Why?

Though my war lasted only fifteen months, it's something I think about every day. Occupying a portion of my conscious and subconscious for the rest of my life. Iraq. A tiny blip, but one that will resonate as long as I breath. War. It shapes the way I think about everything else now. Truths I may never understand but plan to spend the rest of my life attempting to reason through not only in conversation with others but by searching for an emotional truth on the page.

I left the Army and became a teacher. I escaped to a tiny village north of the Arctic Circle. At the end of my first year I was asked to attend a writer's seminar in Homer, Alaska. I would be there eleven days. This is where I decided I wanted to write.

Ephesians 1:7 says, "In him we have redemption through his blood, forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace."

I didn't feel redeemed from war right away; it's taken time. And though I may be forgiven, I believe I still have humanity to reconcile with.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,

and ever again, this soil'd world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

-"Reconciliation" by Walt Whitman