Jocko Podcast - 447: Everyone Who Exalts Himself Will Be Humbled. With Lynda MacFarland.

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Lynda MacFarland. Wife of General Sean MacFarland, and Author of "Drowning in Lemonade."Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 447 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I did not want to go to be part of a unit in which people would die. But now it was a certainty. How many deaths was the only unanswered question? And I didn't want to become friends with these women and then have to deal with their grief when their husbands died. I had not spent much time in my life around grieving people.

Very few people who I'm close to have died. I didn't know how to help what to say, what to do. I didn't want the pain and the sorrow and the tears for them or for me. I did not want to go. When I said to the Lord, make this go away, it was followed by not my will, but thine. be done so there was the mountain top moment with more to follow in the end the brigade lost 96 soldiers and Marines to hostile actions the death of each one was so costly too many families no longer have their loving son nephew grandson father

husband or daughter it was the realization of my fears the news of each death tore at my heart and I worried for my husband who felt responsible for each life and of course I worried for his physical safety in this instance as in my husband's other deployments I asked that he be kept safe my very first mountain top moment in fact was at the beginning of Sean's first deployment, Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm. It was the biggest, most profound leap in my journey of faith thus far. I placed my soldier firmly in God's hands and then said, protect him from harm. And I followed that with, not my will,

but yours be done. Those words were uttered with solid. and tears believe me to entrust my husband's life to God to do with what he willed it was a realization of utter powerlessness mine and ours and a challenge in trusting God's wisdom and a perfect plan for us I never dreamed I would say it again and again and that right there is an excerpt from a a book called Drowning in Lemonade Reflections of an Army Wife by Linda McFarland. And Linda McFarland is the wife of General Sean McFarland, who was on this podcast number 439. He was the brigade commander of the Ready First Brigade of the First Armored Division during the Battle of

Ramadi in 2006 and 2007. And he was an amazing commander, leader, and friend who oversaw one of the most violent and decisive battles in the Iraq War. And those of us who served under him in Iraq revered his judgment and his intellect and his bravery and his vision. And he led from the front. And I personally stood side by side with him on the battlefield countless times as he. he shared the risk and made sure he never asked his troops to do anything that he wouldn't personally do himself but in any war there is another front a front that is different from the one where the enemy is met and that is the home front the home front is where families wait

and worry and wish for the return of their loved ones the home front is where fear and frustration confessor in the hearts and minds and souls of spouses and children and parents. The home front is where a knock at the door can bring the most wretched of all messages that a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter is gone. And I cannot imagine that the fear of combat, the fear of bombs and bullets and battles can be worse than the fear of that dreadful knock at the door. The home front is a different type of war, but it is a war nonetheless, and it requires bravery and compassion and, of course, leadership.

And Linda McFarland stepped up and led on the home front and guided families through the darkest of times with her care, her kindness, and her faith. And it is an honor to have her here with us tonight to share her experiences and lessons learned. Linda, thank you for joining us. It's an honor to have you here. Thanks very much, Jocko. It's an honor for me to be here. Yeah, uh, when, when we got done recording with your husband and then talk to you

afterwards and I didn't realize that you had written this book. You know, obviously I had imagined and contemplated what you'd been through as the brigade commander's wife in a brigade that was so heavily impacted on the battlefield. But then when you mentioned that you had written this book, I thought to myself, oh, and I immediately asked you, I said, can you come and share what you went through? Because there's so many spouses and military families out there, and they don't have the best guidebook. And I know, You know, you hear military people say that the families have it harder. And I totally agree.

As when you're on the battlefield, you know what's happening. You see the risk. You confront the risk. It's all very real. And I think the fact that it's real and it's right in front of you makes it easier to deal with. But for the families on the home front, a lot of it is left to the imagination. Exactly. And that is not a, that is, the imagination doesn't usually make things nicer.

It usually makes things worse. Yeah, true. So, um, thank you so much for coming. Sure. Really appreciate it. And let's get into this. Let's start off a little bit of background on you. Let's start from the beginning.

So where were you born? I was born in Chicago, Illinois. Mm-hmm. But when I was about 10, I was the youngest of four kids, we moved to El Paso, Texas. What brought you? down to El Paso, Texas. My mother's family. My mom was Mexican-American, and that's where she was born and raised.

Met my dad, the Chicagoan. When he was stationed at Fort Bliss, which is co-located with El Paso, he was just drafted during the Korean conflict, and he never left, you know, he never went overseas. But he did go to Bliss and met my mom at church. And then what did he do? Because did he stay in the Army? No. So he got done with the Army, and what did he do?

do for a living? Well, various things. He was in manufacturing, kind of middle management guy, eventually had his own restaurant for a time. We all worked at the restaurant. What kind of restaurant? It was a steakhouse. Nice. Yeah, when I was a kid, it was a steakhouse. It was very nice. This is in El Paso by the time we moved down there. So, like, I was a hostess when I was in high school. It was like a job I had. But yeah, so it was kind of just an ordinary civilian kind of life. And then what were you into? you're growing up. Were you doing a good in school? Were you a troublemaker? No. I was editor of my high school paper. Actually, co-editor. And I also wrote for them regularly. I was always a writer.

I always wrote. I wrote poetry from the time I could hold a pencil. My mom had one in her purse for the longest time about our dog. You know, like I just always was writing things down. But I was a good student and and so I you know was in the honor society and all that kind of stuff and then by the time I was a senior I was senior class president oh dang and you would not believe that helped me so much as an army wife because it sounds crazy but I learned how to recruit volunteers to stand in front of people and talk to them I was a very shy shy person I didn't like to be in front of people and or you know you have a class sponsor and he was the girls volleyball coach, Coach Vanley, big old dude.

And he's like, okay, you got to do this thing. And I want you to read Robert Rulthoror and, you know, just, I'm like, what? So you gave you some good leadership training. He did right from the start, right from the start. So, and then, you know, years later, I'm looking back and like, wow, you know, because we managed to get ourselves, raise money to go to Los Angeles to Disney World, Disneyland, for our senior class trip. and I sort of organized that whole trip. I mean, I was doing all these things that I would do again, you know,

decades later. It was kind of like. My personal political career peaked in eighth grade when I was the eighth grade class president. How you like that? Echo Charles, little, no fact. Oh, hell, yeah. My motto running was rock with jock. There you go.

And what I did was I took old record albums. You know, like actual the physical records. And I made like an album cover and the album was coming out. And I wrote Rock with Jock, Jock. class president. That's really nice. Victory, you know, but that's kind of the peak of my political. And I did not take away a bunch of really good lessons learned,

other than it didn't seem like I wanted to be having that job. So you learned something. Yes. Learned about yourself. It's always a good thing. What did you, when you were in high school, did you have some vision for what you wanted to do when you got older? I was going to be a writer or an editor, which that kind of formed a little bit later in

college. I went to the University of Texas at El Paso, Utep. Utah all day. Go minors. Yeah, I know. Hawaii did play against the... Yeah. So, because I went to all the games.

That was a good student. You know, loyal student. Loyal. But, you know, it's a commuter school. So, like, I lived one semester in the dorms as a freshman because I didn't have a car. So I told you, my dad was, like, middle management manufacturing. There was not a lot of extra money. And I was actually the first of us to go to college.

And I really... Did you say you were the youngest of four? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So they were all for it. My parents thought that was a great thing, but they're like, how are you going to pay for that?

So I got some scholarships. I got some grants. I had a part-time job. And then my dad helped definitely financially. But yeah, I lived at home primarily for financial reasons. And you were an English major? And that was, again, leading towards looking to be an editor or writer at some point. Yes.

And people would say, oh, so you're going to go to law? school after this? Like that was usually the question because who gets a English degree, right? That's what people say to me too. But you have an English degree? I do. Oh, okay. But when you like to write, it seems like a good fit, right? Yeah. Well, for me, so I had become an officer before I went to college. I know it doesn't make any sense, but it was this program that the Navy did for a very short period of time. And so when I was an officer and all of a sudden I had to write evaluations and I had to write awards and I had to write fit reps and I had to even writing like operas. And I had to even writing like operational summaries or concept of operations, that's all writing.

And it's also reading because you're getting directives and you're getting general orders and you're getting rules of engagement. So I was like, I need to get better at that, whatever that stuff is. It was English. And so I ended up when I did go to college, I studied English. And it was so helpful. It was so helpful because not only writing, you know, writing evaluations and writing awards and writing fit reps and writing concept of operations, but also reading the rules of

engagement and reading the general orders and reading the directives because I realized, oh, before I went to college, I thought if I didn't know a word, I just had to just kind of make my best guess and move on. Then I realized, oh, no, you actually need to get out of dictionary and figure out what that word means. And then you can make sense of this whole sentence. Yes. That alone was worth going to college for.

Even though when I got back to the SEAL teams and guys would say, well, what did you learn in college? and I'd say, oh, what I learned in college is don't ever, ever, ever, ever, get out of the SEAL teams, ever. That was my big lesson learned. Oh, my goodness. So did you meet General McFarland when you were in college? Yes, yeah. My sister's now husband of 42 years was in a third armored cavalry regiment with my, you know, future husband.

Okay. So I met Sean through him and her. So just like a dinner or something like this? No, no, no. I actually knew him for probably almost two years before we started dating. And we would just be groups of people going out together and having fun. And he was so funny. Oh, he is hilarious.

I got a lot of commentary that when your husband was here, I was laughing a bunch. Yeah. And I was doing it. I was doing it into the mic probably because I never have done it enough to where I realized that I can't laugh into the mic. So when he's cracking all these jokes and he got that dry sense of humor, I was just like I was laughing the whole time. Well, at least like for the first hour, I'm laughing.

And plus I was excited to see him and we had a bunch of like little jokes going on. Yeah, sure. But I kept going, so I apologize for that. I won't do it again. Okay. Well, I'm not as funny as he is. But I will say that, you know, his wit, he was so smart. It was just so obvious.

And he, you know, I was this cute little. college co-ed, whatever, but I was pretty smart and I was well read and I had a pretty good vocabulary at the time. So I think he liked the fact that I wasn't all fluff or whatever, you know, had a little bit of depth maybe to me. But I remember asking him one time, years later, I'm like, I was such a silly little girl. Why didn't you want to me? He goes, I saw your potential. Of course, it made me laugh. That's the thing. He can make me laugh. Even when I'm mad at him, which is just infuriating. But he just, I always loved, I love that he was so witty, you know,

and he was this tall cavalry guy. And I was so superficial because I was this silly girl. I was 22 when he got married, I think. And I loved, the first time he came to my house in his uniform, and we were not dating yet. But he had asked me, I had offered to type some things up for him for work. He was a platoon leader or something. And he's like, oh, so much typing.

And I'm terrible. I type all the time. My job was a clerk typist, you know, to him. This sounds like a big setup on multiple fronts. Not only is he getting to date, he's getting you to do the typo form. Yeah, this was all strategic thinking. Probably. But I mean, I think I kind of liked him when I offered to type the thing, right?

Yeah, that's true too. More strategic thinking. But he came to my house to bring me something to thank me. And my mother was there because I lived at home. And he gave me, I think, chocolates, which I love chocolate, which I'm sure I'd mentioned it some way. So he gave me a box of chocolates. But I saw his name tag.

and it said McFarland with an A, M-A-C, not M-C. I love that. I was like, oh, that's so cool. I love that. It's spelled a little differently. That means it's Scottish, not Irish, because my dad had told me that. So it was like, I love these got a Scottish lesson. And it was just stupid.

Sean, S-E-A-N, that's the way you'd spell Sean. And this S-H-A-U-N stuff. You know, like I love these stupid little things about him. So I think I was already, you know, we were friends. I was already like, he's so dreamy. or whatever. How did you, now did you know kind of about the military wife gig from your sister?

No, nothing. Well, they got married two years before us and shortly after they got married, they left. Got it. And once we became engaged, which we only had like a six-month engagement,

which I think to me was short, but he asked me like after we, we got to marry him. We had our first date on my birthday, which was in September, and before Thanksgiving, he asked me to marry him. So like two months?

a couple of months. But, I mean, I'd really known him for two years. Oh, okay. And I really liked that we were friends first. Was he leaving or anything like that? There was a brief scare where we thought he was going to Korea. Yeah. So I had asked my grandmother to pray a novena that you wouldn't go to Korea.

And it worked. Go to Korea. Because sometimes military people make the marriage move because one of them's going to, right. Oh, I'm going to get stationed in Korea. We better just get married so you can come with me. No. Wasn't that?

No, not at all. He was there for three years and then he was going to move on. And so he was not leaving anytime soon. The hardest thing was finding a date for the wedding. I had to keep moving it because like, oh, we're going to the field. Oh, we're going here. We're doing this. And the last time I thought we had a date and he called to say, oh, we have to move it.

I started to cry, okay, because I was 20, probably 21 years old. And I was like, you don't want to marry me because you just keep pushing the date back. See what I mean? Silly little girl. right? And he's like heavy sigh on the phone. And he's like, no, it's not me. It's, you know, the guy's upstairs, whatever. So we finally found a date that works and it stuck. And it just happened. Our 30 June was our 40th wedding anniversary. And we had a big party in El Paso. We went back to El Paso, where it all began. There you go. And went to Mass at the church we were married in St. Patrick's Cathedral because I was my grandmother's church, my parents' church. So did you go to Catholic high school or no? No, just Parkland High School.

You didn't have the Catholic high school pedigree like he had. No. No, well, he didn't do high school Catholic. Oh, I thought he did do high school. No, just lower grades. So now when you first leave there, where do you end up? You end up going to Germany right away, huh? Well, first, we did six months for the advanced course.

They used to call it captain's career course now. And it was at Fort Knox at that time because armor went to Fort Knox and he was armored cavalry. So off we went for six months there. It was horrible. It was hot. There was no air conditioning in the home. It was humid. I'm from a desert climate.

My people are desert people. It's a dry. It's just like, I can't breathe. The humidity was just like oppressive to me. And I remember I was just like in the afternoon just lie in front of the fan because you had no air conditioning. We're in quarters. We're in government quarters on post with, you know, ice water or tea. It's like, this is horrible.

So I was just such a week. silly girl were you thinking that he was going to be doing this for a career because i know when when he was on he kind of talked about like there was phases where he thought it might be a career then phases where he'd be getting in trouble yeah so were you kind of just along for the ride would he tell you a lot about what was going on at work he did initially he used to talk all the time about what was going on at work and i had no idea what any of it meant but i would listen patiently and smile and not but um he had said he thought he'd do 20 20 years.

And he's like, you know, it's a nice retirement at 20 years. And, you know, we are newlyweds, but I'm like, well, by the time we start having kids, they could probably do high school in one location, wouldn't that be nice? You know, that was, that never happened. But so he was thinking a 20-year career at that point. And he was, we got married in 84. He was commissioned in 81. So we're looking at, okay, 17 years of this, all right.

But I had no idea what that meant. I mean, who could. Then you guys go to Germany? Yes. And how did you like being overseas? Well, I ended up loving it. I was filled with great trepidation. Told you I went to college, pretty much lived at home.

So this was my first time away from my family in any major sense. And then I went across the ocean, you know. And so I tell people this story because it's kind of funny now. But I had a nightmare that we were in Germany. We had not left yet, and we were living in this little apartment that looked like something out of a movie. And sure enough, the Nazis broke into our apartment. Like guys dressed like Nazis with the helmets and the things. That's how much anxiety I had about moving to Germany.

I think my subconscious was kind of getting away with me there, running away with me. But you end up, it's, there's a bunch of Americans there when you're stationed overseas. So it ends up being a great community. Well, it ended up being a great community. Initially, it was kind of dicey for me. I think Sean talked a little bit about our time over there. It wasn't real family-friendly initially. It was, you know, this is the Army, and this is what we do,

and those ladies are over there doing whatever, you know. But it got better, and it did become much more, I would say, family-friendly. And we had our daughter there. Our daughter was born in 1987. and we brought her back as like a 15-month-old from Germany. But I loved it. And the next step then coming back was Georgia Tech. Is that right?

Yes, they sent him to. The Army sent him to grad school to get an aerospace engineering, you know, Master of Science degree. Because that makes sense for an armored cavalry guy. And they called him. That was the, he was not like, you know, the highest grade point average guy at West Pointe Class 81. So he's like, hey, I got a call from the branch manager, and he's like, you want to go to graduate school?

So, of course, he had to apply, and Georgia Tech was the first one to send an acceptance letter. So he's like, I guess we're going to Atlanta. I'm like, okay, you know. And that's kind of nice, right? He's just going to college. Yeah, yeah. And I was there with little baby Maggie. And Philip actually was born while we were there in Atlanta, but just right before we left.

But during that time, I'm like, this is what I'm going to get serious about my writing. Because I had time to do so. And I started writing children's stories. I actually wrote a ton. And I just was rejected constantly. It's a story in my life. But I also, at first, initially I was very excited to get a rejection letter. Because back then, you had to have the manuscript and your cover letter and put an envelope.

You put a self-address stamped envelope so they could send it. back and then you wait you know weeks and weeks and weeks so it was almost like rejection was a form of recognition it was you get the rejection notice it's like oh you know but to me it was like i'm doing this thing you know i said i would be a writer and i'm writing and people are telling me it's awful it's so different now because you can just you can just publish it yourself that's true or you could you can you have to make a book you can just put your story online and you can just get it out there which is pretty awesome and by the way you can do that that with music. You can do that with movies. You can do that with anything now. It's true. It's

possible to produce something, which I think is awesome. I've heard, you know, professional writers with books under their belts say, I don't know why we need publishers anymore. Like in the picture. Oh, it's definitely a changing time for publishers. That's, that's for sure, because it's just a different world. I know. It's kind of cool. But back then it was very... Of course, all props and love to the publishers. Yes. Only because my publishers are probably listening. but it is interesting that what they don't they don't they definitely don't have the sway that they used to have I mean back like what you're talking about you couldn't do it yourself there wasn't an option no way yeah there was no way so what were they telling you in these rejection letters did they even

give you any feedback or was it just like no most of the time it was you know thank you it's not what we're looking for at this time kind of stuff so I mean who knows as I continue to write and be rejected this was a multi-year thing not just the time at you know Atlanta sometimes they got more specific you know what I should do or but a lot of times they were very encouraging that was the thing I think that's why

I kept trying because I would get encouraging letters from editors one time because I was still saying poetry off to poetry magazines there I can't imagine how hard it is to get published in poetry it's hard yeah it's very hard and this one editor wrote me back and she's like I really liked your poem basically paraphrasing here. It's been years. But she's like, we passed it around.

