana Oestreich. After being deployed to Iraq immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Diana faced the horrors of war and some of the most difficult moral decisions anyone could possibly imagine. However, after she was shown a heartwarming act of kindness and trust by an Iraqi woman, Diana’s life was changed forever. Her new mission: to bring humanity to an inhumane war. Upon returning home, Diana continued her mission of unconditional love and self-sacrifice in her own community. Diana and Sharon discuss the importance of loving and showing up for all people in-need regardless of their lifestyle, religion, political standing or race. In this moving and heartfelt episode, Sharon and Diana uncover exactly how we can grow into fiercely kind and unshakably good humans. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first come first serve spots at select top restaurants when booking through open table. Learn more at open table.ca forward slash visa dining. Hello, friends. Welcome back. So glad you could join me for this episode. I am delighted to be chatting with author Diana Oestreich. You are going to want to listen to her message. If you have ever wondered, how do we put aside our differences and move forward as a community, as a nation, even heck, as a family, this is going to be useful for you. So let's just dive right in. Let's hear from combat medic, nurse, mother, professional peacemaker, Diana Oestreich. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

It's always nice to chat with a fellow Minnesotan. I tell people we're half Canadian because we're just so culturally close to the border. I'm like, we're real quiet. Don't want to ruffle the feathers. No, no, never. I want my listeners to know a little bit more about you and your experiences as a combat medic in Iraq. What led you to want to even join the military? And I just want to hear a little bit more about your experiences deploying to Iraq for over a year. Well, let's start with the first part,

since we already talked about how we're Minnesotans. I grew up in a rural town even farther north of where we are today. And culturally, I didn't really know anybody who had gone to college, but everybody in my family had signed up to serve in the military. That was what most people knew wanted to go to college. And this was how my people and my culture, this is how we knew how to do it. It was very familiar at that time. Fast forward, I was at the tail end of my enlistment. I graduated as a nurse. I just started my first job. And then 9-11 happens. And I knew I was sitting in my nursing classroom, and I knew when they wheeled in the TV, back when we had TVs in classrooms, and they were showing it, I just knew in my bones that my life was going to change forever in the military. I didn't know how. I was only in the Army National Guard, but there's those premonitions when you know that you know that your life is going to change, whether you want it to or not.

And indeed, I did end up getting called up to be deployed. And previous to this, you know, people were like, join the National Guard, hometown heroes. So my unit hadn't been called up since Vietnam, like 30 years ago. So it really was not. You didn't see it as a big risk. No, it was a bit more of a guys club. Get away from the ladies on the weekends. You know, we were not a fighting force. Let's put it that way. It was just not even possible. So at 23, I get the phone call that says you're being activated for the global war on terror. We can't tell you where you're

going. We can't tell you how long you'll be gone. Put your affairs in order and write a will and report for duty in 30 days. What went through your mind and body when you got that phone call? Well, I remember I picked up a phone with my roommate. So it had the really long cord that you tried to like walk through the house to have like privacy. And I remember when he said that I could hear what he was saying. Like I knew what it meant. And at the same time, I remember the phone just feeling like a rock in my hand, just the weight of it. And I knew that when I put down that phone, my life as I knew it would be a before and an after. And I just remember being glued to the floor knowing like the minute I put this phone down, I will be in this new reality. He didn't

tell me where I was going, but we were watching bombs drop on TV. We knew what was going to happen, even though they weren't going to tell us, I knew where I was headed. And even though they weren't going to tell us, I knew where I was headed. And I was 23 years old, which I thought I was an adult. And now I know, baby, I was just a baby. When we first landed there, you know, the heat and it was like breathing like through cotton and it was middle of the night and they were like, hurry up, get in the bus. You know, don't let anyone see you. You'll be an easy shot for a sniper.