All the editors read it. And ultimately we decided not to publish. I'm like, it was 50 bucks. You were going to pay me 50 bucks if you published this poem. It went all around the office. And you're like, no, it's not good enough for 50 bucks. I'm sorry. I don't know.

I just thought it was so crazy. And that letter that I got, I think by then Maggie was in high school. So this is, I mean, she was a baby. So you did this for 18 years. It's not like every month, but on and off over the years, I did continue. But that letter I threw in the trash. I used to save them as like a little scrapbook. And I was like, I think God's telling me something.

And I threw it in the trash. And I didn't attempt again really until drowning in lemonade, which wasn't that long after, interestingly. How about after that? I know your husband went to four. list for like the Star Wars initiative type thing. But at a certain point, it's Desert Storm, and he's in third ACR, and he goes over there as the operation staff officers. Now, this is like a wartime deployment.

Right. And I remember, I was in the Navy at the time, I was about to go into seal training, and reports were, I was watching CNN, and reports were there's going to be 40,000 U.S. casualties in the first 48 hours. It was something crazy. Don't quote me on that, but it was a crazy amount of, but it was a crazy amount of casualties. Oh, yes. So what was going through your mind at this point? Okay, so what you read at the beginning, that's that deployment. I, as you said, your imagination can be way worse than actual,

you know, reality. And so I was just not a happy camper. And I did watch a lot of CNN, which was a bad idea, and I never did that again with any other deployment. I learned my lesson. But I would watch it all the time and, you know, I'm trying to figure out where they are and what they're doing. Because they can only tell you so much. And the other part of our issue was Sean joined the unit as it was deploying. And he had not gone to Bliss to be a part of the third ACR. He had gone to do the Star Wars stuff, right, to use his degree, to use that aerospace degree he just got. And so I was like, well, they probably won't take him.

because he doesn't belong to the unit. But, and it's just, you know, to me, it's all God. People could say fate, coincidence, whatever. But the regimental commander had been Sean's squadron commander when he was a lieutenant. And we knew this when we got there. He's like, oh, he's over there. I'm like, that's nice. Well, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and then, you know, everyone's like, this is going to happen.

And this is going and third ACR is going. and my husband, the news junkie, would get home from work, and it was kind of a nine to five job, and he would get home and put on whatever network he wanted to watch. You know, once the war started, CNN was the only 24-7 thing. That's the way everybody watched it. But he's watching news, and he's just pacing the living room. Oh, because he's going to miss it?

Because he's going to miss it, because he's doing this stupid R&D job, right, instead of being in a combat unit, which he had just been in months before, oh, the irony or whatever. So I'm watching him pace, and it's every night, and he's talking about stuff, like, I bet they're doing this, and I wonder what they're doing when they get there. And so he always tells people that I sent him to Desert Storm. But honestly, I thought about it.

I was like, if this is the man I'm going to live with, for God knows how long this thing's going to last, he needs to go. And it was true. And this time I had an infant. Our son, Phil, was about four months old, and Maggie, the three-year-old, and I'm like, you,

go talk to the regiment and see if they will have you. And he's like, really? I'm like, yes, please do that for me. Now, two things, I don't really think they would take him. And too, I just was like, will he really go? Yes, he really went. And I kind of knew that part was going to happen. And then he came home and he's like, well, you know,

I talked to the XO or whatever they call the second in command at regimental level. Maybe it's still an XO or chief of staff. He said, I talked to him and left a note for the Regimal Commander. And I'm like, okay, and this is where I start praying. This is where I pray, you know, you will be done. And we'll see what happens. And then I got a call from his senior, you know, the boss at the R&D job. His wife called me.

And she's like, so my husband tells me, Sean's wanting to leave our little family to go with third calf. And she said, and I told my husband, well, did you tell him no? Did you tell him he can't do that? He's got a newborn baby at home. And, you know, she starts out,

and I'm like, I don't know this. I'm like, well, I kind of told him to go over and see if they had a job for him. And this was not Linda being the, you know, good army wife. I mean, this was just me with my husband. Yeah. Looking at this man who, to me,

seemed like he was in anguish. Yeah. You know, it's like, this is what I trained for. This is why I'm here. and I have to sit it out, you know. So I was like, I just couldn't be the reason he did that, basically. I don't want to be the reason that he didn't get to go. Yeah, that's when 9-11 happened.

And the officer-dealer who assigns us our jobs, I was in college at the time. So the Navy had sent me to college, so now I'm in college. And the officer-dealer who I knew who I'd worked for, who was a friend of mine. and as soon as 9-11 happened, I called him and I said like, hey, you know, get me out of college. I can go to college when I die.

You know, I don't care. I just want to get me out of here. Set me back to a team. And he told me, you know, hey, though this war is going to last a long time, which I didn't believe at all, you know, because the Gulf War only lasted 72 hours. And I was, no, please. And he goes, no, it's going to last a long time, finish college, and then I'll get you to a team.

But a few years later, I had another conversation with him. And, of course, I always thought, you know, I was the guy that called up. Everyone called. Yeah. Everyone that wasn't in a combat unit called to try and get to one. Because that's what you want to do. That's what you came in for and you don't want to like mess out on it as selfish as that might sound, especially when you got a family.

You know, and I had a family at the time too. I had, I probably had kids the same age. They were like three and, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were like three and two or three and one. My kids were exact same age. And my wife was telling me the same thing. Like she could tell, here I am, watching Fox News, watching all this stuff happen. And she's going, gosh, you better get out of here.

This is ridiculous. So there's a certain mentality that's very similar across the board. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it certainly happened in our case. And one day he came, I came home. I'd been somewhere with the kids and I walked into the house. And there was all this desert camo stuff, you know, the old chocolate chip thing is what there is on, all over the kitchen.

like on the table and the chairs. And I looked over and there was a little camouflage Bible with a little rosary because he'd obviously seen the Catholic Catholic gentleman or they asked him what religion he was. And it was all out. And he wasn't, he was in like the bathroom or something. So this is all in like, oh, so I guess it worked out for you. And he came out and I'm looking at this. And he's like, yeah, he said, I went back into the regimental office.

And they said, the guy showed him the note, the regional commander. He never saw him up until this point. And it, you know, said captain, because he was a senior captain at time, Captain, Sean McFarland, as requested to join the regiment and deploy with us. And it just said, get him. The regional commander had written get him on it. So you show that to Sean. And I was like, well, I don't know what they, you know, their experiences, these were Vietnam vets.

You know, like, but they were taking anybody who'd asked to go with them. What did you learn from a family perspective, from a home front perspective on that first appointment? Okay. On the military side, on the Army side of things, third Army Cavalry Regiment was on it. They had a plan in place. We started up our chains of concern where there was a spouse at the top and these are the ladies you call because it's all women at the time pretty much. This is who you call. and if there's an incident or any kind of news coming from downrange,

this is how it's going to work. And they asked me to be one of the people at the top to call some women. They gave me my list. Here's who you call. Roger, got it. I'm good to go. Okay, so that was that side. On the civilian side, though, I mean, I'm in El Paso where I'm from,

or, you know, grew up since 10. Was your family still there at the time? My parents were no longer there. They had moved to Florida inconveniently. So, you know, they get to live their life. That's fine. They didn't know. We never thought we'd go back to Fort Bliss.

When we left when Sean was, you know, after we got married, we're like, it's been great, Fort Bliss. And we went back three times. So what do we know? But so they were gone. But I had aunts and uncles and cousins there, and actually one of my sisters lived there. But everyone just kind of contingent to live their lives as normal, you know? Like, I got invited to Christmas Easter. you know, every once in a while, a Sunday something or other.

But most of the time, you know, people weren't called, how you doing? What's going on? You didn't get a lot of that. My sister, just because she's my sister, we do stuff together sometimes. But not a lot of anything. My across-the-street neighbor came over right after the ground war. No, right after Sean left. And I really felt kind of, I was in a civilian neighborhood.

So I felt a little vulnerable with him gone. and the man across the street came over, and he was a family man, and said his wife and, like, teenage kids, and I opened a door, and we never met before because we just moved there. You know, Sean had only been there a few months doing the R&D job when in August the groundwork started, so it's been like three months. And he's like, ma'am, is your husband with the third ACR? And, I mean, I'm sure he just saw him coming and going on.

I said, yes, he is. And yes, well, I guess he's going to be deployed soon. I want you to know, I am a retired NCO, and I'm used to taking care of officers. So if you need anything while your husband's gone, you just come across street, do not hesitate to ask. I was huge for me. I never had to bother him, but it was nice to know. And I knew he meant it, because why would he do that?

He had no reason to, other than he felt for our family. So that was pretty cool. I had an uncle about two miles away, and I, you know, saw him occasionally at family things. but the night that somebody knocked on my door at 10 o'clock at night, and I looked through the blinds just a little, and there was a car. We lived on a corner on the opposite side.

There was a car full of guys, and they were just sitting there and kind of talking to each other, but someone had come to my door and knocked. I called my uncle. And I was like, I'm sorry to call you so late, but somebody snucked at my door, and there's a car, guys across the street, and I don't know if anybody's noticed I'm here alone,

or maybe they have a real problem, but there's other houses. I don't like this. And he goes, I'm on my way. And two miles away, and I don't know how fast he drove, but he was there. And he whips into the driveway and jumps out of the car, and the car was gone. And he was my mother's youngest brother, so he was probably in his 40s. He looked, you know, not like grandpa coming to the door, you know.

And so I was like, oh, I look like, you know. And he came in, he looked around, he goes, I'm going home because I'm a late. you know, I stay up late. I'll drive back by later and make sure everything's okay, you know. So that was wonderful. But we never found out what these guys were doing. We don't know, but it's just, it was just odd, you know, so. But overall, I really feel like I knew everyone was there if I needed them, but nobody really got.

The story that I remember very clearly is a holiday. I don't remember exactly which one. and all my family were gathered together and my parents had come to town and so they were all there too and were all in the house and they're watching like the war on TV you know they're watching CNN

stuff on TV and they're like oh that's that's interesting you know and then and I was like I can't do this I don't want to just sit here and act like it's a movie or a TV show so I said I gotta go bye and I took my little kids I got home and I got sick. I got like physically and and it's like nobody there knew you know I just was like do you not

understand what's going on. So did you did you learn hey sitting around and watching TV watching the news and watching all these things happen is not probably the best idea. I know my wife really didn't you she was very detached she wasn't going to watch them and of course she had three kids you know during my deployments so it wasn't like she had a bunch of time to sit around and watch TV. I wouldn't say she purposely avoided it, like actively purposely avoided it. But I think she consciously made a decision that to sit around and watch the news every night to find out how many people were wounded that day, how many people were killed that day. I think she decided to, let's say, decided to focus on other things.

And I think that was. And that's very, again, for my marriage, my wife, she didn't really, I didn't tell her a bunch of things that were going on. I didn't, I didn't bring home any of the drama, the gossip, the rumors,

all that stuff that's happening. I didn't really talk, I didn't talk about any of that stuff with my wife. And so therefore, when the war's kicked off, it wasn't like I now started telling her. I just never really, we always had a very,

I always had a very compartmentalized knowledge gap between what's happening at work and what's happening at home. And I'm not saying that's the right thing to do. Yeah. Because I know other families that the wife knows everything. The wife knows more than the husband because she's getting multiple sources that are, you know, she's got the other wives that are telling.

And so I'm not saying that's the right way or there's a right way or wrong way. I'm just saying for me and for what seemed to be good for my wife was, hey, I don't know what you're doing. You go do it. I'll see when you come home. And I'm going to be over here with the kids and taking care of the home front. And that's what she did. And it was it seemed to be very good for her right of course, you know, there's times where it you're gonna like it's gonna hit you because you know when you lose people or people get wounded and my wife was wonderful about going to see my wounded guys and the hospital and stuff like that. And then it's you you you have to confront the fact that this is happening. Right. But other than that, I think she did her best to kind of live in a state in a state of mind that was.

you know, wife, or sorry, kids, family, dance recital, jih Tornament, like all that stuff. Right, sure. I think, I will say, like, during the day I did not watch, I didn't have television on, like, all the time. It was usually after the kids went to bed at night that I would turn it on and kind of catch up with things. And then I kind of even steered away from that.

I'm like, I don't watch a movie or whatever. So I did, because I did start. to feel like I can't do this all the time. And I think that's why what happened with my family happened. I don't even know if anyone with my family listened to this. I don't know if it will surprise them to know because I don't think I've ever told them that happened. But it was just kind of surreal.

It's like, you know Sean's there, right? And this is not a fiction for me. This is very interesting. And I don't blame anyone. Like I'm not mad. I don't carry a grudge. It's just you can't understand. it if you haven't experienced it first hand as your loved one as spouse or maybe child or just

someone you're close to in that way. I just don't think it really can penetrate something and maybe people do it for defensive reasons. But I don't have that option, right? But I was like, I'm leaving now. I think that's what's best for me. And I blamed on the kids and I left without making a scene, but that's probably why I got sick when I got home. But it gets to bed and they're like, okay, I'm done here. I'm done being strong today. How long was he gone for? The actual time he was gone was like five months.

Because he joined them as they were already deploying, they put him in the S4 shop initially. So he was helping push everybody out. That's what he, his job before a troop command in Germany, he was the S4 for our squadron. So they're like, oh, that's a good place for you. But then when he got there, he moved to the S3 shop and, you know, did something completely different. Yeah. But because, and I don't know why, no one's ever told me why, but I feel like he volunteered to go. He was an add-on.

He was with one of the, not the very first group, but he kind of came back with the earlier groups, which, you know, I wasn't going to complain about it. It's fine with me. What was next after that? A couple years in college. Is that right? What did he do after? Oh, yes. The Commander General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

So we took our two little ones off there. Maggie did kindergarten in first grade. Philip did pre-K. And that's a good mental break and time with a family and all that stuff. Pretty much. You know, Sean doesn't do anything halfway. So he was studied hard and wrote all these papers. I don't know, whatever they do.

At least you just have to type. him? No, no. But I was there, or he was there for Phillips soccer games, which, you know, three-year-old soccer games are hilarious. But that was fun. And my daughter's dance recitals, and she took up the violin in first grade. It was the Suzuki method. You don't need to read music. You just learn by ear. And I had worked, my part-time job in college, I don't think I ever mentioned, was as a clerk typist in the music department at the university. So all my friends were musicians, and I learned all this stuff about music that, you know, but I was the English major in this music department.

So I had learned about Suzuki method there. And so they can start kids as young as three on these little tiny violins. Did she get good at it? Pretty good. She played till eighth grade, what would have been eighth grade. She skipped eighth grade. But she played till then, and then she switched to voice. Are you getting

Are you getting indoctrinated Into the military wife type of thing? Do you take classes or anything like that? Up till that point I had not I did not That time we were in third cav Was a huge really deep good deep dive into And they're learning about being an army wife

Was it? Are there official classes? There are there are I'm not sure if there were yet, but they came around shortly after that. Because then we went to Germany, to Schweinford, Germany. And, well, Versburg for a year and then Schweinfurt. But anyway, he was in a cavalry squadron in Schweinfurt. And by then the Army was offering these classes for spouses starting, you know, zero to five years.

You take this class, you know. And what are they teaching you in these classes? Oh, well, the very early ones, like how to read an LES, they'll leave an earning statement, you know, like real simple stuff, the rank structure, you know, on, enlisted and officer's side, a little bit about protocol stuff a little bit. And then with each section, you get a little more. Now, I never took those classes. I always said I went to the school of hard knocks.

So I learned a lot of that stuff, but on my own. I did do pre-command stuff, though, like before Battalion Command, I took those courses. They even had pre-command courses for company-level command, and I think I did one of those, but it was a real, you know, a few days kind of thing. So I really don't think, you know, as with most things in life, the classroom is not where you're really going to learn, you know, the stuff that really matters. You're going to learn that by doing. I am an observer of human nature. So I watched every command spouse around me and how they did it.

And I took what was good. And I said, that's good. And if they did a bad job, I'm like, I will never do that if Sean ever gets this type of command. It wasn't like super cunt. Like I didn't have a notebook or anything. But I was just watching stuff. And you see the results of a particular thing, and you're like, okay, don't do that. Nobody seems real happy, you know, or whatever.

So you did realize that at some point, if he got promoted and if he got, like, Battalion Command, for instance, you were going to be, you understood that there was a role to play as a battalion commander's wife, and you would have to execute on those duties. I always understood I didn't have to, you know, the Army can't make me. Okay. They can't make me. They can't make me. I'm a private citizen and I have that choice. But because I was blessed with some pretty good, you know, role models early on, I was like, why would I not?

Like, it just felt like things worked better when somebody is there who knows what they're doing and is trying to help others figure out what to do. One of the, we're going to get to the book in a second. the things you talk about in the book is there's something that you mentioned there was like some negative some negativity in the families at some point what was that all about you don't and maybe i'm putting you on the spot you don't go into too much detail in the book was it just like people with bad attitudes was it rumor mill type stuff what what was going on there it was it was very strange i don't know how much anybody wants to say about this but there were uh

our unit was being combined with another uh part of a unit that had been training else in the United States and we were in Germany in Schweinford and that was the Bosnia deployment and they were getting ready to leave like any time now the the tankers who were here and this other here being in Schweinford sorry so we're all there in Schweinfurt and we're getting our people ready and the spouses are doing their thing to be ready and of course the soldiers doing theirs and then they're like oh these other soldiers are joining us now and they're going to be part of the squadron and we've given the families the option They can come, even though their soldier will leave immediately,

or they can stay in the States until they come back. And they decided to come. And we all applauded that. We're like, good for you. You should be here with the other families, or we can all, you know, be together, support one another. But it was just a lot of issues with us integrating with them. We did on our end so much work.

And I say we, that included spouses, to make them feel welcome, to, you know, we gave them all sorts of information that we would not have gotten if we'd showed up as an individual that we had. We met the bus from the airport. They all came together on buses. Like that's just unheard of. You just show up and you wander around until your sponsor's show. You know, like this was, we did so many things. And they, a lot of them, not all of them, but of course the loudest voices were not happy and complained. And, you know, I do a lot of dime store psychology. So this is one of those moments. I think they were not happy that their soldier was going to leave immediately upon arrival, but they decided to project that

onto the unit they were coming to instead of their husband or the army or life. I don't know. So it was kind of rocky. And at the time, the other thing the division decided to do, because this was a divisional squadron asset, so a cavalry squadron. So they changed out commanders before the training for the deployment. And that was kind of weird. And who knows what personnel reasons they had. So the new guy came, the new commander, but without his family. And Sean was the X-O. And I was the X-O's wife.

And there was no senior spouse there. So I started taking up some slack because I'd already done Desert Storm with Third Cav who was on it. And I'm like, I know what we need. We need change against there. We need to be, you know, training this and that. So I start working with the Army Community Services people who do that kind of training. And we're getting stuff set up. and we're doing all these things.

And Sean's coming home, you know, prior to their deployment, and say, you're being mentioned at our staff meetings. What the heck? And I'm like, I'm sorry, but somebody has to help get the families ready. And I guess it's me. And to me, I always felt like if there's a need and I see the need, I will try and, you know, alleviate what the problem is or get people educated or supplied, supported, whatever.

So that's what I was doing. and my third ACR time, I felt like that was my training for this, you know. And it was accepted well by many, but not by others. And it really hurt to have people say that this had been an inadequate integration, that they had been made to feel this way or the other. And I'm like, I'm not doing stuff with my kids right now to make sure your family is going to be taken care of when they arrived. So, you know, I took it very personally.

But at the meeting, we had this big steering committee meeting with all the leadership, just the spouses, mind you. And I'm sort of being inundated. Like, people are throwing things at me, not literally, but, you know, metaphorically, a lot of unhappy people are telling me how I had not done a very good job. It's how I was taking it. And the squad of commander's wife was like, okay, we're done here. And the tanker wives with me were like, I can't believe you're taking all this. I can't believe you didn't say anything.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Right now we have the moral high ground and we're staying here. We're staying here. We're like, thank you for your input. Okay, sorry about that. And one of the girls is like, somebody needs to be thrown up against the wall. Like, you know, these gals were really very upset.

So, you know, this is just what was going on. I went home that night and I paid the babysitter because my kids were at home. And I asked her if she could come, you know, the next night for some other stupid meeting. I don't know. And then I called my sister, one of my F2. I called my sister who was at work, and I just started bawling on the phone.

I just, you know, everything was like, he's gone now. I didn't really get a good goodbye because I was so busy and he was so busy. We didn't get any family time. He's just gone, you know. And then this happens. And I was giving my all to these people who didn't seem to, not everyone, but a lot of the loud mouths. It's always, you know, the ones who complain are always louder that weren't happy and so I'm just crying you're crying and she told me later she's at work you know because

time difference it's a night time where I am it's afternoon and mississippi and people are walking by her desk and they see this stricken look on her face and they're like is everything okay and she's like yes my sister from Germany I think she's having a nervous breakdown so I i i loaded everything up I did not go to bed that night I took all of my um paperwork and all the rosters I had and all the information I had it all over our bed and I organized everything and I made notes and I'm like I am turning this over tomorrow to squad commander's wife and I'm resigning and then I'm just going to take her my kids and me and good luck to you all and I called her like as early as I could the next morning I'm like the kids left for school

I'm going to call her now and I told her that I said I'm resigning I've got everything for you And she said the only thing she could have said that kept me in the job, my volunteer job, she said, but Linda, you are a light to these women. We need you to stay and keep doing stuff. Don't withdraw. Don't leave.

And I'm like, dang it. Because really, truly, I was like, well, you know, I'm called to be a light. And nobody said it was going to be easy. So I stayed. Did you learn anything from that in terms of people attacking you. And again,

throwing stuff out you metaphorically, it seems, you know, it seems like you've got to develop a thicker skin at some point where you realize,

you know, people say, oh, you can't make everyone happy or things like that. Like, what did you take away from if your daughter

was calling you going, this is ridiculous, this girls aren't I appreciate it. What would you, what would you tell her? Yeah. Well, I did learn a lot

from that, and I did develop a thicker skin, which was really good because he just kept getting more senior, so there's just more people to hate you, you know? Not that they all did, but there's a bigger pool of people to decide you're not doing things correctly. I was really able to take those experiences and share with others. People would email me or call me and say, you know, I'm in

this new unit and, you know, the wife isn't doing anything. And I'm like, well, she doesn't have to, first of all. And I'm like, second of all, have you offered to help her? I'll bet if you go to and say, hey, you know, I'm thinking we really need this program or this whatever, and I'd like to head that up. She'll be more than happy for you to do so. You know, like, don't just complain. How are you going to help fix us? And how are you going to help her? You know, we don't get hired, right, the spouse. Nobody, we don't fill an application. We don't even volunteer sometimes. It's like, here, do this, you know. But definitely, nobody was paying us anything, and nor do, you know, most of us don't expect to, don't want to be. But it's like, think about the fact that we have had no real training

for this position. And so everyone's doing the best they can. And you know what? Some people, like, I thank you, God, got over my shyness and was able to stand in front of people and tell them things and ask them questions. But some people will never be there. They have anxiety issues. They're shy. They're, you know, whatever it is. Don't expect. things from them that it's not written anywhere they should be that you know so um i try to pass that along to people and you know make your corner of the world where you can be an influencer um do that be that light be that um positive my watch words by the time we got to brigade command we're positive and productive if this thing we're talking about doing is neither of those then we're not doing it you know

So I just I learned so much in that very difficult time that helped me with Sean's Battalion Command and Brigade Command Times. And so I'll forever be grateful even though it was hard. And did so you were more prepared when it was Battalion Command Time? Yes. I basically one thing I learned from our squadron commander's wife, the second one who came in. Initially when people would complain, we were bending over backwards to try and accommodate whatever their complaint was. And then one day she said, she realized as one of the other

ladies was hanging curtains in this woman's house for her, for reasons I couldn't understand. But she's like, what are we doing here? And I'm like, man, what are you doing here? I don't know, because I wasn't there. But she said, you know what? What we're going to do is what we can do. And then everything, if people are unhappy, they've got to figure out a way not to be unhappy. it's not our job to facilitate that, you know, in their personal lives. So we actually had our fake t-shirt that said, oh, well. And she said, let's pretend we have a t-shirt underneath our blouse. It says, oh, well.

So when people go up and say, and this happened and that person, oh, well, you know. And I love that. And then the other thing she said was, if people are speaking badly about other people and you are there, your options are walk away, just leave. the scene or say, I'm not comfortable talking about people behind their backs, so we need to change this conversation and have to leave. I use that after that and throughout my life. And people said, oh, but that's so hard to do. I'm like, not for me. Not after I saw what happened when people just were backbiting and being awful to each other. I would much rather just tell you to face,

I'm not doing this. I'm sorry. And as a senior leader, informal, not assigned, but when we took on that role. You know, you get to be that example for others, and then you can mediate, like I say, you two are not getting along very well. I see this. We can get together and talk about it and figure out, you know, how you can get along, or please stay away from each other and stop, stop talking about each other. Be on your back. So those are things, oh my goodness, I couldn't have imagined doing as that silly 22-year-old, but, you know, take me down the line a little bit with a few punches to the face, you know, metaphorically. Did you go to school for Battalion Command?

Do you go to school for that? You do. There's a pre-command course for the couple, the command couple. Actually, Command Sergeant Major and their spouse as well are invited. But we're invited. They have, you know, real-life orders to be there. And they're there for like three weeks. We get a week.

But it's hard. You have kids in school and you have a job or whatever. It's hard to get there. So not everybody. makes it. And they do not have, this is not a distance learning thing. They want you there. And I understand why. And I actually had to explain this more than once to working why. So I'm like, well, I can't take a week off at work. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. But you need to be in that room with the other spouses. And what they had finally come up with. And I had a little bit of input on this. The pre-command course for

battalion command that I went to several years later was much difficult. different because I was seeing battalion commander's wives as a brigade spouse. I was seeing battalion level commander spouses who were not really understanding, you know, the difficulties and challenges they might face, particularly during war time because we were now in war time. And so there were several of us who were like, you guys got to make this a little more preparatory for what they're going into. And then also we asked to please make the brigade spouse course more relevant.

because a lot of time, when I did Italian command command's spouse course, the brigade commander's wife was kind of like a resource for them. You know? And so I went as a brigade commander's wife and they were like, Linda, what were you doing? Doing a situation like that. And I'm like, what me? I was here to learn.

Now you're asking me to, what? And I said, I must have missed a letter. They must have said something that said, we will be calling. No, there was no letter. They just had a plan and they surprised you with it, you know, when you got there. So after that time, things began to change. And now there really are good courses involved to help kind of help you to be that person who can maybe mediate here and there and be the mentor that would be more helpful to the spouses

and families in the unit. And I really like where they've gotten with that. So by the time you are in brigade, so it's now. 2005 so the war and and your husband went over there for kind of pretty quickly in 2003 2004 I know we were actually both there at the same time but we weren't co-located but we were both in country at the same time and I think he was approving some operations that we were doing we were kind of chuckling about it on the on the podcast but then in 2005 he gets assigned to command first brigade first armor division and this is really what um the book where we

where you really start getting into what you experienced in the book. And I'm just gonna go to the book here. You say, I can't tell you everything. There's too much to tell, but I can share some of the mountain top experiences, those moments that got me to where I am now, those moments where I knew with absolute clarity, I was in the company of angels. The words that mark mountain top moments are these, not my will, but thine be done. They are said, without hesitation, no holding back.

Whatever God does or whatever he allows, I will accept. Why? It's not my call to make. The creator makes the call. If I believe in his infinite love and mercy, how can I even think of holding on to any earthly thing? You want to know how I got here? How do you get to the mountaintop?

You have to want to go there. And sometimes you'll be pushed and shoved. You'll fall more than once. And sometimes they'll kick you and whip you. They'll spit on you and call you names, but you'll know you're not alone. And don't fight back even though you could. And boy, would you show them. You can't be bitter, although there's plenty of reason.

You're unappreciated to put it mildly. Some even despise you, although you're not sure why. You asked to know the secret, but if you'd like to share the mountaintop with me, you need to know what'll happen. You'll experience some of this, maybe all of it, in different. different ways. I've gone before you. It'll be okay. How do you get to the mountaintop? By dying. Dying to yourself, to your desires, your comfort, your pride. Look to me for your strength to be encouraged. And that's a capital M. Unite your sufferings with mine, capital M in mine.

Then you'll find the mountain top. Then you'll find yourself on the mountain top. And then one day, one glorious, perfect day, you'll go beyond the summit. You'll hear you'll hear you. hear my father say, you'll hear your father say, well done, good and faithful servant. And that's April of 2005, you wrote that. The idea that, hey, listen, you got to accept what gets put in front of you. It's actually very similar. Echo Charles made a video of me one time. And I'm saying, hey, when something bad happens to say good and figure out,

what good is going to come from this thing. And you've got this similar thing. Hey, this is God's will and we're going to move forward with it. How does that encourage us to take action? In other words, what are you? Well, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. So I'm just going to sit back and let it happen as opposed to, hey, it's going to happen.

I need to make the most of it and I need to take action. How do you reconcile those two thoughts? Yeah. I think everything you do should be intentional. You don't do things just because. I always say you have to know the why. You have to be able to answer the question why for other people. Otherwise, why bother?

There should be meaning behind the things you do. So, you know, anytime I was in a situation that wasn't the most pleasant, I always knew God was with me. And the little, it's kind of little, you know, poem of sorts there, that's Jesus right and he was to me I always say follow the leader with a capital L he's the perfect leader he never asked us to do anything he didn't have to do the pain he endured on all of the stuff that went with his passion and death and even before that when he was you know unjustly accused his friends abandon him you know there's a lot a lot of bad stuff went on so there's always that leader

to look to say, well, okay, he went through this, I'm going to go through this, and he is with me. So that's kind of where it is, you know, I mean, I'm human, so it doesn't always perfectly fall like that. But that's the goal, right, is to do things with intention, out of love, and just be the person that you think God made you to be. and he made us to be like him, which is merciful and loving and kind. Yeah, you know, you mentioned that in here. You say, I've experienced it in a much smaller way, meaning what what Jesus went through, right?

The suffering. You say, I've experienced it in a much smaller way, but real for me nonetheless, to be so tired, so drained, and then ask to give more to others who do not know what my life is like and don't really consider how difficult it is. On my knees, I beg God to make this go away. You can do anything. But my husband's orders didn't change. This is when you were fixing to get orders to go to this brigade.

But my orders, but my husband's orders didn't change. We were still going to Friedberg, Germany, so I had to accept it. And this was, you know, you talk about it. Again, I'm only reading the, not reading the whole book. Get the book so that you can get the whole story. But you're waiting for this brigade command. And, you know, your husband and I talked about when he's on the podcast, but he'd been promised one brigade.

And that brigade didn't come through. And they changed some army policy about when you could switch out brigades. And all these things kind of happened. And, yeah, it's just he finally ends up with the 11 AD. Mm-hmm. And the brigade that Sean was given, Ready First was preparing to deploy. in a few months to Iraq. So when he finally gets orders,

it's like, oh, you're going to Iraq. Yeah. And I, it's just so crazy because we had been in Germany. This was our, this is our fourth tour? I think it was our fourth door. Yes, it was our fourth tour.

We had never been in the first Army Division. I didn't want to ever be in the first Army Division. When we were in First ID, which is where the battalion, or the brigade was supposed to be that he was going to get. And then they, whoops, that's just inactivating.

We're just getting rid of it. I'm like, who does that? What? In the middle of a war, but okay. So instead, he was going to get this first Army Division brigade brigade, and I'm like, no, we don't want to go there, remember? We don't like First Army Division. First ID was happy and sunny and everything was great, and First AD was dark and gloomy,

and all bad things always happened to First AD. Honestly. And so I felt like I was going into the jaws of the dragon. Just experiences. It always seemed like something weird was going on in First AD in our previous doors. My apologies to anybody who was in it. And it's not like every day was bad, but there'd be these big things that were kind of like, oh, like a division commander gets relieved because he's having an affair with this

ordinate or, you know, like big stuff. And then the part of the country that it was in, the part of Germany, we were in sunny Bavaria, you know, down in the third ID when he had battalion command. And that was nice. Yes. It's the built up. It's very built up.

It's a very beautiful place. It is beautiful. And, you know. Heavily supported. Yeah. Like nice barracks and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, relatively newer things. I mean, it was night and day.

And so I was like, really, Lord? And that's the thing. I just have conversations with God all the time. You ever seen the movie Fiddler on the roof? Mm. If I were a rich man. Okay, so Tevia is the, you know, main character in that. And he talks all the time to us, the audience, breaks the fourth wall all the time.

But he also talks to God a lot. And he asks him, you know, like why us? You know, he's a Jewish guy being persecuted, as God bless them. They have so many times. And he's like, you know, we're the chosen people. Why get to choose someone else? You know, and he has these conversations, but you know that as in like a relationship with a husband and wife or whatever, someone really close to you, you can have those conversations. You can be honest with your feelings.

Tell them, you know, how you're feeling. And you're still going to be okay, you know, you know that the love is there and you're still going to be okay. So that's kind of what I do most times mentally. I don't talk, you know, occasionally pray a lot. But a lot of it is truly just talking to God, which I tell people, you know, because I don't know how to pray. you don't have to know how to pray. You just talk, say, Lord, really? What are we doing here?

And it's just, it becomes very conversational, which definitely what Teviah does. So I encourage everyone. So watch Fiddler on the Roof again, because it's really a good movie. It's great songs. I'm a big musical theater fan. But so that's what I was doing. And so because I have that kind of relationship, I like to think, with God, when weird stuff happens or stuff I wasn't planning on or didn't want to do like this.

I had just talked to him about it. And I've always felt like he's got this. Like he's with me. It's going to be okay. Whatever it is, it's going to be. And that's just, you know, built over time, right? But that conversation, that prayer of just regular

conversation has really, really helps me a lot. So when we had to do the Freedberg thing instead of the real sex thing, I think I say in the book, Friedberg was the land that time forgot. Did I use that phrase? If I didn't, I've said it many times to people. They were going to close that community down. The Army was going to close it down.

It was not well supported. It was falling apart. I was appalled the first time I walked through. They had a pedestrian gate from the housing area. It looked like a bomb had gone off. There's stuff hanging off the little house that the guard was supposed. The guard shack looked like crap. And, you know, the, the, the, the,

roads were like this. I said, I told the garrison commander, you know, so he's back in the rear with us, sadly for him, because I was always complaining. But I'm like, I walk with my son at church. We're going to turn our ankle or break something because of the potholes and the road and the sidewalks to get from the pedestrian gate to where the church was. So, you know, we, we worked really hard to get things improved there because we were not closing down until after they returned from Iraq. Yeah, and it was interesting or really good leadership lesson here. You say some people may wonder why the decision of living an hour away, because that's what you, if you, you could have stayed in your old.

In Heidelberg. You could have just stayed there in Heidelberg. But you say, but you knew you had to leave. And you say, as one whose husband has deployed from within a community of many deployed soldiers and from communities where there, where very few were gone, I know that the former is by far the better situation. To live with the other spouses who have soldiers deployed with your soldier, makes a huge difference. You don't feel so alone. And as the commander's wife,

I believed it was important to be there in solidarity with their experiences. Friedberg was not the most well-funded community. We did not have all the amenities of Heidelberg, the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe. I couldn't live there and then tell the spouses in Friedberg

that or our additional housing areas, I know how you feel if I wasn't living among them living their experience too. So that's a good lesson learned. You couldn't be sitting there. Well, just, you know, suck it up down there in your crappy barracks and your blown out gate guard and all this stuff.

You didn't do that. No. And I really, you know, again, it's like, it's like I said earlier about if I see a need, I'm like, well, how can I alleviate this? How can I help? And I thought, I can't do that from there. But if I'm living where they are, I can say I walk those streets, right? and something bad's going to happen to somebody.

And I never, if I have, I apologize if I'm lying, but I never asked for anything for myself or my family. I ask for things for the families of our brigade because they deserved it. I'm like, you have soldiers dying every week in a foreign land at your behest, you better take care of these families. And I just felt that was a moral,

issue and that there was no, you know, wiggle room on that. It's like, can you please? And Sean, you know, God bless him because he's very, very busy and otherwise engaged. We had a great weird detachment commander, but he said, Sean told me, he's like, you do whatever you need to do. Talk to wherever you need to talk to. I don't care, you know, get angry. I was at the point of getting ready to stand on somebody's desk, you know, and say, help these families. Because it was just to me they deserve better. So we were able to, you know, make, because everyone knew, well, I shouldn't say everyone, the powers that be in US Army Europe knew that that brigade was going to go away and that community was going to go back to the Germans. And they knew when.

But the families didn't know that. And so they didn't want to pour a lot of money into it because they're like, well, in a few months or whatever, it ended up being, you know, almost 15 months. But, you know, this is going back to the Germans. And that date was not a date that could change easily, because that was above, you know, user level. That is, you know, status of forces agreement stuff. So that's like State Department to State Department. They, they, we promised them we'd be up by this date in April or May, whatever it was. And so we had to, had to be gone. So they were not giving us a lot of money. The day they closed our movie theater and they promised us they wouldn't close the movie theater.