I remember watching the plane taxi down the runway. And I remember there was a first time that I thought, huh, if we don't win, if my side doesn't win, I won't be able to go back home. And that was really when this reality set in of war is war. And as much as I thought I knew what that meant, it was a different reality to have your body in a place halfway around the world knowing if this doesn't go well, that plane will not come back for us. Mm-hmm. Tell me more about the journey of actually getting to Iraq. I remember it was just this before and after of like, I knew my old life and all of a sudden we were in this new life. And when we got there in the middle of the night, they were like, run, run, run,

get out there. And within our first five minutes, my first medic task was to distribute atropine injectors. So we had thought there were chemical warfare. We thought there were weapons of mass destruction. So we assumed they would be used on us. And so my first medic task was to get all of my 100 soldiers these atropine injectors, which would save their life if we were being gassed. And I remember that's when the weight of these lives of what I was going to have to carry is this responsibility as a medic at 23 for these hundred soldiers that I knew their families wanted

them to come home and I was going to have to carry that or carry the failure of that and I feel like that's when I really became a different person in a different life. I remember that was my first task in war. And I was like, here we are, this is what it will be. Yeah. Staying alive. You talked about that frequently in your book, just the idea of not knowing constantly, not knowing, you know, wondering what is around the corner, who is out there, not being able to trust that your eyes are telling you the truth because you don't know who your enemy truly is in that scenario. That had to be a different kind of fear than you had ever known before. That was one of the really hard things about the landscape of war. It was a guerrilla warfare because the U.S. is absolutely

overgunned, overpowered, overpeopled. The enemy, we never knew who they were. Is this just a person on the side of the road? Is this not? And I remember that fear was one of those defining moments of not knowing who's who and still, you know, these split second decisions that you have to make, which one of the very first split second decisions I had to make was we had just gotten there and we were going to convoy into enemy territory the next day. The night before, the sergeant was giving us our safety briefing and he said, you know, it's an enemy tactic to push little Iraqi children in front of American trucks in order to pause the convoy. And then they would ambush our battle buddies at the rear. And he's like, I hope you understand your duty to keep the

convoy rolling at all costs tomorrow. If you can't do your duty, and if you cannot do that, if you can't do your duty and if you cannot do that raise your hand right now and identify yourself his words just hung in the air I could hear it but I was like what um and the whole place got quiet as it was settling in what our duty was going to possibly be the next day and before I figured out whether or not I was going to like raise my hand and say, no, I can't do that. Or yes. Um, he just yelled dismiss, but that was the longest night of my life where I had to decide, would I be willing to run over a child in order to protect my battle buddy? Whose life would I protect and who's what I would take. And in that moment, I had already given my yes, you know, like I was like, I believe in this, you know, I've signed up. These are hard choices that soldiers make.

And my faith really taught me that, you know, ultimately to take a life for my country was to take a life for God, like this was okay. But everything in me was just screaming, like, this was okay. But everything in me was just screaming. Like I can't between just me and God and like, I can't do that. And that was the first time that I really had to wrestle with my beliefs with what does it actually look like my beliefs in action? Who's at the other end of my gun or at the end of my weapon? And am I okay with that? Did you ever reach a point of being able to reconcile in your mind if your only two choices were saving an Iraqi small child and saving a member of the United States military? Did you ever reach a point where you're like, this is what I would do? I, and I won't spoil it for when people read my book, but these questions continue.

It never is a one and done. Never did I really arrive. All that I knew that first week was that I would never take a life. And I didn't know what that would mean next. I knew that I would fight for every person's life and I would never quit, but I didn't know how to walk that out every single situation. But the next thing happened and it pushed me farther and the next thing happened. And so the next thing was I was walking through this village and we were building a culvert and we're always supposed to be in pairs because like you mentioned this is a guerrilla warfare we didn't soldiers were being taken we were finding body parts strewn weeks later and so every morning I would get up and we would hear who had

died the day before and where as a safety briefing of like be aware but also as a way to honor the soldiers. So every day I didn't know if I would live till lunch. Like that was just the reality. But the only thing I did know was what I would do in the middle of it. And I feel like that was the constant question. So I was walking on this little road and I didn't have anyone with me. And in the middle of it, this woman does the universal come over sign.