And so this was Garrison. This was not division necessarily, but whatever it's called, installation management command. They closed it because it was such a tiny community. Nobody was going to the theater. And they only opened on the weekends, but we had teenagers there. And I'm like,

can the teenagers have somewhere to go on a Friday night or Saturday night? Can they go see some whatever dopey movie? And they're like, no. So they took down the... Because that's the thing, too. It's like, I have no power.

I am the spouse of an active duty military officer, but I am not one. So I can complain and yell and scream, or I try not to do that too often. But I did go in with my argument of here's why we should do these things. And sometimes they listen and sometimes they didn't. You know, so, but I was like, I don't have power, but I think I have a little bit of influence because of his power. which I didn't make this system up, but if I can use this to the advantage of our families, I will do that for them.

And so, and that, I continue to do that throughout the rest of his career as he got more senior. We divided things up. Sean had the Army, you know, the soldiers and all the things. I had the family lane, and he was so good about supporting the things because he knew I was talking to people. I wasn't just making this up out of my head.

I was like, oh my gosh, you know, if I found things that needed to be looked at, I tried to help. Yeah, you talk about what you were trying to, your goals were encourage others in their distress, distract them with healthy, good diversions, elevate them, their spirits, their moods, their outlook, inspire them with prayer and productive meetings. I didn't want to ever waste anyone's time and love them. With advice and input from my husband, brigade leadership and others, we devised this plan of attack. Quarterly brigade-wide events that were fun, inclusive, and not burdensome to those involved, particularly the leadership in the battalions and companies.

Monthly prayer services for the safety of our troops and well-being of our families. Care team training and implementation across the brigade with additional psychological emotional support from our combat operational stress control teams. These were licensed social workers, therapists, counselors, and clinicians in our community who helped family members undergoing the stress of deployment or following a casualty or other critical event. So those were your goals. At what point

did you realize that this deployment was going to be such heavy sustained combat? Like when you, did you, when your husband was hearing rumors of going to Ramadi, did you recognize how bad Ramadi was? Did you, where was that like for you?

Because I had heard the report from the G2 or whatever they call him of the Army, the intelligence guy at DA level saying Ramadi's all but lost. Got it. Just let's close up shop and go home. And then, John's like, well, looks up going to Ramadi. It was like, no, no, no. See, they said no.

Don't go there. So I was pretty aware. I was reading the papers or whatever online. So I was kind of seeing what was going on. And when they said they had to move, you know, they were in Talafar and they had a pretty far way to go to get there. And so that was dangerous, just the movement. They didn't lose anyone in that whole trip.

But they had told the families that they were moving. Like they didn't keep that a secret, but they did say, please don't tell anyone because soldiers' lives could be endangered if anybody knows they're moving. And there was no leak. There was not a leak to anybody. They moved as they were planning to move. But I had a lot of grave concerns.

grave concerns about what that was going to look like. I mean, Fallujah, the big horrible stuff had gone on there. I had friends involved in that. We had been in that squadron. And so that was, yeah, definitely on my mind. Did you track it all like the 228 who the 11A took over for? I mean, they lost almost 100 guys themselves. And so were you aware of that and thinking,

I did not know that particular thing to later. I didn't know it at the time. But I had been to Vilsack for a memorial service for a friend of mine, her husband, had been killed in action in Fallujah, who's a company commander. And I went down to that community. Sean's still in Heidelberg. He's the deputy. He was in Iraq just like a month or two before.

He was back. And so we both went. to the service, it was for four soldiers who had died in the same weekend. Two had died in the same event, two were in different incidences, but they just had one large memorial service for all four of them. And we knew, his name was Sean Sims, and we both knew Sean and his wife. She had been, Heidi had been Phillips' fifth grade teacher, and he was on seventh grade. He had done sixth grade in the States, and we came back to Germany. So I drove, it's three hours in the car to Ville-Sec from Heidelberg. Sean got to Ryan.

helicopter with some of the brass. He was in the G3 shop. So he's like, well, I'm going to fly out there with them, like a space A thing. He was a, it was even a colonel yet. He was promotable. So he rode there and I was like, well, I have to go, so I'm going to go in the car. And I got there way before him because they left it really early. And it was just so quiet. It was just really quiet everywhere where I went. And I got to the chapel, which had been enlarged since we had lived there the year before. They had just started working on it. It was all done. And they had monitors in like an overflow hall, and then they had this big chapel. And I went in the chapel. It was practically empty, because I was so early. And it filled up, and it overflowed. And there were just people everywhere.

And the brigade commander at the time happened to be home on leave. So he spoke. at the only memorial service back home station because he happened to be there. And he said from up there, he's like, I don't get to be here for these. And it was really kind of striking to him to see all the families there instead of just the troops that have been downrange with the soldier. But I just saw this broken community. They lost many, many soldiers. And this is, you know, like halfway or like three quarters away through their deployment maybe.

And I knew people there, you know, other than Heidi. I knew others there. And I just wanted to gather them all together and hug them and take them away. And what that was, that was just like the foreshadowing of our very own deployment that would happen a year or so later. And I just, it was very scary. What you read at the beginning. like I don't want to go. And telling the reader, just like I was telling God, I don't want to go.

So fix it. Figure it out. I want to do this thing. But the way God works and the way he fixed it is, oh, I'll say, I was given the grace I needed for the strength to do that thing. I just believe that. You know, I told my sister one day, my sisters, they're like, how are you doing all this stuff? You know, they run in here and there and meetings and meeting with wives. And I said, you know, I just feel like the Holy Spirit animates me.

I said, if I didn't have God's grace, which is just participation in the divine life, it's me opening up and saying, come on in. I said, if I didn't have that grace, I would be in the fetal position in the corner of the bedroom. That's where you'd find me. I couldn't get up and do this stuff. So, you know, that's just who I am and how I deal with things with God's help. So it was not pleasant. But I will also say, you know, maybe I say it in there,

and I certainly know it's been written before. It was the best of times and the worst of times, right? The best in people can come out, this amazing, amazing strength and thoughtfulness. And, I mean, I was just over and over, just encouraged by that. And so I was really grateful for that. And then you know you have other people who are just really struggling and they just can't handle it. And they act out in all kinds of crazy ways, you know.

And that, though, that's not really in my lane because I'm not trained for that. So we had our behavioral health specialist there. I had a really good relationship with those guys. And we were able to assign one each battalion. And there were different levels of participation from the families because families always get to say, again, they don't have to do anything that you ask. them to do because they're not in the military so they don't take orders and I love that about us but um it was offered to them it was made available and many people would take advantage um the the greatest thing to me those behavioral health professionals those therapists and social workers they all did that

nobody asked for um you know overtime pay or to be paid for those things they just did them because they knew it's the right thing to do because they saw a need and they filled the need and um I I I just have so much respect for them for doing that because not all communities had that you know some people and other communities are trying to replicate what we did are like well you know we're getting over in time for that and and be a lot more hesitant to just jump in so we had beautiful people who just wanted to help we started a support group for Gold Star wives and one of the women you know one of our therapists was like, well, I can do that. And I went to the first meeting just to introduce them all to each other.

I got one gal. She was German National engaged to a fallen soldier. We got her on post to go to the meeting when they met in the library on post. And then I'm like, it's all yours. I claim no expertise in this area at all. But I can facilitate. You know, I love to be the connectors. You've got the talent.

You've got the need. Let's get you together. God bless you. You know, so that was, that was a nice initiative we were able to do. Yeah, no, it's the initiatives that you do you talk about in the book, the, the Super Bowl slumber party, the combat spouse badge challenge. The all-spouses holiday gala. Yes. Or gala.

It depends on who you talk to. Yeah, I guess I'm not quite sure about that one. We had the one that was supposed to be like, you know, American Idol thing. That one didn't fly. No one got up there and let loose. We got not a lot of enthusiasm for that one. And if I had to do it over, I just would have done a talent showcase. Like whatever you want to do come up and do.

I think they thought, oh, there'll be judges or who needs that. So, but you know, you live and learn. You say in the book, the monthly prayer service occurred without fail, though it was not always well attended. But the community chaplains and I had an agreement that no matter the numbers attending, we would remain faithful to this time. And so every third Thursday of the month, one of our community chaplains would lead a prayer service

in one of our two community chapels. We would pray for the safety of our soldiers and our troops and we prayed for ourselves and all the other waiting families known and unknown to us. We prayed for the healing of the wounded and for peace in the world. We prayed for the grieving of the families. And I always prayed for the troops who had died.

One time there was only, a chaplain at the service. Sometimes it was the chaplain and me. Or the two of us and one or two other family members. A few times there were six or seven people in attendance. I prayed with strangers, friends, strangers who became friends. And remembering Jesus's words, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.

We believed our time was well spent. And then you go on to say in the midst of everything else that you're doing, in the midst of all these events, there were casualties. Death and injuries occurred throughout the deployment. Two units from our brigade's sister unit were attached downraged to the Ready First Combat team for about five and a half months. I attended as many of their memorial services as I could in their community, in addition to those in our own community.

For several months, an armored battalion from Schoingford was part of the Ready First. I attended a few memorial services down there as well. We also had battalions from stateside units attached to the brigade in Iraq at various times, and I tried to email those commander's wives after their units lost a soldier or a Marine. I called a few of them on the phone as well. Those were always difficult messages to communicate, but I believed it was important to connect somehow. Their troops were fighting and dying alongside ours. It was the right thing to do, and I would pray for them every day.

They were all part of our brigade combat team. My daily prayers were for the troops, wounded, deceased, as well as those still fighting, the families of all three groups, my own family, my husband, and for wisdom and peace, the peace that passes all understanding that only our Lord can provide. And I prayed for the wisdom and peace for myself as well. I asked God to be my strength because I didn't have any. What is the, what are these notifications like? Like, what is happening?

these i mean we were losing people every couple days in romadi what was that like from your perspective well um sean always notified me of the losses and kia's and wounded in action actually and um this one of those times i would uh pretty much curse every time i got an email with names um and you know not proud of that was just like my gut reaction I'm like, no, no, no. So, and I, you know, family members, spouses are not a part of the notification. That's a casualty notification officer and a chaplain who go to see the family. So did you have a Kato that worked just on base?

Was it just yours? Well, we had several people who did the casualty notification. And we had, I don't know, I guess just our two rear detachment chaplains who were with our brigade, went with them. So God bless those two fellas. And sometimes I believe even our rear detachment command, who was a major, would do the notification if he knew the soldier personally. So, you know, you're a small community, so you kind of get to figure that out for yourselves. But so those two would go to the home. We had a policy Sean implemented before he left. Because we met several times with the leadership of spouses and, you know, commanders and CSMs and spouses, we met to talk about

what things are going to look like, including casualty notification, sorts of things. And so the policy was if it was after, I want to say 11 p.m., they would not wake the family, they would wait until morning to tell them, to notify them. And it just seemed like a compassionate thing to do because, you know, in civilian life, somebody dies in the car accident. the cops show up at your door, two in the morning, hey, your loved one died. I mean, you just woke up and you can't even, and he's like, the situation will not change.

We're going to do that. So I only had one night where somebody knocked on my door after 10 p.m. And I almost fainted. I was on the phone, my daughter, who was in the States, going to college at the time. And I said, someone knocked on the door, and she knew how late it was there.

And Philip, our son, was upstairs doing homework. And she said, well, I'll stay on the phone with you. I said, okay. Like, we didn't say anything just that. Someone knocked on the door. So she's on the phone, and I'm walking to the door, and there was a small window right next to the door. And I thought, well, I can look out and see,

and it would be someone I know. You know, they would be in uniform. It would be someone I know. And I was like, can't do it. Can't look. And this is all happening within seconds, right? And I grabbed the handle. And at that point, I had like tunnel vision.

Like I was so close to just keeling over. And I opened door. And it was my neighbor's son. I wanted to see Philip and ask him about a question for their homework. But I lived right across the streets. They just ran over. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, Tony.

I saw me, it's Tony. She's like, hey, hi, Tony. You know, we're just like ecstatic. And Tony's like, hi. I feel like, go, go, go. You know, oh, my Lord. but just in those few seconds as everything's running through your mind so I you know can't even imagine for the for the poor women who actually open the door in and there they were so we did have the

care team and teams in place and they were spouses who were selected and it was kind of a process like we didn't feel like just anybody who said I want to be a care team could be in a care team you know you have to be discreet. You have to be able to kind of go with the flow. Different cultures have different ways of handling their emotions. Just, you know, no judgments. This is what's going on. That's what's going to happen.

You offer assistance. Are there children? What do we need to do with the children, depending on the ages of the children? We had training for this as well. You have pets. Do you want us to take your pets? What are you doing with your pets? like all these practical things as well as get the best friend in here to sit with with the wife so we

you know had had that sort of thing I was not and I encouraged none of our battalion command spouses to be on a care team I'm like this is you you may have to do this multiple times let's you and you have enough every day I don't think that's a smart place for us to be I never visited a spouse unless I got an okay. I would ask either the casualty assistance officer or the rear detachment commander. Can someone ask if it's okay for me to come and visit? Because again, who am I? You know, I don't, I didn't feel like I had this right to be there just because, you know, Sean's my husband. So I was like, if it's okay with them. If not, and I actually only did that if it was someone I knew. Because again, this woman will have never seen me before possibly or maybe ran in a

mean the commissary, but it has no idea who I am or who my husband is. I just didn't see that that was appropriate. So I, but I knew that someone was there, you know, someone they knew was there. So I just really kind of worked that that way. I went to all the memorial services, as you're seeing. A lot of times I would see the spouses there. A couple of them who were, you know, I knew better. I'd see them beyond that at their home or whatever before and or after that. But, I mean, it was going all all the time. And I remember going to the gym. I used to go to the gym to work out and ran into one of the brigade spouses.

And she said, it's like every day we're just waiting to hear, you know, who we lost today, you know. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty much where we are. So, you know, that real quiet community that I'd seen down in Ville, SAC, we had become that very quiet. community. You're kind of in constant mourning and you're also in a constant state of, you know, what's going to happen today. And I think when you're in that smaller space like that, it's kind of intense. Yeah, and I can't, like I opened up with, talking about the fact that when you're downrange, you can see what the threats are and you're, you can act against the threats. I mean, that's what you're doing. You're fighting. But on, on the home,

front, you're, like you said, you're waiting. And I can't even imagine what the atmosphere was like on your base when these calls are coming in. I mean, if you're talking about the wounded and the kill, that's a daily, there's a daily call coming in because that's someone was getting wounded to kill just about every single day. Yeah. And I did not realize to my shame that some of the wounded soldiers who were coming back lived in stairwell apartments. And, and, we're being told things like, you can't walk up and downstairs. You know, they're in a wheelchair or they have crutches or whatever, but whatever the wound was, it's like, and they live on the third floor.

And there are no elevators in stairwells in Germany. So that was the whole thing. I'm like, so what is happening? Well, you're getting up there because I got to get up there because that's where they live, you know? And then we had other wounded soldiers driving the vans to the Launchville Army Hospital because, again, doctors, oblivious, oh, we need to see you three times a week. Well, that was like an hour and a half, two hour drive.

So we had less wounded, taking more seriously wounded to advance at the hospital. It was insane. There came a point where the root detachment commander and I were like, can we talk to the hospital people? Because they're not understanding what's going on here. And can they keep them there? Can we figure out a way? And I, you know, that was kind of above my pay grade.

But I just helped raise the initial flag once we became a, that that was happening. But I just felt like these guys are, you know, on another planet. I mean, they're dealing with wounded people, but they have no idea what they're, they live, you know, in Launge Stool where there's no, you know, none of those people are, they're all there. So they didn't really get what was going on back where we lived. Yeah, so land of time forgot.

There we were again. I'm going to fast forward a little bit in the book. you had these combat operational stress control teams, and these were, again, made up with a bunch of people that could help in these situations. And one of the things they do is conduct debriefings when our soldiers returned from Iraq. This was combat to home transition training. The transition training allowed an opportunity to talk about their experiences and get professional advice on how to cope and also to learn what normal reactions to combat stress are.

Several soldiers self-refered to mental health or medical professionals regarding alcohol-related problems and traumatic brain injuries after their sessions. This also was very encouraging and demonstrated to the soldiers that someone cares. The battle-mind briefings, which have been implemented army-wide, have also been very helpful. One of the innovators, Dr. Amy B. Alder, who helped initiate that program, helped us with the combat-to-home transition training format. My husband and I both believed strongly that if even one person was helped, by the combat to home transition training,

or if one person sought help after their session, it was worth our time and efforts. But we know from feedback that the soldiers, that many more than one or two found the training helpful. I was very outspoken about my belief that spouses should seek help for emotional and psychological issues during the deployment. Generally, my message said it is not normal

to send the person you love most in the world into harm's way, and then, act as if it is normal. It goes against natural self-preservation and protective instinct to say, run toward the fire, honey. We want to say, stay here with me where it's safe. No matter how strong our patriotic feelings or sense of duty, there's always a part of us that wants to protect those we love. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, there's something wrong if we don't have those feelings. Seeking professional help to deal with one's emotions is not weak. It's smart. And it actually takes a great deal of internal fortitude to admit you need that help.

I tried to be open about this so that other spouses would not be afraid or reluctant to seek help too. So you made some serious efforts to get people training so that they understand what they're going through when they come home. Yeah. We both felt that was important because everything's not PTSD, you know? Like, I think there are, you've become this hypervigilant person downrange, I understand. And so upon your return, it's kind of hard to roll that back instantly.

And so just to be told that your behavior right now is normal, that this doesn't mean you're going to be this way forever, or that something's wrong with you because you're reacting this way, even though you're out of harm's way, that that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. And with the, you know, trying to debrief at the battalion level, again, you know, my husband is very much of, that's your command. So you do what you will. He doesn't, you know, kind of. He uses decentralized command. Yeah. Thank you. So they handle it different ways. And some like, here's the whole battalions where it's soldiers, but others, well, here's the company. And it's more effective when it's a little bit smaller group.

So there were varying degrees of success with that. But we did, you know, I know at least one occasion. We had a group of guys from various units. And he said, you know, who did the and how many found it helpful. And there were, you know, Hansen went up. And like I said, we had anecdotal evidence of people self-referring. I heard that from the therapists that were working with us as well. They were getting people coming in.

So that was very encouraging because people won't always do that. during this deployment autumn of 2006 um i'm going to go here atoll am i saying that right yeah atoll it's all it's all but there is the most beautiful location of a benedictine monastery that has been there for centuries i was there to attend and participate in the military council of catholic women conference i think it's as close to heaven as i've ever been fast forward a little bit. You're in one of these sessions. I knew I was in need of such healing, yet toward the end of the priest's prayers, something he said touched me and it began to cry. It had nothing to do with my current situation, the current deployment. It dealt with something years before, and I didn't

just get tears in my eyes. The floodgates opened, and a torrent of tears flowed down my cheeks, and I felt such relief as that damn burst. A woman I didn't know very well noticed my state and came over to put her arm around me. Then more women, friends approached me and engulfed me. It was beautiful to know that each of them was praying for me too. Then several priests stood at the front of the chapel to pray individually with the participants. I got up to have Father John, an amazing, inspiring servant of God, place his hand upon me and pray with me and for me. I can't recall his words, but my tears, which had not stopped and were freely flowing as I sobbed, only intensified during this very intimate special prayer time. Some women were falling limply to the floor, slain in the spirit, it's referred to in the character.

I don't know what occurs between God and that person who loses all physical strength, but I know afterwards they all talk about how profoundly moving and healing that moment was. I remain standing, but the tears and the prayers, the priests and the women's, my own, all melded into a profound experience for me, a life-changing experience. I had no doubt that the Lord had touched me and healed what? My spirit, my psyche, my memories. I don't know which, maybe all three. I saw things in a new light.

moments from my past that I thought I dealt with or at least put to rest came to my mind were revealed to me and I was freed from the burdened they had caused me to carry for close to 10 years. And this is kind of what we talked about a little bit where you were just having all this negativity and you're doing your best and you're getting metaphorical daggers thrown at your back and just that hurt. And then you talk about this. I was also learned the second time around that words not only hurt, but the,

that people can truly deliberately thoroughly harm with complete understanding and intent to injure. The fast forward a little bit, the battle with depression I was also experiencing was helped by talking with a professional, some medication for a time, and lots of prayers from loved ones. It would take a long while to restore myself. When Sean headed to Iraq in the summer of 2003, our oldest was starting her senior year of high school.

I was devastated at the thought of her leaving, the family soon for coming. the family soon for college. I was also in denial about how difficult the separation from my husband and my concern for his safety was for me. When Sean returned eight months later, a short time when compared to most, I know, but long enough for me, he returned to the most demanding job he'd ever held in his army career. He was named Five Corps G3 as a good Army wife friend advises on any Army staff,

avoid the three jobs. Those are operations jobs, which means you have to do everything. these always tend to be very stressful among other challenges. To be the core G3 during a war was especially so. Sean never complained. He never brought the stress of his job home with him, but he was not home very much, and he was always very tired. I made it my mission to make his few conscious hours at home as pleasant as possible.

As I was sinking further into depression, though, that became enormously difficult task, but I was successful for the most part. At the end of the deep depression, Sean made the comment that despite my emotional state, I had always been nice. He marveled at how, he marveled at that fact. I don't. I give all credit to God who is stronger than anything and who is merciful beyond measure. In my darkest days, it was so uncomfortable to talk to people, to be around people, even my own family. All of that is alarming in retrospect.

And it was alarming to my husband who used that exact word when I finally told them how I'd been feeling. I'm normally an extrovert who loves socializing, but during that period of my life, I would cringe at the thought of being with people. It took more effort than I had. I actually thought I was successfully pulling it off despite the horribly oppressive weight on my chest. And in spite of the air that felt heavy as I walked through a room full of people, I literally felt like I was forcing my way through a space if it was filled with more than a couple of people, especially people to whom I was expected to converse. There was a heaviness all around me. The weight of the world was not only on my shoulders, it was on my chest, the top of my head, my arms, my legs, face, and neck. I felt as if I were walking completely submerged in about eight feet of water.

Sean told me I looked miserable, and I had thought I looked fine to so many observers. I understand now why he was alarmed. It was his concern and request that I see a doctor that was the encouragement I needed to make the call. When the psychiatrist asked me a series of questions designed to determine if I was truly clinically depressed or worse, I answered in the affirmative to all of them but one. A person in a healthy state of mind would have answered no to most, if not all. As I recall the one question I did not answer with a yes was, do you have thoughts of killing yourself? I indicated no on the questionnaire, but did tell the doctor that I had been thinking, lately, my family would be better off without me.

I suppose that left me only a short stones throw away from suicidal thoughts. Even when I knew I was not alone that God was with me, I felt little to no comfort through the heavy, ugly oppression that engulfed me. I knew God loved me, but I couldn't do anything about it. The feeling of depression. So did that come on slowly over time? Was that something that you woke up one day feeling? And how did you journey out of it?

I think it was slowly over time. When we moved back to Germany, that fourth time, we'd only been in the States for a year. Maggie was going into her senior year of high school. Sean was going to deploy. Philip was going into eighth grade. No, ninth grade. And I did not come immediately with him.

He and Philip went first because Maggie had been accepted into, I call it, opera camp. But at that point, you know, I told you she switched from violin to voice. And she had been accepted in the Washington Opera Summer Program. And it was three weeks and very prestigious. And her plans at that point were to switch. to study voice, classical voice in college. And I'm like, well, you got to have this on your resume, man. This is pretty cool.

And I thought it would be good for her, you know, development as a singer. So I told Sean, you go ahead with Philip. And we had friends in the area. And I'm like, he can hang out with them. And you go to work. But at least half of us will be there. And I found a little, you know, kind of extended stay hotel. It was in Northern Virginia.

She was in D.C. But we were right outside of D.C. And so I was two weeks behind him. So that was two weeks I didn't get with him before he deployed. And we knew he was leaving. The Corps was already, you know, down there. So I made that work in my head in my little strange way. And that one, I think that was a sign that I was not quite, right?

I remember talking to a friend of mine who was already in Germany and she called me, see, I was. And I said, yeah, I just got here. And, you know, Sean doesn't deploy for like 10 more days. So it's great because I can do all these things, get the kids registered for school and do that, blah, blah, blah. You know what I'm telling her? And she goes, and then he deploys. And I'm like, well, yeah. That's at the end of all this.

But, you know, just like, ah, la la la, la. I'll just not think about that too much or whatever. So I really think I was kind of pushing things down that I didn't want to deal with. And I, and that's never good. So. Is there some of that where you don't want to burden your? husband with that? I think so.

There's some of that. I know my wife would like not tell me, you know, little things when I was gone, like, not tell me that the water heater broke, not tell me that the, you know, we might not have enough money for, you know, ballet practice and whatever. She's, you know, starving the kids so we can pay for whatever, you know. So she wouldn't really tell me a lot of that stuff. And I think, well, I know. She did that because she didn't want me to worry about that stuff.

She wanted me to worry about my guys. Yes. Exactly. And I was definitely of that same old. You know, something like, well, okay, you know, Philip got in a fight, but he didn't break his nose. So who needs to know about the fight, right? Or whatever. You know, it was just very much just the really bad stuff. And yeah, he was like, so I'm a little out of sorts. Ah, you know. As Sean doesn't, does not need to know about that. And then there's another part where you're kind of now at this point in his career, 25 years in maybe, where I'm thinking, I'm a. senior army's boss by golly and I've got it all figured out and people don't help me I help people and you know it's just sort of lying to myself about the fact that I could be in a situation where I'm the one in need you know it's like I find the need and fix it I don't you know I'm not the one who asked for help so I think that was part of it so that to me is kind of a little bit of pride probably what was the tipping point that allowed

you to say, oh, you know what? I need help. John. He said, we went to a hail and farewell. He said, the events we have to welcome the new people, say goodbye to the old. And we sat down and I was sitting. I remember we got like squished into this table with some people because that's just where seats were available. But I didn't know anybody around us.

I just knew Sean who's over here. And I looked at this man who I'd never seen before in my life. And I didn't care to know. know him, I was just like, oh, good, I don't have to talk to anybody. And I just ate my dinner or picked at it or whatever, like nothing. And if I was like with a group of ladies and they're all chatting, I was saying nothing. And that's when we got home, it's like, what's wrong? You looked miserable. And I really was like, oh, I can fake this, a little smile on my face and all is good. I don't have to talk too much. And that was really, that's really what it took. I just,

Like, I was like, I feel horrible. And so a lot of the descriptions there, I gave him a, you know, quick little version of that. And he's standing there. I remember I was sitting. He was standing. He's like, that's really alarming to me. And I was like, really? Like, and I can't explain to you where you go in your head to make it all okay.

Like, because the other thing I did that none of my family knew, both, it was summertime. Both my children had summer hire jobs. So they were, they left every morning at 8 o'clock. They came up at 5 and, you know, Sean was never home until really late and left really early. So I would send everyone out the door and then I would sit on the couch and turn on the television and pretty much be immobile until close to the time they were coming home. They'd be like, oh, I better take quick shower. I better, you know, figure out what's for dinner. And they had no idea, no idea.

And I had very involved in our church. stopped volunteering for things and I made it work. I'm like, I guess this is just a new me. I'm tired. I've been doing this 25 years and, you know, I think it's time for a break and, you know, that was just craziness. None of that made sense to the real Linda. The person I had become, that was not really me, you know.

So then you go, what, talk to, do you go to the doctor, the hospital? I went to a doctor first and yeah, the Heidelberg Hospital. so that's where all the doctors were. So I went to the doctor first, and he wrote me a prescription for an antidepressant, sent me on my way. That's not what everyone jokes about that they do. He did it. I was crying in his office, telling him what my husband had said,

how I'd been feeling, what was going on in my life, and he's like, oh, here you go, you know. And never said, come back, never said, why don't we set you up an appointment with, you know, a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, whatever. nothing. It just sent me on my way. And even in my, you know, state of mind, I'm like, that's not right. That doesn't say right. So I think Sean was in the waiting room. And I came out and I was like, it's like, no. I'm like, no, I don't think so either. So this is when, you know, God's grace comes into play again. I had friends there. Now that I told Sean, I felt like I could share with others. So I started telling my close friends about it. And one of my friends, I told her about the, the, the, the, the, the and no other follow-up. And she said, well, you know, we have a nurse practitioner who sits in the front row

every Sunday with her husband and their baby. And she said, why don't you go see her? And I did, I made an appointment with her. Her husband was a psychiatrist, which my neighbor knew. She called her husband from her desk phone as I sat crying in her office. And she's like, yeah, I got a patient. Can you see this lady? And he's like, sure.

and we set up an appointment for a few days later, and I went to see him, and that's when I filled out that questionnaire and stuff. But it turned out he was an adolescent psychiatrist, but I'm like, hey, I can be very mature. Works for me. But he did. He saw me through the rest of that time. I continued to come down once a month from Heidelberg,

from Friedberg to Heidelberg. It was an hour drive. So once a month, I would go down and see him and have lunch with my friends and then go back home. And what are they doing? What is he doing? Is he allowing you sort of an outlet for what you're feeling? Is he giving you some perspective on it?

Like, you know, we talked about it. Like saying, oh, yeah, that's normal that you might feel sad that your kids are gone all day or sad that your husband's going on deployment again. That's totally normal. And don't let it eat you up. Here, let's try these other things. Is that the kind of conversations you're having? No.

Okay, tell me. I mean, I could tell him. I mean, he was one of the people I said, you don't take a three job, never do the threes, you know? Like, he has no idea. He's an army dog, but he's a psychiatrist, you know? And I was like, just like telling him things that I hadn't even told myself, you know. And I remember when I was filling out that form saying,

and I just feel like, you know, this was a divine thing. It's like, tell them honestly how you feel or they cannot help you. Tell them, don't worry about it. Don't be prideful. Don't say, oh, well, I don't anybody know I'm feeling like this. Just tell them honestly or they cannot help you. I mean, that was a voice from without, you know. And I'm like, okay, you know.

So I did. But it really was like that lying to myself. I could unburden that, that, you know, I'm okay and I don't need anybody to take care of me or help me. I needed to let that go. And I did. And I would tell you, the first day I walked out of talking to him, I felt lighter. I felt 10 pounds lighter.

If only I had been. But I felt that way. And I was like, wow, that was really something. Because to just be honest with myself helped a lot. I was on a very low dose of antidepressant, and I stayed on that until Sean got home from deployment. I mean, but the fact that I had this deep depression before we went to the brigade, I mean, I think part of it was just anticipating the beginning thing.

I don't want to go. I don't want to do this. I think that all of that played into it. My daughter, I used to say I was going into semi-retirement because I have two children, and my oldest was going to college, and I'm like, she doesn't need me anymore. Poor Philip, it's all going to be on all my intentions, turn to him.

But I think that, you know, we were very close. We still are. We still are. Talk all the time on the phone. You know, but I was like, I don't know how to do this. But I'm looking around me at all the other parents, the seniors, parents, and they're all happy and excited. And I'm like, what's really? wrong with me. Why am I just so sad? As you start talking to individual parents, they're kind of sad, too.

You know, it is a change in your relationship with your child, but people weren't clinically depressed, so it was easier to deal with. For me, it seemed like the end of the world. I'm just like, I don't even know how this is going to work, you know? So, yeah, but I do feel like, you know, God was with me through it all. I did not understand why he wouldn't help me. I was like, I am, you know, and this is how many times do I do this? Bag on my knees, you know. Sorry about being on the table. But it's like, just make this, wait, let me be the person I was.

And it's like, now you got to go through this dark valley. I'm sorry, you're going to have to go through this dark valley. But you know what? On the other side, you're going to be stronger, and you are going to be that compassionate person who is going to say, hey, ladies, you know, predominantly women, don't hang on to this stuff, you know, talk to someone, get the help you need. I really felt when that the first day the the his name was bill came up to me to say I have this combat operational stress thing I can do to help debrief and at first we were just talking about

debriefing the casualty notification officers because it's very traumatic to talk to a family and tell them these things and he's like they might need someone to talk to when he initially told me that like I'd probably been I don't know a week or two on the you know seeing the doctor and everything and I'm like, I hate this so much. I don't want to have this on my plate. I don't need this. What? And I'm like, okay, thank you.

As I started to speak to him more, I started on my medication. I'm like, gosh, yeah, we need to do that. Oh, my goodness, we can't not do that. And always asking God to get me through this and then one glorious day, and I don't even remember exactly what day it was. But it was around the time we moved, because I did stay in Heidelberg for a couple months until my kids, summer jobs were done because there was nothing for Philip to do up there or Maggie.

There was no, there were no jobs like that. So I told Sean, I'm staying here through August until the kids are done and he would come home on the weekends. We go up there and see him sometimes. But, I mean, he went to the field. They did their training part of the time. So he wasn't even around that much. I did go up for a few meetings and I kept time when, I'm coming, I'm coming.

Just let me get my kids through their summer jobs. and so that by the time I got there, I was ready to roll. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here in the book. Let me say this. When an extension for our soldiers year in Iraq was announced in September of 2006, we on the home front were all stunned. The spouses, many of whom had experienced an even longer extension during the unit's last deployment, were saddened, even momentarily demoralized.

by the news. I told, and this is to me, it's, you know, this is in, you're getting told this in September, you guys have probably lost 70 or 80 from, from the, the brigade at this time. So this is, you're going to be there longer. This is more people are going to die 100%. That's what you're facing. This isn't like, oh, they're going to be gone for a couple more months. This is, our spouses are going to be exposed to death for more months.

for more months and we're gonna it's a nightmare you continue on i told a group of those spouses that i knew the news was hard to take that even one more day was a day too many i gave them my sympathy and empathy which certainly wasn't a stretch because i was experiencing what they were my husband's tour had also been extended it was tough to bear when sean had called me the day before to share the news my honest first thought was oh no those poor families it took about five seconds to process that Mine was one of those poor families. I didn't cry then. I don't know when I cried.

I'm sure the tears of frustration over the extension came streaming down my face during the healing mass. They were intermingled with so many others. When I spoke to the spouses before a town hall meeting to answer questions they had regarding the extension, I use the following analogy. Quote, there's an old saying that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. I don't know about you, but right about now, I'm drowning in lemonade, end quote.

I put my hand in the air in a gesture that they should do the same if they felt the same way. A majority of the hands went up as well and there was applause. When enduring a tough time in life, it's easy to deny your pain. It's easier to deny the main cause for the stress you're experiencing or to deny the symptoms that stress is causing. You have to own up to it. You have to say, this really stinks or something like it. You know it in your heart.

Others recognize it. Just say it. And then you can move forward productively. There you go. That's what I learned from my depression. It's like, just be honest. When it sucks, it sucks, it sucks. I didn't say it's a Christian book.

You said stinks. You said stinks here. That sucks. We didn't use bad words like sucks in the book. But, yeah, I mean, that was part of it. And it was so funny because the day, the division commanding general came down. with his staff and all these people, and they're in the front row, because they're there to answer any questions, any spouse had.

And he said, we will stay here until the last family member's question is answered. But before we start our little briefing, I want Linda to say something. And he had already asked me, someone to call me and said, they want you to speak. I'm like, okay. Our family readiness support assistant, who's a friend of mine to this day, Amy, she's like, you shouldn't talk. I'm like, what? She's like, they're going to throw things at you, like literally the sign.

She's going to throw things, they're going to call. She's like, can I stand in front of you and kind of? I was like, no, no, no, it's going to be fine. I'm sure it's going to be fine. It really was. But I wanted to speak so badly to them because that's commanding general did not know how they were feeling. But I did because I had a husband with their husbands. So I was like, let someone who's walking this walk with them say something to them.

And but I thought I'd be at the very end, like after all the military people did all their thing. But he introduced me first. And I was like, whoa. Okay. But I had actually had a prayer that I wanted to share with the women. And I saved it to the end, but, you know, I included that thing about the lemons. And then I introduced all the combat operational stress control therapists. for each of them.

I'm like, this guy's with that battalion, that guy, this gal's with these folks. You know, and I said, you know, I have to go as, you know, it doesn't have to be for the group. If you want to see your person, that's your person if you're in this battalion or that battalion. And, you know, I didn't need any notes or anything. I knew these people. I worked them all the time.

I had asked them, would you take this battalion? You seem like a good fit for that battalion. Like, you know, I was intimately involved with this stuff. So I was so glad that I was able to do that because there was nobody there who was going to be able to do that. And so I did that and then I ended with the prayer. And I think that kind of diffused things a little bit. There's also a huge leadership lesson here.

And people ask me about this. You'll say, well, what if? Because I say, you got to tell your truth the truth about what's going on. And someone will say, well, what if your boss is telling you something that you don't agree with or something that's just bad news? What do you do then? And I said, you tell them the truth. You tell them the truth. And like in this situation, hey, this sucks.

Oh, this stinks. Yeah. That's what you do. You say, hey, look, this isn't good. This is the situation we're in. Because the minute you try, you know, if you would have stood up there and said, hey, I got some great news. All of our husbands are going to come home in another three months and they're going to be at risk of death for another three months. This is a nightmare.