And in a minute, she's like head to toe in black in this area of the country. They wore their burkas from just little eyes. And I was like, oh my gosh, she's inviting me behind the wall into her home. And I'm fully armed and I'm an invading soldier. And all of a sudden I look to my right and my left and I'm by myself. So nobody knows where I am fully armed and I'm an invading soldier. And all of a sudden I look to my right and my left and I'm by myself. So nobody knows where I am. All my training said, act like you didn't see her. You keep walking.

My training said protect. But in the middle of it, my feet got like cemented to the ground. And I just all of a sudden had this like fireworks in my chest that was just like, don't miss this. sudden had this like fireworks in my chest that was just like, don't miss this. And in that minute, I knew I was either going to protect myself and do what I've been trying to do, or I was going to take a chance. For whatever reason, I took the chance and I walked over and she opened her door. She could be a cute little grandma and there could be the enemy behind her. And I would never be, be seen from again, something in me just compelled me through that door. And so she, um, brought me in all of a sudden she hugged me and I got to see all of her grandkids and that, that moment with her, her name was Om Hassan was the first time that somebody had shown me this truly wild act of love

where she chose to trust me before she knew if I was trustworthy. She chose to welcome me before she knew if I would hurt her or harm her. And that relationship changed everything that I thought that I knew about Muslim people, about the Middle East, and about Iraqis. She just demolished the script that I had been told to follow in the most beautiful way. What do you think made her do that? So many people have asked that. I've never wondered about that. I think that she was somebody that showed up in the middle of war choosing my humanity. And she chose all of us because she was not new to war. War was new to me, but she had been scrapping out survival for her village. The Aranarak War, it was constant. And I think that she was building a future by showing up with this love in the middle of the worst places. Like she was choosing freedom in

a place that she should have been scared. I don't know why she decided that, but it created this community. It changed my life. Like if there's one person on the planet that I want to say thank you to, that I want to like meet my kids and say, you know, like my kids have a fully alive mom because of her. Because she chose to love me when I was far from home, she would be the person to do it. I think that she decided to refuse to hate. She refused fear. She championed me as much as she championed her family. And it changed things. I mean, it changed the course of my life. I love what you said about her in your book. You said her invitation where she was waving you into her home. She didn't know you. Her invitation dared me to be human in the middle of an inhuman war. She dared me to believe in the stuff that my little girl self had thought was

possible. Goodness in the middle of the most violent darkness, her twinkling eyes dared me to believe that I had something extravagant to give instead of something priceless to protect. to give instead of something priceless to protect. In human war, she dared me to believe in the stuff that my little girl self had thought was possible. Goodness, in the middle of the most violent darkness, her twinkling eyes dared me to believe that I had something extravagant to give instead of something priceless to protect. I could dare to love even in the middle of a war, or I could settle for staying alive. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me?

Steve! It's Steve Carell in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Sharon20 for 20% off at checkout. Hey friends, it's Sharon again. Did you know that I teach online workshops? Because I do. They are called Government for Grownups, and they are a fun, fact-based, nonpartisan way to get more information about how things work in the United States, hot topics on things like abortion and gun control, not promoting a certain viewpoint, just providing you with education so you can make your own educated opinion on important matters. They are really affordable. I charge like 10 bucks for a live class and it is well worth it. So you can head to SharonMcMahon.com and click on workshops. You go on to talk about this concept of being a practitioner of dangerous hope.

And I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about what that means to you. love to hear you talk a little bit more about what that means to you. Just you reading those words are still so, they're so tender for me because one of the things about war is I think that I found out there's something more important than dying. There was something more valuable than just staying alive. And that was to show up with this extravagant love. And I think she taught me that. And it was dangerous. It was absolutely dangerous to her. It was dangerous to me, but it has changed my life that I'm no longer willing to settle for staying alive, that there is something that is more valuable to me than that. One of the things that really spoke to me about your book was this idea that there's really not

an obligation to agree with each other in order to show up for each other, that the conditions of loving your neighbor, the price of admission is not, you agree with me politically on religious issues, public policy. There's no price of admission for showing up for your neighbor. And I loved what you said. You said, we don't have to agree on immigration, border security, agree on immigration, border security, politics, or faith to link arms and say, this is not a reflection of who we want America to be or the kind of legacy we want to hand down to our children. Dehumanizing our brothers and sisters comes at a high cost, and it will cost us liberty because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Can you talk more about your experiences with removing the conditions of showing up for your neighbor? What has that been like in your life?

Well, I grew up pretty black and white. I grew up in a little Baptist church. And if someone didn't baptize the way we did, then they're doing it wrong. And if they didn't vote the way they did, they're doing it wrong. And I found that one of the hardest things about choosing to show up to my neighbor was fearing the loss of belonging in the groups that I was part of. And I think that's an important conversation that I don't think oftentimes people know that's what we're wrestling with. We're wrestling with our own group that if you show up there, then you cannot sit at our lunch table. And like, you want to belong, like we need connection. And so I feel like that's a cost like it will cost you belonging to not exclude other folks and that's a high cost because most of us um grow up in

our camps are pretty set you know and we know what our group thinks about that group so I grew up hearing peacemaker as a dirty word. Like it was somebody who had like low morals. They didn't understand sacrifice that we definitely didn't want to be associated with them. And so knowing how my, my group judges other people, that was one of the biggest costs of saying, I'm going to show up. I'm going to show up for the LGBTQ community. And I know that people from my group that I grew up with will judge me and they will kick me out. And I think that's an honest place for us to accept. You don't even have to agree with someone to show up at a vigil. And I think, especially in our social media era, people want to assume that if you support someone else,

then you agree with their whole five points. And I was like, listen, I don't even agree with half the stuff I do by lunch. So why in the world, you know, I don't agree with half the things I do in my marriage. So why do I think I have to approve of your relationship or your marriage? So I think we just have to get braver and courageous. And the more that people step out and just say, I'm going to choose to stand with people. And it doesn't mean that we have decided we're besties and everything makes a sense. And, you know, we, we want to balance our checkbook together and we want to, I think the more that we can do that, the more we're actually going to move forward. And we desperately want to trust each other. And we want all of our kids to

feel safe at school. And it's going to take us moving forward instead of kind of sitting in our camps, judging each other. Because I think we have so much more good than we're ever give each other credit for. Oh, absolutely. It becomes very easy to be polarized on social media. The idea that it's incumbent upon me to vet every belief that is currently held within your brain. And if I do not approve, because of course, my viewpoints are the morally correct ones. I think that people come alive as we connect with more people and get to learn more. And I think it's really to our benefit. If we don't, I think the security actually suffocates the goodness, the good possibility that we have to contribute to the world. And it's going to suffocate our kids and it's going to

suffocate our faith and our communities. And I think we're made to be brave. I do this thing called the Waging Peace Project and it's activating justice and instigating joy because justice can't wait. And I think that we're made to be brave and we all have courage and each person is in their communities for a reason. And we need them, whether you're 75 or you're five, we are each activators in our community. And so I think that the cost is really high to stay the same. Yes.