But like I'm looking forward to it. No, that everyone was seen right through it. You've got to tell the truth because the team knows the truth anyways. They know. So just own it. And then explain, we got to get through it. Yeah, and here are some ways to maybe help you do that. But, yeah, no, the other thing, I had discussions over the years with other senior spouses

about memorial services, because as a commander's spouse, they sit you right in the front row at the chapel, in the chapel. And, you know, sometimes you're seated next to the spouse of the, you know, the Gold Star wife is there. You know, we didn't have any other family members because we were overseas, so there weren't any moms or dads or anything. We just usually had the spouse. And the very first time I did that, and I'm sitting there, and there's all these family members behind you in the pews in the chapel.

And you can just hear all the sniffling and the sobbing. And so I'm crying along with the rest of them in the front row. And some women felt very strongly that you should be strong and you shouldn't cry. You know, they need to see that. And I'm like, that would be a lie because I don't feel strong right now. And there was always a nice, pretty picture of the soldier up there and this beautiful young face every time. I'm like, how do I not cry? Tell me how you do that because I don't know.

I'd have to like not look at that and put myself in some place. I don't think that's healthy. You know, for me it certainly wouldn't be. So I cried too with them. and you need that communal experience together to mourn together. And I did have all the respect in the world for our rear detachment chaplains because we're all sitting there waiting for them to make it better, you know, because he's the rear detachment guy talks,

and they read letters from downrange from the commander and friends and whatever. Sometimes there'd be a friend back who could speak. But then you're waiting for the chaplain to get up there and say something that's going to make you feel better. And I was like, I would not want that job. They did beautiful, beautiful jobs. They did. They were great guys. But, yeah, Chaplain Crawford and Chaplain Fredrickson, great guys.

But it was very difficult. But I'm like, let's all just be honest here. It's hard. It is hard, but it's the right thing to do. Fast forward a little bit. You say this. The following is excerpted from a letter I sent out to my prayer chain. and to Catholic family and friends explaining the rosary for warriors and asking them to pray.

And this is the letter. This is not the way it's supposed to be. Fathers shouldn't outlive sons. Sons shouldn't grow up without fathers. But the evil that men do to each other is done through free will on their part, not God's will. Yes, the Lord sometimes allows things to happen and we wonder why, but we must grieve and cry with hope, not despair. This world is not our home. That's what we must cling to.

And you go on to explain this Rosary for Warriors. I believe the Rosary for Warriors was divinely inspired. This devotion is prayed using the Marian Rosary of 59 beads with meditations on the sorrowful mysteries. On each decade, please pray for the following. First decade for deployed service members and for their safety. Second decade for wounded service members and for their healing. both physical and spiritual. Third decade for deceased service members

and for the repose of their souls. Fourth decade for all families of deployed, wounded, and deceased service members for the strength and comfort only our Lord can provide. Fifth decade for the victims of war, our nation, and for peace in the world. So you put that together and shared that with your friends as a methodology.

Another, fast forward, another thing that I found very powerful. You say this and it's very something that we talk about all the time. Humility. There is great strength in humility. The paradoxical,

ironic lord of our lives exemplifies this. Through the life of, suffering and death of his son, we see how in humble, ourselves we gain the crown of heaven Jesus' meekness in the face of the elders the Roman soldiers Pontius Pilate God becoming man is the ultimate paradox of humbling oneself to be exalted. Jesus told a parable to those who had been invited noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table we read in Luke 14 7-11.

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at the table in the place of honor, a more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, give your place to this man and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you, he may say, my friend, move up to a higher position. Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Powerful. Well, thank you. Those Jesus' words, so. But again, you know, following the leader. He's our fearless leader. That's what I call him. And I actually have a blog. It's really small.

It's a substack, right? It's now a substack. I'm migrating all of my blogs to the substack. And it's called Linda's... Linda Substack. Because that's how creative I am. Believe me, you're right now sitting on Jocko podcast. That's right.

There you go. Maybe I was inspired by you. We love your creativity. So the blog I've done since 2017, and I actually wrote one about Michael Montsor. And I start off talking about how his body took the blows for others. to save them. And then it transfers into Jesus, who did the same thing.

His body took the blows when he was scourged, and he was spit upon, and he was pushed, and he fell, and then he was crucified. And so his body took all of that for our sakes. And we like to say, in my faith, that it's not the nails that held Jesus on the cross, but his love for us. And so I just really feel that if you want to know how to do this life thing, you know, look to Jesus, no matter how difficult it might be.

You know, the day before he died, the night before he died, and he's in the Garden of Gathemeny, and he's praying and he's sweating drops of blood, which is an actual physiological thing that can occur if there's enough anxiety. And, you know, because it's not just that he's dying and he knows he's going to die. He knows he's going to be betrayed by his friends and abandoned by them. And, you know, everyone is going to say horrible things about him, and he's got to walk basically naked with this crossbeam of the cross, probably not the whole cross, historically. It's probably just the crossbeen. But he's got to carry this.

And, you know, there's no friends. He's been abandoned by everyone. And all of that is part of this thing. And, you know, if you believe in a triune God, son and Holy Spirit, he's divine. So an innocent man does not deserve to be treated that way and to be killed, but certainly, Son of God does not deserve that sort of treatment. And yet he takes it all for us. And so to me, it just seems like a really good, and like I said, he won't go any place. He goes before us. And he says, follow me. And he's like, if you want to follow me, take up your cross.

take up your cross and follow me never promised an easy life never said it'd be all sunshine and caviar you know and and his um apostles the 11 of them and then of course judas betrays him so they bring in a new guy so there are 12 of them all but one died a martyr's death they were all killed by the state for this saying jesus king because no caesar's king what do you guys are doing. You don't call anybody else king. So they were all martyred. And you don't die for like that.

You don't keep, Peter was in prison. He kept going to prison. I kept flogging him. Paul, same thing. And they're like, no, no, this is real. This happened. This man lived and loved. And he's still with us now because he said, I'll be with you to the end of the age.

And he sends his Holy Spirit, which is what, you know, I count on or who I count on now. So that's what gets me through. That's, you know, that's like, he's with me. He's in me, actually. Holy Spirit dwells within us. So that's why I wrote the book. I actually started the book with the very last part, the Psalms at the end that are meditations on Psalms.

I wrote that when the ground wars started in 2003. I'm watching that on TV. I had been reading things copiously reading online, and we used to get a magazine. I show me me name. But they're saying, oh, it would be a really bad thing to start war in Iraq. This is just a no-win situation, and they're telling me all the reasons why. And I'm like, well, our leaders are smart enough to not do that.

And then we did that. And I just had, like, my heart sunk. And I immediately started thinking about the families because I like, they're going to be casualties. There will be casualties. And I was like, I just started thinking about the families and the wives. I'm an army wife. And so that's what I know. Just like I knew I had to speak to those brigade commander's wife.

I'm like, I need to start writing stuff down for them. So I did the Psalms first. That was 2003. The ready for stuff, you know, that was three years later. But I started it then and I just went in my basement. Shawna, each had our own little office spaces down there, this really great house in Northern Virginia. And I just started typing them up.

And it's because his first deployment to Deserts, storm at night after turn the TV off and the kids were in bed, I would read my Bible for I went to sleep. And I always went to the Psalms and there was always a psalm that spoke to me. Always something there that I found helpful. Because there's a lot of psalms that are like lamentation psalms and whether it's, you know, David, King David is reported, have written a lot of Psalms, but there are others, they're not so sure. But there's lots of whys to God. Why and how long and you know but invariably they're going to end with a praise and it's kind of like me we don't know the wise of god that's not our business that's his business but we have to trust and and and ask him

for strength to get through things yeah i think the the first time i met you i think was actually it was a ceremony from mike monsoor up on mount soledat i'm pretty sure no that was that was for mark Was that for Mark? Yeah, Debbie Lee had us all come out on the 10th anniversary to Mount Sillodad. Oh, then no, we went earlier than that. That's the first time I met you, I think. Oh, maybe at this award ceremony. Yeah, it must have been at something.

I thought it was, because I read a speech for Mikey at Mount Solod. But that was pretty, that was like 2007. It was pretty, no, this was, it was 2016. Sean was in Afghanistan. No, Iraq. I have to think where he was. and 2016, it was the 10th anniversary of Barksath. And Debbie had asked you,

we all went on a bus to North Island, and then we came back and we went to a solidite. And you did a speech on 10 years. And what happens in 10 years? And I sat in the very back row of the seats they had arranged because I knew no one but Debbie. And family was there and all these friends and people who would work with you all.

So I'm just like, I went on the bus everywhere, but I just sat in the very back row. And I remember you reading that speech, And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so good. It was profound and it was appropriate and it was beautiful. And so I was like, and people were coming up after and talking to you. And I'm just waiting back. And I found like, hi, Junkgo.

You might know my husband, Sean McFarland. And you said, can I give you a hug? And I was like, please do. But that was the first time I met you. Yeah, 2016. Yeah, 10 years. Now it's 18 years. Mm-hmm.

going to the book here um you say i cling to certain things during times of adversity and one of them is do not fix your eyes on the affliction surrounding you turn your eyes upon the risen lord who has all the power in heaven and on earth his help will come i've seen very good things come out of evil i have seen the best in human beings revealed even during the most terrible of times i've been inspired by the goodness of human nature and awed by the selflessness of others where is God when horrible events occur? He is within each one of us who still strives to do what is right. He is weeping with us in our pain.

He consoles us through the hands and feet and voices of others. We can lift up our loved ones and those who suffer to him and ask for his healing presence and comfort and love. Yeah, I think that's when you were talking earlier about the best of times in the worst of times. That's what war is. You see the absolute worst of humans and you see the best of humans. Fast forward a little bit more. Through my active duty army husband, I've learned up close what it means to be the good guy. In the military, laying down one's life for a friend is not just a platitude. It's a real possibility. The sacrifice required of military life are big ones, even in times of

peace. But in times of war, in the heat of battle, lives are often lost and some are saved. due to the extraordinary bravery and selflessness of others. It's been said that a soldier fights in battle not for his country or the flag or any cause, but for his buddies to his left and right. That's love. And in some cases, it can mean the ultimate sacrifice. This is meant for women,

wives who must endure while their husbands go off to a foreign land in defense of our country. That is where we find ourselves now. I'm a veteran of six deployments beginning in 1990 with operations, Desert Shield Desert Storm. With a three-year-old daughter and an infant son, I was left seemingly alone to cope with life's daily routines, joys, and challenges. And of course, to deal with the fears for my husband,

the rest of the service, members, and families involved, and our nation. If you've never gone through this, it sounds overwhelming. It seemed initially that way to me. But through that experience, I learned a lot about letting go and turning things over to God. Through that experience, I learned to put myself and my family in his hands in a way I'd never done before. It's the way it should always be. We have no control over what others may do to us through their own willful acts.

We don't know how or when our lives will end. But with the Lord in our lives, what others do to us and our mortar shells doesn't really matter in comparison with eternal realities. I'm going to close out the book with this section here. I have a distinct memory of sitting on the floor in our upstairs hallway with one child in the room at the end of the hall to my right and the other child in the room at the opposite end of the hall. We were all crying.

I couldn't take it anymore, I thought. And through my tears and frustration and loneliness and fear, I prayed. And I knew underneath all that pain God was with. me and he was listening. Now that I think of it, he was probably weeping too. But I knew he was there. I cannot explain how. It was more than imagination, more than a feeling. It was truth. I believe the Holy Spirit's presence was there. It ministered to my spirit. That's why I wrote this book, to remind you that God is with you and you will be ministered to if only you seek him. let's seek him together let's look in his word and find wisdom and comfort and peace and then of course

there were two more deployments after i wrote that yeah um under afghanistan for 15 and a half months which was supposed to be a year also and he's like no this time it's really a year yeah and i was foolish enough to believe him and then he's like i love this he's done it's like the third time So I got something to tell you. I have to stay a little longer. I'm like, jeez. And you finally got, so those are multiple more deployments. And again, he, you know, he and I have been exchanging a bunch of emails lately.

And one of the things that he pointed out is, you know, he was overall in charge in the Battle of Ramadi. And then, what, 12 years or 10 years or six years or seven years later, I guess it was maybe Nine years later, he had to go fight that thing again. And this time it was using primarily Iraqi forces on the ground and U.S. coalition forces in the sky. But all that sacrifice that he saw and the soldiers and sailors and Marines and airmen that sacrificed their lives

to secure the city of Vermont, which was successful. And that city was absolutely secured. Yes. And victory was achieved. Yes. and then he had to go back and do it again after it was given over basically or taken back over by ISIS

and you know just incredible that he was overall in charge of both those operations I know um I you know I think I said it or you read earlier

every loss he took very personally carries them all with them to this day. It's a book with everybody's name in it. He looks at it from time to time. I know we still praise for everyone and the families. When we can, we go to Arlington and find whoever we can in section 60. We're in touch with several ghost of our families. You know, it's just, it will be with always, and it does impact how we live our lives. you know, we will always honor their memory and their families. If anybody needs anything, let us know.

So, I mean, it's with him always. And even, you know, and I think what makes him a good commander, or a major commander is that he does take every loss personally. He knows I am ultimately responsible. That's his thought. But that wears on you. So I think you mentioned here says, Linda thinks I have undiagnosed PTSD.

And I stand by that. But that's part of my dime story psychology that I do. It's some things he can't really talk about, some things he keeps to himself to this day. But yeah, it was tough. And when he went back, I was so concerned. I mean, as much as I had been when he went and was personally in combat now that he was leading it from, you know, this big, massive thing,

I just felt like, you know, emotionally and all of that, that that was just going to take a real toll on him. And I think it did. But I think I also, like, he could call me more often. So he were calling, we would talk. But it's been very difficult. That was one thing, and I don't know how much you know about this. I mean, it's funny, like, Mikey Monsor, he would, he told his family, you know, oh, we're just on base.

We're just training Iraqis. It's boring. He's telling him all this kind of stuff. Meanwhile, he was in countless firefights and obviously, um, uh, just in combat all the time. But, yeah, I don't know how much. I mean, your husband when, when, uh, you before, I think before we hit record, we were talking about one of the battalion commanders who, when you, when you met him for the first time, he looked at you and said,

your husband's a badass. And you were kind of like, wait, my husband. And it's because your husband as a brigade commander was out on the battlefield all the time. Like, all the time.

It was, it was, like I said in the beginning, he was not asking his troops to do anything that he wasn't willing to do himself. And by the way, all the battalion commanders were out there. And I mean,

obviously the company commanders, the platoon commanders, but the battalion commanders are out there all the time. You'd see these guys like, I'd look, over and there'd be one of the battalion commanders, you know, climbing out of a, the, climbing out of a Bradley or climbing out of a tank

or patrolling down the street. It was, it was, and it was also interesting that it was so, the battlefield was so small. You know, Ramadi's a small city. It's like four miles across. And even though there was, you know, there's 5,600 people in the brigade, but there's what?

There's a, I don't know, seven, eight, nine, ten battalion commanders. And we'd all see each other all the time. Like and then you'd see you'd like be sitting in a meeting and then two days later you're out like in some battalion commander gets out of a tank or walks down the street or comes into a building. It was such a close knit group of people. And like I said, your husband, he he shared the risk with everybody else. I, I. It's it was quite frankly.

It was kind of surprising and very inspiring to see. Oh, that's that's good to hear. I did not realize at first that he was going out. And then I don't remember when it was somebody took a picture and he was out on patrol with the group of soldiers and he had this thing and all this stuff. And I saw it either on. I don't think he sent it to me. Somebody sent it to me. And I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah. You know, but it almost doesn't matter like one way or the other. Like I love that picture now. I do. but it was, you know, you know they're in harm's way. And I don't know when he deployed the last time, so 10 years later, 2016, he's in Iraq, because that's where he stayed all the time.

He was actually in the embassy, and he would go other places, but that's where his room was. That's where he slept at night. And one day he called me, and he said, I wanted to tell me in the middle of the day, which was weird. He said, I need to tell you.

something before you see it on the news. I'm like, okay, he goes, well, ISIS put our home address out on the internet, and they're like, anybody who wants to take care of this, you know, you'll get something on what they would get, but it was like encouraging ISIS to come and blow up our house or kill the people

in it. I don't know. But it was our home address in Texas. I was saying, okay, thanks. What do I do now? And he's like, well, I've talked to, you know, the rear D guy, who's deputy commander, and he's like, they're going to, you know, take precautions.

Put a Bradley in your front yard? Yeah. No, they just put it in P. Cart at the end of the cul-de-sac. But, you know, I talked to the, because my daughter had just arrived with, she only had two kids at the time. She had two little girls. She said, should I go home? Like, she was really wigged out by this.

And I think I was, too, but I did a little bit of, like, I was in shock or something. I'm like, no, no, you stay here. And I'll go talk to, you know, the DCG and we'll see. and he told me some of the security measures that were going to be in place. And I was like, okay, I feel good about that. So we're good. He said, you know, you live on the street with other general officers. So kind of the securities for everybody.

Because I think technically as a spouse, I don't really rate security, you know? I mean, honestly, it's like the guy in uniform rates the thing. So, I mean, I just don't think, like, technically or it's legally or whatever. but I live with a bunch of other and they were all home. So he's like, we got this covered. They did. They kind of wanted to know where I was. I was like, really?

I didn't always tell them because I thought that was kind of weird, just for me personally. But I did, I had this big thing. It was a suicide prevention conference that we had on post. And I was very involved with that because of my own experience. And so I was trying to make sure family members knew that there was help available and how they could get it. and I share my story.

So I was one of the speakers, so it was kind of publicized that I was doing this. And I walked in and, you know, Chris, are taking me table to table to meet all the different agencies who are there to help. And I'm, oh, this is great. And I keep seeing this young man in like a jacket and an, you know, open collar shirt. And he keeps smiling at me every time I look at the sky. I'm like, okay, what is going on with that young man over there? because, you know, I'm 58, whatever.

So I don't think it's me. So, and then I get up to speak, and there's this little room full of people, and he's over there, smiling. I was like, oh, my God, what's happening? And so after it was all over and everybody had spoken or whatever, this older gentleman came up to me, and he's like, hi, and he was like, CW5 or something, whatever, and he was with the, not the MPs, but one of those military police organizations.

And he's like, and this is, you know, special of so-and-so. And it was the kid who'd been smiling at me all afternoon. I'm like, you guys really should have told me that somebody was kind of watching out here because I just thought he was a crazy person. And I was not sure what was going on there. But then I got to ask to be the Grand Marshal of the Belton, Texas, 4th of July parade. Largest parade in Central Texas. There you go.