We know what's real secure is a prison. Right. That's real secure. And also there's no joy in that, right? Go ahead. You can have a lot of security. You can live in a padded room with 18 padlocks on the door and 42 armed guards outside, and you'll feel real secure in there. And yet you're in a prison, right? I want to hear a little bit more about how we can have productive conversations with people we don't agree with. How can we come alongside our neighbors, maybe whose values don't align with ours? How can we do that more productively for the sake of waging peace? I try to hold on to two things

and I call them fierce kindness and unshakable goodness. And it's kind of this like, hold it together, you know, because the minute you get around somebody that doesn't agree with you, we get activated. We have this very defensive response that wants to run back to that prison with all our friends where we all like the same Doritos and we watch the same movies together and laugh so hard. But I think that we can move towards each other. And one of the ways that I try to remind myself of how to do it is fierce kindness. And that means that we are going to speak the truth. We're going to speak about how, you know, maybe someone doesn't know, guess how this policy is affecting unsheltered

people in our city. And I think it takes courage to speak up because you believe that that other person believes in kindness too. Like you have given them just as much goodness as I've given myself. So fierce kindness means we speak up about what is happening in a posture of kindness. And then the other one is unshakable goodness. And that is where we believe that the other person has good that we haven't even seen yet, that they have possibility, that I don't know everything that they think and feel, and that they are more than their opinions. They're more than their bumper stickers. They're more than who they vote for. hold out this unshakable goodness, that there's more to this person than I know or I can see, or even who they are today, then we don't have any vision and we don't have any hope. And we have to

know that we can change together and that someone else might be a really unlikely accomplice in our cause. That just gives me this like two handholds to say like, this is who I'm going to show up as I talk to my neighbor who I don't feel like makes my family safe. I'm the mother of a really beautiful white boy who looks like me and a really beautiful black boy. And so I don't feel safe all the time. Um, but I really want to connect with my neighbors because I truly believe that they want every kid to grow up celebrated and safe and with all the opportunities. So those are two things that I just try to like ground myself in so that when I talk to somebody, they know I have goodwill for them. They know they don't have to prove anything to me. I've already assigned them

unshakable goodness that they belong in this community. They belong in the world. And if we can continue, we can work for good together. We just have to make room for each other. And I know that's hard. I'm not, I'm not saying that it's a practice, but it matters. And I think the more that we do it, the more encouraged we are. When I get a little isolated, I get a little more judgy, a little more like, oh, the world sucks. Nobody cares. It's not going to get better. But when I'm in a room with people or even a Zoom book club, I am so encouraged that these 75-year-old ladies care that my elementary schooler feels safe. It always humbles me and reminds me that there is so much more good than I really allow people to be. I love that, that when we're feeling real judgy, it's probably because we're getting too isolated.

Yes. I love these phrases that you have coined, you know, like fierce kindness, unshakable goodness, preemptive love, dangerous hope. You're speaking my language here. I also love the idea that you need to hold out the hope that someone can be an unlikely accomplice. I love that. To say, I have already determined everything that you think, every opinion you hold, I've decided you can't change. And so I am unwilling to be in community with you. I mean, what a narcissistic way to approach the world, right? Like leave room for the idea that this person, this neighbor that you have, and I'm speaking of course, metaphorically in the neighbor sense, can be an unlikely accomplice.

If you are willing to extend that olive branch, if you're willing to assume that they have goodness in them and that they want similar things to what you want. I love it. I want to change gears really quickly. As a teacher, one of the things that I love to hear from other people is about a teacher that has made a difference in your life. If you could give a shout out to a teacher who may or may not be listening, who would you want to give a shout out to? I think there's 10, but the one that absolutely comes to mind, he was my very, very old school, Mr. Baker. He was my algebra one, a teacher. And he called on me when I raised my hand,

he would call me, yes, Ms. O strike, Ms. O strike. And I remember him putting respect on me by using my last name and calling me miss. Cause you know, I was like a teenager when I was in his classroom, he acted like I was a scholar and like, we weren't just in a smelly little eighth grade math class that like I was Ms. O strike and we were scholars and we were learning. And I remember nobody had done that, you know, and for him to, to show me, to respect myself as a learner and that I had something valuable to be, that he would address me like that. And then he also gave us his phone number and had us call him at home in the evening if we had trouble.