And myself and our Command Sergeant Major's wife, if they asked us to be the grand marshals because our husbands were deployed. And they said, we know that you guys are back here. And it was really sweet of them. That's awesome. So we didn't. I got to make a speech. I got to make the speech.

And I did not give the speech they thought they were going to hear. I talked about 10 years ago. Not your speech. Don't worry. I didn't. I didn't plagiarize. But it happened that it was 10 years. So I did that.

But they told us, I got a phone call from the Belt and Police. department, a civilian police department from this nice female lieutenant. And she's like, I've been assigned security for you at the parade. And I'm like, really? She's like, yeah, you know, MPs can't do that, but we can. So she said, I'm going to be in the car behind yours. And it's just like, you know, you're sitting on the back of a convertible, me and Sandra, I see a S&M spouse. And Maggie's like, is she wearing a pillbox hat, mom? I'm like, thank you. But we're on the back and we're waving at people. And so she said, I will be in the car right behind you with my partner in an unmarked car. And I'm like, well, that's weird. I said, are you going to be dressed like clowns or something?

Like, one is these two people in an unmarked car, but okay, whatever. And then she tells me, this is on the phone. And she said, so if anything happens, I will grab you from the car and take you to the hospital. That's reassuring. And I was like, hospital? And then she says, or a safe place. It's like too late. You already said hospital. You're expecting like injuries here. And then we get, because it's Texas and we get in the back of this car and we're sitting up there and the driver who was worked for the city, he opens his glove box and he

had a pistol and he goes, ma'am, we're ready for anything. And I'm like, holy. And Sandra looks at me and she says, I will never do anything with you again. And it was fine. But so that was like this very weird thing out of nowhere. and it was a little thing on CNN or whatever on the news that the commanding general of OIR that his home address had been put out there by ISIS

and that's not something we'd ever expected. I was telling my cousin this story and she's like, were you mad at Sean? Like you put me in this situation. And I was like, it never dawned on me to be mad at John. Not that I think of it, maybe I should be mad at him. I just kind of thought, surprise of doing business, I guess?

I don't know. I felt very safe. I don't think I've ever felt physically safer when he was gone than, you know, knowing that they were out there kind of keeping tabs. And how was that, you ended up going to Trey Dock for a while, the training command, and then make the decision to retire? Mm-hmm. Do you feel like that was a good decision at the time?

I was so ready. The day he came home from Iraq, I could have retired. Uh-huh. I was like so ready. And one morning I sat up and bet he's putting on his army socks, putting on, I'm like, you have to retire. It's like, okay, okay. Like, I'm just so done here.

You know, first of all, the 20 years became 37, right? You signed up for 20. You got 37. Yeah, I got 34 because I married him, you know, the way's in. So I married three years in. But yeah, 34 years, eight appointments. And, you know, some of them were short, but they were, you know, Even those were like unexpected, and that's never a good thing.

And what was really good, though, and I will say this, which made me feel better, my daughter was telling me when time it said, I'm on how much her dad was gone. She's like, Mom, I don't think of it that way. Like, I don't think of my child and say, where was dad all the time? And she's like, I remember my memories are of dad being there more than us being alone. That's a beautiful thing to hear. But something I try to share with young mothers, military spouses, is when your soldier or whatever, your service member's gone, just don't change your routine. Everybody has the same bedtime and they sleep in their own beds.

We don't all jump in mom's bed. That's a bad thing because when dad comes home, he kicks you out and you're not happy about that, right? So it's like keep them in their own rooms, keep the routine as much as you can. You know, that's what we did. nothing really changed in their routines of their personal lives when their dad was gone. We missed him a lot. We prayed for him every night when they could. They talked to him, but he always called it the weirdest time.

So they didn't get to that very much. But their memory is not of him gone so much. I know, I think Philip has some memories, you know, when his dad was gone when he was younger. And he's an army now, right? He is. He is. But I remember saying, really? that's what you want to do.

Like, I was very surprised. I was very surprised. But when we were in Freedberg and you all were in Ramadi, he had a summer hire job there. Turns out they did have some summer higher jobs in Freedberg. And he was around, he saw wounded soldiers all the time. And I said, went to him one day years later. I'm like, did you know that I was going to all these memorial services?

Because I mentioned I was driving all over Germany going to memorial services. And he said, mom, every morning before I left to school, if you were going something, you would tell me where you were going. I'm going to Bamberg today. I'm going to Baumholter today. I'm going to Shwineford today for a memorial service. He goes, I always knew. I have no memory of that, of telling him that. He was a sophomore junior there.

And, you know, there were kids at school who were losing their parents. So he was, his eyes were wide open when he decided to do that. totally his decision. His dad told the kids, you've already served your country, just being my kids. And they know he meant that. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't mean. So then they're like, okay, great. And then Maggie marries a soldier and Phil if he comes on. So I was like, okay. I told my daughter, have you learned nothing from me? Really? But then somebody told me one time, she did learn from you. And she learned you can make this work and have a happy family. And it's all going to be okay. So that was nice. And so what are you focused on now?

Well, I'm continuing to write. Just about finishing up a second book. It's on hope. What's the name? Do we have a name, a working title? Yeah, the anchor for our souls. And the subtitle is Certain Hope in an Uncertain World. And it's way different, not autobiographical.

It's almost more like a devotional. So there's some of my essays in the front. And then the middle section is Scripture, some saints, and then just some regular people with their. thoughts on hope and then I write little reflections kind of off of those. And the last section is seven people that I know who I asked to write their views on hope. Debbie Lee's, one of them. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. I am self-publishing that one. Well, that's what we have the ability to do now. We too. And we're almost there. Just shy of

finishing that up. So, great. And so you got, how many grandkids do you have? Five. Nice. Yeah, Maggie He has three, Philip has two. How often do you get to see them? As much as I can, which is hard because the one's on the East Coast and one's also in Texas, but Texas is a big state. But we make every effort. And, you know, if anybody says, could you come babysit, I'm there? I don't care.

I tell Sean, you have to keep working until the kids are old enough to not need babysitters. Awesome. So does that get us up to speed? Does that get us up to current times? I think we pretty much are. And you're, so if people want to find you, you're on the internet, you've got the, the site, drowning in lemonade. So it's drowning, hyphen, in hyphen lemonade.com. You've got your substack, which is very creatively named Linda's substack.

Linda with a Y. Linda with a Y. It's L-Y-N-D-A. Soomstack. Yeah. You have Instagram. I do. I have actually

I have Twitter I do have or X or whatever yeah it's called X Twitter X is what I call I patented that I think I'm my Lynn T Mac there Your Lynn T Mac

Lynn T Mac on both Twitter and Instagram Well okay so here's the thing about Instagram That's kind of my personal Instagram so I try to look at it I try to stalk you but I couldn't I'm sorry but I also have a more public one

That's Linda dot with a Y Okay With a Y There's a dot between Linda and with because that's the only way they would accept it on Instagram. I don't know why. So it's Linda with a why. Because I go back to, you know, you personally should be able to explain why you do something

or why things are the way. God does not have that limitation put on him. That's, as I say, we do the best we can. The rest is God's business. I didn't create the universe. I'm sorry. I can't make a tree or a planet, the sky. So, you know, I just, I leave that to him.

but I did do, I did a lot of protocol and etiquette stuff. There's actually, oh, there's, sorry to hear that. No. So here's the thing. I try to make protocol fun and how people see why it matters. There's a why. If you cannot explain why we're doing something, don't do it. And I felt like in the Army, too many people were abandoning traditions that had good reason for being there, but no one had explained why to them.

So I realized, oh gosh, I'm at the time, Sean was Division Commander. I'm like, I'm a two-star general's wife, and I don't see anybody else doing, you know, why this is important. So I'll do one. So I did one that wasn't recorded, and then when we got to Ford Hood, they recorded it. And then Traydock, when we moved there, once Sean left Ford Hood, or Fort Cavas now, they took it off their website. Ford Hood did, but Traydock very sweetly put it there and it's still there. And it's a video. It's called Army Tradition and Why It Matters in the 21st Century.

And I just, it's a little dated now. I've actually done an updated version that I haven't recorded yet. But this one has movie clips in it and stuff. And it's just to explain why we do some of the things we do and why we should continue to do them. And, you know, just give some meaning and context to things. I talk about George Washington and, you know, all kinds of stuff in there. But it's about 45 minutes. But it's still up.

It's got like 1,800 views. Right on. And that's on the Trey Dock website. Is it on YouTube? It's on YouTube. If you just Google Army tradition and why it matters in 21st century, there I am. Yeah. You get the views up on that thing.

Yeah. But it's, I just felt very strongly in my time as an Army wife. I went to actual classes or lectures where some senior spouse would stand up there and tell you some things. And I think part of the resistance to that is people are like, oh, it's all, you know, heighty-to-y. But really, it's a lot of practical stuff. And the irony to me is that a lot of the customs and courtesies and all that kind of stuff, the protocol, was actually supposed to make everybody more comfortable, but it ends up making everybody, really nervous, you know, like what to wear and what the attire is. But the bottom line,

and what I tell everyone is, the bottom line is always choose to be kind to others. If their manners are not correct, if they're in the wrong clothes, if they say the wrong thing, don't point it out. Leave them the heck alone. An observant person will notice, oh, I probably shouldn't have worn this. Oh, I didn't know that was the fork for that. Start on the outside and move in. You'll never go wrong. But it's like you just be kind to them and you welcome them and let them know you're glad they're there. Don't be all, you know, well, this is how you do this, honey. It's like, no, just leave them the heck alone. Be nice. Be nice. Yeah. So I do, I have a scene from, did you ever see Blast from the past with Brendan Frazier? No. It's a very funny movie.

He spends 30 years underground because his dad thought that the bomb went off, the Russians. So he comes up 30 years later, and he has 1950s sensibilities and manners. And, you know, it's like this guy that hasn't been underground for 30 years. He said, he told me what a lady and a gentleman are. And he says, a lady or a gentleman is someone who makes you feel comfortable when you're with them to show your respect for who they are. He goes, I always thought it was someone who owned horses. You know, so. But really, that's the thing. And I actually, I have a theory. that people in the United States, we wouldn't be where we are culturally with so much, you know, vitriol if people had learned their manners. Honestly, why is it okay to just tear people apart like this?

It's really not how we should treat one another. Yeah, and social media makes that really easy too, because when you're on social media, there's no repercussions and you're not even a real human. I mean, most of the time you're just insulting or reading insults or whatever. from a person that you're never going to meet and they're allowed to say whatever they want. And the way for them to get the most popular statement is to make the most shocking and heinous and offensive thing that they can make. And so that's kind of the norm. Yeah.

I had a guy tell me. Not much manners on Twitter. No. Or anywhere else. I don't remember what side it was, but I made a comment and this guy said, oh, you're so full of hate to me. And I was like, I don't hate anybody. That was my response.

And he didn't write anything back. I was like, I don't know what? I think that's the other thing as a writer. Use the right words for things, you know. Hate is not the right word in every instance. You know, you might not like something. You might find it distasteful. But don't say hate all the time.

Hates a strong word. Hates a very strong word. I know. Now I'm getting to my maternal mode here. And another thing, Chaco. No. Awesome. So echo Charles, you have any questions.

Quick question. So back, rewind back when you saw the, what was it, the teenager psychiatrist? Yes, adolescent psychics. What was it about the psychiatrist that made it, I don't know, effective or whatever? Only because everyone's in a while here of like, oh, yeah, a psychiatrist, you know, all they did was prescribe me this and it didn't even work. You know, like they don't, I don't know, they don't get like the outcome that they wanted, but you say that you did. Yeah. It was kind of like finally you got like some.

I think I think he listened and he didn't jump in. He didn't judge. He didn't offer solutions right away. He was very kind. You know, if I made a joke, he laughed. You know, you might get someone who even if it's funny, he wouldn't laugh. But I thought he genuinely appreciated what I was made. So I felt like it was a conversation.

It wasn't like a doctor was here to help me do whatever. I just felt like, but he was a guy who had the training and the education and I think the compassion to say, let's figure out a way for you to cope with this, a way to get over this. One of the things we discovered after all of my therapy is I had actually, I carried around a lot of anxiety because I was worried all the time when they were deployed. I had like this constant thing. and I didn't know how to not be worried.

I had to like unlearn that. Yeah, so I had to really kind of learn how to realize. And then when, if I couldn't worry about people, oh, I did, I kept worrying about my kids. But I, you know, I'm normally worried about things every time they weren't with me. But I worried about, you know, I might get lost in the city. And I'm like, I drove all over Europe and I'm worried by getting lost.

But all of a sudden, so I had to have something to worry about. And I was helped out of that. And that was through the psychiatrist. Or did you find that out later? Oh, that actually was the, I saw a social worker. You know, when Sheikh Sitar was assassinated, Sean was home and he was working at the Pentagon. And it was horrible.

I'm sorry, you know, we were ending, but I just thought. Yeah, no, it's, Sheikh Sitar was a huge player in the Alambar Awakening. And he was good friends with a bunch of the leadership. and your husband definitely wanted the leadership. And he, you know, took huge risks to do what he did and unite the tribes in Al-Lombar and specifically in Ramadi. And he was this, he was a big personality.

And then your husband was totally critical in making that happen because he was the guy that said, well, when he ran that up the chain of command, hey, we want to work with this shake. And they said, that guy's a criminal. He's a gangster. And he said, well, you know, he's all so powerful. And he wants to be on our side now, so let's give him a chance. Yeah.

And so, and then after we left in 2007, he, he was assassinated. And so that, the whole thing ended up not being a great thing, how we were notified. I'm used to the Army way, which, you know, you tell the family before it's on television, right? When it's your family member, well, he wasn't related to any of us. So it was on the news. And so I had not heard. I'd been out for the day. Sean's at work and a secure thing where you don't have phone, you know, cell phones.

And so I got home and there was a message on our answering machine. We sell an answering machine in 2007. And it was a friend saying, I just saw on the news that Shakespeare Satar was killed. That's how I found out. I just fell apart. Now, I never met this man, but Sean had told us my kids too all about him. He had stories about him and, you know, personal, funny things, all kinds of stuff. We felt like we knew him.

And that's not how I should have found out, but that's how I found out. And I was home alone and Philip was at school and Maggie was at school and college. Philip was a senior because we were in Northern Virginia. And I said, I've got to tell the kids before they see it on the news. And so now I am right back in Friedberg and Sean's in Ramadi in my mind emotionally because that's what I always did. I was like, oh, make sure the kids know this, that, the other thing before they see it on the news, you know. And so I

Because we had friends who were killed You know You just don't want them to find out from strangers And so I called Philip came off school I told him You know he's upset I call Maggie, she cried

She's like When it's going to be over And I'm like I don't know How should I know It was just awful And then he comes home from work And he's like Did you hear?

I'm like yeah I heard It's awful And he said yeah And he told me though He said like you He said he knew the risks He had many

Attempts made and threats made, and he did it anyway. And he knew what could happen to him. And he said, I feel like he's okay with this. And I was like, okay. Well, so he goes back to work, does his stuff. I'm starting to slip kind of back into this sitting there all day thing. I didn't quite get like I was in Friedberg, but I was not as energetic.

I was sad all the time. So I did find a social worker, and I just went to her. for about, it was really only like four months. I just needed to, I was afraid I was going to end up back where I was, but that was kind of when we realized that the worry thing was still hanging around. Another thing is when I did, you'll see family members, either when I went to their homes or saw them in the chapel for the memorial service, I saw grieving families, and then they left. And I never saw them later, you know. That was my time. experience. That was my memory. So in my mind, months later, that's who they are. That's where they

are. Yeah. And so I had to kind of get over that a little too. And then the social worker, the male, female? Female. And then did she ask a bunch of questions? Because I don't know, I haven't been to any kind of therapy or anything like that. But from what I understand, like sometimes the therapist will be more into the listening part of it. And then sometimes they'll ask a lot of questions. to get like where does that come from what does that make you know like you know yeah no I did not get those kind I think if people had asked me those kind of questions I wouldn't have gone back you know yeah if they'd been to like so tell me about that what did that feel like yeah I didn't get a lot of that it was more really conversational they were the two that I think you God were so like skilled I think and what they did probably the the adolescent guy was just used to talking to teens who don't want to tell you much of anything So he was really good at kind of figuring out a way to get you to talk and you didn't even know you were going to talk about something, you know. Yeah, so it's almost like, I don't know, I'm trying to kind of conclude or figure the whole thing up.

Yeah. Like sometimes people need certain things and different types of people need different types of things as far as therapy goes. And then other people need other types of things, right? So it's a matter of like, almost like from a therapist standpoint. They have to navigate what do I think this person actually needs versus. is, oh, this is the kind of therapist I am. I ask questions all the time to get to the root of it so I can solve your problem. You know, it's more about them more so than it is like, kind of like how you said,

it's more conversational. So he can kind of, or he or she can find out like, what does this person need, you know, to help them, you know? Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that helps them, if they're the kind that I had, which I really appreciate it, the, the guy was the intake form where they asked all the questions. So he kind of already knows very. emotionally by the time he gets down to the last question.

And so he's, I don't know, I think that just helped him a lot, figure it out. With the social worker, they just asked me, what do you want from this time together? And I think one of the things I told her is I don't want to worry all the time. And I don't want to be sad all the time. I mean, so I think that's hugely helpful if you kind of have a goal at the beginning, at least it's it for me. I don't know how many therapists do that sort of thing. But that was really where we started, not with my symptoms or how I was feeling, but just this is, I need to get out of this, help me get out of this, you know? It like sometimes will strike me because you know how like

you have stuff going on in your head and you're like, well, I don't want to burn in my friends with it or whatever because it's like, it's not big enough, you know, it's not a thing, you know, it's just so, but it tends to like chronically bother you. And then finally when you're like, I don't know, at a moment of whatever, you vent to your. your friend or your husband, wife, whatever. You just vent to them, right? Kind of almost on the uncontrollable side. You know, I'm just kind of compelled to start convincing.

Uncontrolled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a real thing, though. You know, you know, Holly, I mean, we've all done it where it's like, it started a vent to you, you know, right? That's like a common thing. This is why sometimes our podcast starts 40 minutes after it should start, because I have to do therapy for Echo Charles.

Here's a thing. That's my point where, bro, that works. So if and you can't just vent to anybody. That's the thing you start venting to the wrong person, right? They're going to use it against you. They're going to think you're weird. They're going to judge. They're going to like all this like negative stuff can come from it. If you vent to the wrong person. Sometimes they will still judge and think you're weird even though you keep doing it. And yet you persist. But somewhere in there if there's like a legitimate element of trust, I feel like I feel like it's beneficial. I feel like it actually helped. Okay. So I would say because I think that's true.

to a point, but what I would tell people when I was trying to help them to get to a therapist is I can tell my trusted friend how I'm feeling or vent to them, but when I walk away, I've still got my pile of crap that I started with. I haven't figured out a way to cope with it. I haven't figured out what about, and they have been able to tell me, well, you know, have you tried this coping mechanism or some people do this? Or, you know, there's no way to go from there. So you still walk away with all of your stuff that you had when you initially yelled at them and then, or yelled them, shared with them, shared with them. And then they also now might walk away with some of your stuff, which isn't always fair to your friend. So that's why to me therapy is good.

If you get a good trained professional, they help you do something with that stuff. They help you to get it off your plate. So when do you have a clean, shiny plate? You can see your reflection in there. But I will also say, find the people should find the right person. Like if you go to someone and they are being weird and you're like, I don't want to talk to you about that, my childhood or whatever it is. Then go to somebody else. Say thank you. Goodbye. Yeah, fully. And the whole venting thing, you know, I'm not saying it applies to me. I know. Not saying it doesn't. But I feel like the whole vending thing is like a very, it's like a microversion of therapy.

But if you find yourself, if you find yourself venting about the same thing, each time, that might be when you need to talk to somebody to get that thing out of the way. They'd be really nice if you went and talked to somebody else, Echo Charles. I'm going to talk to. All right. Well, I have Linda now, so okay. That's right. Anytime, Echo.

Send me a note. I'm happy to talk to you. But again. He told me a 25-minute story the other day. and the story was about having to listen to a story that he didn't want to listen to. It was very ironic. Yeah, see? I know deep down you didn't judge.

It felt like you were like looking for an opportunity to make a funny joke. I was happy to support. So, hey, magic. It's a version of trust and love, see? It's a version. Well, it was really funny with that social worker. I mean, she learned so much about my entire family that by the end. And she's like, well, Linda, I don't really think there's much else I can do for you.

But when are you leaving? Because we were PCSing. And I said in April or whatever. And she's like, well, I can keep seeing you until you go. Like, okay. Just going once a week to talk to her. And she said, I'm going to miss your family. She knows.

So, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it can even develop into that kind of a relationship with the person. I think a lot of times with venting anywhere. I mean, obviously, it's different for everybody. But a lot of it is just hearing what you're thinking out loud. You know, it's way different when you're thinking it in your head and, you know, all these different ways. But then when you say it out loud, it's kind of like it kind of puts it into perspective a little bit. There is truth to that.

I don't think anybody should leave it locked up inside. It's surprising how many people ask me a question. And as they're asking me a question, they'll be like, I know the answer. And they don't need to ask me. These are like leadership questions or life questions. And they'll be asked me the questions. As soon as they hear themselves saying it, they're like, I know what I got to do. That's me like probably 90% of the time.

If it's like a question, you know. Yeah, no, that's a good thing. Good, good. Cool to meet you. Any other questions, Echo Charles? No, that's it. You know, if I have any more, I'll hit you out. You know how to get in touch with me.

Absolutely. Linda, any closing thoughts? No, I mean, thank you for having me on. Thanks for, you know, sharing about my book. I do. I still would love people to read it. I don't make any money off the sale of the book. it all goes to a nonprofit that actually makes these MP3 players for,

they started off making them for wounded soldiers and deployed soldiers. And now apparently veterans in veterans hospitals, things like that, they're getting requests from chaplains for the MP3 player. There's two versions. There's a Catholic version that's very specifically that. And then there's a Christian version. I helped a lot with the content on the Catholic version, has a mass from the Archdiocese of the military services.

They have their own archdiocese, which a lot of people don't know. It's worldwide. And the current president of that Archbishop Brolio is also president right now of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops. And so that mass is on there. And they do one every May right before Memorial Day. They recorded. Then the Eternal Word Television Network, EWTN, airs it. on Memorial Day. And this year, for the first time, it was the 20th anniversary of the Rosary for

Warriors being prayed at the beginning of the Mass. They always pray it, but they never air it on the network. And so I happened to be somewhere Archbishop Brolier was. And I was like, do you think for the 20th year that they could air that as well? And they did. And it was, I was just so excited to see it there. And it doesn't matter where it came from. I just, the intentions can be prayed by anyone. You don't have to be Catholic and pray it on the rosary. You know, we can all pray. And one of the reasons I still continue to share it is because I don't want anybody to forget. I don't want it to forget our fallen, certainly. But there are people with wounds that will carry them the rest of their, they'll carry with them the rest of their lives. And their families will be

impacted by that. Of course, the families of the fallen, and we don't want to forget them. And even we have people deployed around the world right now that people don't think about, civilians don't think about. So the rosary is a way to remind people that all that's still going on and it just always will be in one fashion or another. So I was thrilled that it got that bigger coverage at least once in 20 years. Well, hopefully get some more coverage with this. So yes, thank you so much. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your faith and your experiences. And of course, thank you for your service to our conference. country and supporting your family through decades, almost four decades of military life and

years and years of combat deployments that that you went through. And so thank you for that sacrifice. And then thank you for the service and support that you gave so many families. And the support that you continue to give to families of the fallen, including my own brothers. I know you help Mama Lee so much. And I know there's countless others that you've supported with your, with your strength, your compassion, and your faith. Well, thanks. It was always a privilege.

It's always been, always will be a privilege. So thank you. Thank you. God bless. And with that, Linda McFarland has left the building on her way. Awesome to have her on here and hear that side of the story. hear that perspective on the home front. Home front's rough.

You know, have you ever heard of a book called Mikey and the Dragons? I hear good things, yeah. You know how the dragons are bigger in your head than they are in real life? Yeah. That's kind of case and point behind combat, you know? Yeah. For the guys in combat, you're there.

You see the dragons. You see how big they are. Yeah. The people that are home. All of them are huge. Yeah, and yeah, I forgot to talk about this too. Social media, like it's one thing to, during the first Gulf War, to be like, oh, you know what? I'm not going to watch CNN, the one channel that has 24-hour news coverage.

And you just could avoid that actual one channel, channel 30 on cable or whatever it was, channel 31. Sure. Right now, because now you'd have to avoid CNN. Fox, MSN, B, B, B, blah, blah, blah. There's, how many of those are? Newsmax, there's all those social media, by the way. Well, no, that's, I'm just talking television. Oh, yeah.

So I'm just talking, you've got probably 10 channels to avoid on television. Once you get into social media, well, actually, now go to your, your news websites, right? Because all those things I just said, they all have a news website. And now go to your social media. And by the way, how many people are 10? texting you with some news. Oh, yeah. Because they just saw it on social media.

So now you have to avoid your friends. Yeah. Because they're texting you about some stuff in the news. Oh, yeah. Yep. So it goes a lot, a lot. When the more you think about it, the more it's like it's kind of going to be everywhere. So there's like apps that are open by the way.

I didn't. I never set this freaking what it called status for this app to give me notifications. But it's like news. It'll just pop up coming across your screen. Yeah, what the hell? I didn't put this on freaking alerts, yes or nothing like that. There's that. And then you go, you go shopping on, I don't know, freaking xyz.com.

They'll have breaking news on the website sometimes. So it's like, man, everywhere you look, you know. Yeah, that's crazy. Bam. Well, awesome to hear from her. And the side of perspective that she had, obviously from her whole career, It's definitely from specifically from the Battle of Omadi and and just to connect with the McFarlance has been awesome to have them both on here to share what they learned and what everything looked like from their perspective. So really appreciate that and awesome to have them on.

You know, she talked a little bit about mental health. One of the things she said was negative about mental health is sitting on your couch. This is like a precursor to bad mental health. Sure. So we're not sitting sitting on the couch. Matter of fact, couch time should be minimized a lot. Yeah. Do you have a comfortable couch?

Yes. I don't. My couch is on purpose. No, it's not on purpose. I wish it was more comfortable. Back in the day, back in the day I had me and my buddy when we lived in an apartment, we had the most comfortable couch of all time. This thing was huge and it was low to the ground and you could fully sleep two people like on it.

Yeah, yeah. It was ridiculous. It was gold velvet. We got it at a, you know, one of those stores. Goodwill. Yeah, yeah, something like Goodwill. Yeah, like a thrift or like a thrift store, thrift store. And this thing was huge, but it was so because as it got used, it's probably 25 years.

years old. So it was all softened up. Yeah, yeah. Worked in. It was softened. It was worked in. The thing was comfortable.

But the current couch that I have, when you sit in it, the back pillow, the back thing is too tall. So it propels your neck forward. It's so annoying. So you can't get comfortable there, which is good because we don't want to be on the couch. Yeah. We want to be training.

You're right. Especially when you're talking about your one that was close to the ground. Because once you're down there, it's like, brother, to get up is like more work. I was like, bro, what are you doing? Might as well to stay down here, you know? I get it. You know that this was nice. I always think about this.

We'd get done, like on a Saturday, wake up, work out, do whatever, train the Jiu-Too. And then come home. You know how you, if you wake up, workout, and then you train, and you come home and you eat something, now you're kind of like, you're kind of tired. Yes. And then you lay on my old couch. Yeah. And the breeze is coming through.

Oh, bro. It's a nice cool breeze, but then you've got some kind of a little blanket scenario going on. You can kind of get over your legs. You know what I mean? And this is back in the day when you have no responsibilities. Like it's Saturday. You don't have to be work. You don't have to, you have nothing.

You have no response. No kids. Yeah. Nothing. You just have no responsibilities. You have to be at work in like 39 hours. You have 39 hours where you can do whatever you want, no responsibilities. Yeah.

And TV on TV off doesn't matter. Yeah. Like whatever's happening is happening. You have no responsibilities and you're just gonna sit there and just lay there. And maybe sleep for 20 minutes, maybe sleep for two hours. Yeah. Maybe sleep for four hours. Doesn't matter.

Yeah. You're just gonna feel a cool breeze over your, over your right shoulder. Because your left shoulder's kind of covered up. That's, I think that's the worst I've ever heard you've mentioned that, but it's like such a real and magnificent part of like the lounging experience when you can find the time to have lounging experiences it doesn't exist anymore yeah because once you're once you're once you have actual responsibilities in life you can never escape them at least me i can't be like oh you know you know who cares what i'm going to do i haven't i haven't done what i just said in decades you know what i mean

i'm talking i was in like i was a e4 in the day and there's no war going on yeah And even if there was work on it doesn't matter. They don't know. When we had the weekend off, Frogman Friday, get done, go out, whatever. And then Saturday, oh, we're going to get up. We're going to work out. We're going to train. So we're tired.

Maybe order up some, maybe order up some food on the way home, you know. The blanket over your legs. That is the, you know what I'm talking about. I did. Right. Because that's the kind where, like, you really are not expecting anybody come in bother you at I know this because what's today Monday. So Sunday yesterday.

You see, I haven't had this in decades. You had it for a yesterday. Not that whole scenario. It was very brief. But yes, the blanket was like on your legs. It's like a thing because it looks real dainty. Like it looks real like, you know, old lady knitting blanket on your legs. You know, it's like that.

It's not very like hardcore. We'll say that. In fact, it's the opposite. But the benefits just for that moment. It's nice. Are real. I was training. yesterday?

Sure. J-J-T. No, no, no. I was... Are you on with a blanket? My legs. Anyways, I just need to mention this, but there was a guy came in to stop in and say how you weren't there.

He kind of didn't expect you to be here because he kind of listens to the podcast. Sure. But his name was Daniel. He's from Poland. And he came from Poland to Chicago and then drove to San Diego to swing by and say what up. Oh, damn. So props to Daniel for that. but what Daniel said

his favorite part of the podcast was when we start the support section he's like that's why I listen I was like bro you and one other person we haven't met the other person yet he said it no it's nice to hear you and echo talking I love to hear you guys speaking

yeah was he kind of tall was he like maybe your height maybe slightly taller no no big beard blue eyes big beard yeah pretty big beard I met a guy from Poland, but no. Where? At victory training.

Yeah, yeah. Friday. Good. Check. Nonetheless, hey, I agree with them, you know, for, you know, partially, partially agree with them. But listen, the couch, while nice at times, like Linda said, this can't become the protocol. The protocol should be lifting, running, sprinting, training, surfing, the jihitoo,

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Yep, we're going to go right into it. Camp Laurel. Yeah. So you go to origin, USA.com. Is that where you can sign up for? Same deal. That's it, man. Freaking awesome.

That's going to be good. A lot of law enforcement already comes to the Jiu-Jitsu can. But now we got the special one. Yeah, because specific for it. Because, I mean, let's face it, I mean, me, I've never been a cop. You know that about me. But every once in a while, I'll think, like, as a cop, like, you can't, if you know Jiu-Jitsu as a cop, you kind of can't help but be like, I can't wait to use some Jiu-Jits.

You know? So anyway, it's a good, very beneficial thing to have. It's very good that this exists. August 27th to the 31st. Maine also jaco is the store it's called jaco store is where you can represent discipline equals freedom good standby to get some get after it all these things you want to represent this is where you can get your stuff shirts and hoodies the whole deal also uh the short locker new design every month people seem to like it it's a subscription scenario new design every month uh

that's also on jocco store.com you go to the top right it says join the shirt locker that's what's called the shirt locker pretty cool man yeah so you click on there and it'll show you kind and what it's all about, you know, some designs from the past. As far as designs from the past go, if you're a member, you can get any design from the past, unless you're sold out or something like that, which is, can happen, but you do have access to that. Reprint them out. Reprint them. Yeah, yeah, fully.

It's basically you get access to the whole thing. It's only for a member. So, yeah, if you're a member, you get one every month. Plus, you can, you know, bypass past designs, the whole deal. Just be part of the whole club. A whole shirt locker club. True. You know, yes, it's all at chocolate store.

Also check out primalbeef.com. Check out Colorado Craftbeef.com. You need steak. Get steak from the good people out there. Get steak from the good cows out there. That's what we're doing. Awesome. I just had a massive primal beef steak.

It was so freaking good. And the Colorado Kraft beef sticks just to have them your back pocket at a moment of need. Yeah. Check those out. Primalbeef.com, Coloradocrafbeef.com. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out Jococcaleroft beef. Underground.com.

Also check out our YouTube channels. What is it? Jocko podcast. Official. Official. We got, oh, there's the clips one that you made.

Jock Podcast clips. And then there's Jock Fuel has one. And then there's also origin. Origin USA. So check those out. Psychological warfare. Man, I'm supposed to make a new one of those,

aren't I? Yeah. Still viable though. You know, it's one of those things. Still viable. Yeah. Timeless.

Timeless. Oh, yeah. Check you out. Brow, I'm here to tell you. Liable timers. Dang. I'm here to tell you out. Psychological warfare.

Yep. Check that out. Flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books. Drowning in Lemonade by Linda McFarland. Check that out.

We read probably 3% of it today. But it's a good read. It's a fast read. Lots of good, actionable items in there. So check out drowning in lemonade by Linda McFarland. Also,

I've written a bunch of books. Written a bunch of adult books. Not adult like, like adult film, right? Of course, but books that are meant for adult humans. Sure. Is there a name for those?

They're just called books. Books, bro. I've written a bunch of books. Adult, what, 50 shades of jocco freaking books? No, we have not written that.

We have written a bunch, I have written a bunch of leadership books, I've written a novel, I've written, And I've written a bunch of kids books as well. So check those out. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five letters to Uncle Jake. We've got a movie coming.

But you don't have to wait until a movie. You have to wait to see Chris Pratt as Uncle Jake. You know it's kind of dope. It's dead. It doesn't wait for Mick G to put together the perfect. By the way, I'm reading the script. It's good. We like that.

So good. There's, look, it's a Hollywood movie. There's some Hollywood activity. And I mean that in the best possible way. Like, cool. Hollywood, activities, players on there,

parachuting. Like it's taking it next level. So definitely looking forward to that. Mike in the Dragons about face, extreme ownership, dichotomy and leadership. Check out those books. Also, Eschleonfront. We have leadership consultancy.

We solve problems through leadership. Go to eschlonfront.com for details on that. We also have an online training academy, extreme ownership.com where you can learn to lead yourself and your friends and your teammates and your family through life. Leadership is a skill.

You don't just get it and now you have it. Now you're good. No, it's like going to the gym. Got to go to the gym. Go to the leadership gym. Go to the life gym. Extreme ownership.com. Check that out.

And if you want to help out service members active and retired, you want to help out their families. You want to help out Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org.

And if you want to donate, to having the Ready First Brigade Memorial statue refurbished and repositioned. Go to America's Mighty Warriors.org and donate money and then just put in the notes that you would like it to go to the Ready First Brigade Memorial. So it's a beautiful memorial. The names on it of those that we lost in the Battle of Vermont. So check that out. Also Heroes and Horses.org, Micah Fink up there in Montana,

taking care of our veterans by taking them outside into the wilderness where they can find themselves. And finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the Brotherhood. Dot org helping seals go from their military career into the civilian sector with success. And if you want to connect with us,

once again, Linda McFarland, She's on the interwebs. She's got drowning hyphen in hyphen lemonade.com. She's got a substack, which is creatively called Linda's substack. She's on Instagram. She's on Twitter at Lynn T. Mac. What was the other one that she's at? Oh, it's Linda with a Y.

That's on Instagram. Linda with a Y. She's also on LinkedIn. She's on Facebook. You can find her at Linda, which spelled the Y, McFarland. As for us, I'm at jocco.com. I'm on social media. at Zaka Willink.

Echo is also on social media at Echo Charles. Just be careful. Because there's an algorithm. Everybody wants to tell you something. Everybody's got something to say to you. Get you looking some way or feeling some way. That's what they're trying to do. I recommend you go your own way.

But if you want to connect with us, we're there. And thanks to all the folks out there in uniform and tonight, especially thanks to our military families around the world. You sacrifice so much to support your service members. You keep track on the home front so that the service members can keep the front lines on track. And you take care of kids and bills and broken cars and you handle doctor's appointments and wrestling matches

and piano recitals. You do it all while worrying and praying that your loved one comes home. It is a burden and a sacrifice. And we thank all of our military families for your service. Also thanks to our police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us. And thanks to your families as well who put up with sleepless nights, constant worry and continued sacrifices so that the first responders can go out there and do their jobs. So thanks to the first responder families out there.

And everyone else out there, let's remember what we learned today from Luke 14, 711, passed on to us from Linda McFarland in her book, drowning in Lemonade. Quote, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. and quote humility is the most important characteristic of a leader and of a person so stay humble everyone stay humble and that's all i've got for tonight and until next time this is echo and jaco out