Military Wellness Collective
Military Wellness Collective is made up of four friends — two retired Marines (Joshua and Brian) turned church planters and their wives (Brittany and Kelli)— who have lived life both in uniform and on the home front. Together, we share real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and practical, biblical encouragement to help military members, and their families thrive in every season. Whether you’re navigating deployments, adjusting to life in a new town, or simply seeking hope in the middle of your military journey, our mission is to equip you with truth from God’s Word and tools for a healthy, resilient life.
Military Wellness Collective
EP 52: What Do I Do When... Practical Takeaways from Joshua's IED Attack; Part 1
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A tarp flapping on the roadside. A shape you recognize too late. A blast that turns a convoy run into a fight to secure your people and survive the next five minutes. We sit down with Joshua Brown, a Marine veteran and Purple Heart recipient, to tell the real story of an IED attack during his 2005 to 2006 Iraq deployment, and to get honest about what happens in your body and your mind when war stops being abstract.
We talk through the grind that sets the conditions: convoy security out of Ramadi, changing missions, poor sleep, and the “fire mission” mentality that trains you to move now and think later. Joshua breaks down the details of the convoy, the pothole-riddled roads, the gas station ahead, and the instant where training and exhaustion collide. Then we follow the aftermath: concussion symptoms, shrapnel, securing a perimeter, clearing for a possible trigger man, and the complicated shift from vehicle commander to casualty riding in the back of a Humvee.
The conversation widens into military wellness and veteran mental health: why sitting out on medical hold can feel worse than pushing through, how “what if” guilt shows up when your team keeps running missions, and what it’s like to call your spouse while you’re hurt and medicated. We also wrestle with long-term healing, chronic pain as a constant reminder, the value of telling the story out loud, and Joshua’s reflections on God’s sovereignty when life proves how little control we really have.
If you’ve carried a memory you avoid, we hope this gives you a next step. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more veterans and military families can find the show.
What’s one story you know you need to process, and who can you trust with it? We encourage you to share your story, your suffering can be for someone else's healing. Let's not walk this life journey alone!
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Welcome And The Big Question
SPEAKER_02Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Military Wellness Collective. My name is Brian O'Day. I am one of the pastors of Pillar Church in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Also a veteran United States Marine. And I am joined by my good friend Joshua Brown. Hello, hello. Also a pastor in a military town right outside of Camp Lejeune, Pillar Church of Topsil, also a veteran Marine. And we're joined by Brittany.
SPEAKER_00Hello.
SPEAKER_02And Brittany has been by Joshua's side all along the way. And also pretty cool in her own right. We still have a missing chair next to us. Just so you know, the past few episodes that we have not heard Kelly's voice. She uh that we've filmed all these, recorded all these episodes the same morning. So all good. But we miss, we miss Kelly. Look forward to having her back. All right. Today we're going to walk through a question. What happens when? And I want to get Joshua's perspective on a few things. So often in the military life, we have things show up on our doorstep that we didn't expect, or we maybe we in hindsight, we should have expected them. We knew, or we know their possibilities. Like this could happen theoretically to some somebody sometime. But when they show up on our doorstep, sometimes we we don't know what to do with them. Okay. So I'm gonna I'm gonna jump into one. I had this idea for an episode a little while ago. Joshua's alluded to it a couple of times on the podcast. Joshua is a purple heart recipient. He was in an IED attack. I think I confronted Britney once upon a time because she kept calling it, what did you call it?
SPEAKER_00An accident.
SPEAKER_02An accident or an incident or something. I don't know. I'm like, it was an attack. Like, you know, um people were somebody in the show. Somebody was trying to kill Joshua. So I just wanted to hear a bit of that story and what's going through your mind and those things. And I think that's probably gonna spark some of these other types of stories. Combat is kind of, you know, it has been said war is chaos, and war there's a fog of war, and everything is crazy. And we've lived that. And so just want to want to think through some of those things. So, Joshua, would you start like what what just where are you at? How long have you been in the military? Tell us the the deployment, how long has the deployment been before the incident? So lead us up to the incident.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. Well, before starting there, you you said that war is chaos. Uh we have all sorts of stories. I'm sure you have all sorts of stories. Electric electricity going through water. We have stories of Humvees disappearing, we have stories of all sorts of craziness doing fire missions in your underwear. We have stories of I never heard that possible international incidents being you know thwarted.
War Chaos And Artillery Life
SPEAKER_01We have stories that just you know driving vehicles while they're on fire and putting out the fire while driving, and all sorts of stuff just going on.
SPEAKER_02Just just for just for fun, give us the so fire mission. So you're an artilleryman cannoneer, which means you sleep near a artillery cannon, and when somebody yells fire mission, you jump up and do your job. So give us that just for fun. What's oh yeah, yeah, tell us that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which was just a routine evening, honestly. And everyone's you know, half the unit is asleep, the other half's on guard. You're in the middle of the desert somewhere next to a couple different cities where some operations are going on, and they call for like an alum, which is a it's a big artillery round that you shoot into the sky, and when it pops off, it it catches on fire with a parachute above it.
SPEAKER_00And then it's a really cool looking thing when you see them training.
SPEAKER_01And you can see, and it illuminates the whole city, the whole battlefield. And oftentimes at night when when kinetic operations are happening, that needs to happen and quickly. So, and then also you know, shooting H E, D P I C and those kinds of things as well at night. But illumin is very common at night. And if you whatever you're doing, whether you're eating, sleeping, whether you're going and relieving yourself, it does not matter what's happening. You just have to go and do your job. So if you wake up and you're wearing whatever you're wearing, that's what you're doing the mission. And if you're not wearing your boots, you're not wearing your boots. If you're not, you know, whatever you whatever you can possibly imagine you doing otherwise, as soon as you hear fire mission, you're going and doing it.
SPEAKER_02So one thing, so I'm also an artilleryman, and uh one thing we have in common. That is one thing I love about the artillery community. When the word fire mission is said, it's time to do the job. Nothing else on the planet matters in that moment. Our job is to do the job, to do the job till we hear rounds complete, end of mission. And when we hear that, then we go back to life. But in the moment you hear fire mission, and nothing else on the planet matters, and just that focus, I miss that, man. I I miss the focus in the everybody, an entire gun section, an entire artillery battery knows it's time to go to work. Yeah, it's trained in us immensely, so that's great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because when you hear fire mission, you know every second matters, and you're trying to help your buddy that's downrange. So if it means saving a life, then you're it doesn't matter. And probably one of the worst scenarios, it wasn't me, but a buddy of mine had to do a fire whole fire mission that lasted several about 20 minutes or so, we were in the fire mission status, and he was relieving himself and didn't get to clean up. So he's running around doing it, and he just afterwards he was like, Oh, I I need to go wash myself. Yeah. So and he's like, Well, you gotta do your job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So you know, in this first question, like, what do you do when it's time to go do the job? Yeah. And it's time to go do the job. And so we appreciate you guys, those who are listening, that do that when it's and for you, it may be to fly an aircraft or to be a grunt or to do some other job. And one thing I love about military guys is when it's time to go to work, you understand it's time to go to work, and it is it is almost always in support of other people. And so I just love that. So, what do you do when it's time to go to work? You go to work, and when it's time to be done and mission, then it's time to focus on the other things and do those other actions. So there's a good first one. It's good. So tell me about this deployment. Yeah, how long have you been in the military
Fire Mission Focus Under Pressure
SPEAKER_02when when the IED attack happened?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I joined in 02. This was when the IED strike happened where I got hit. It was my second deployment. First deployment, we were artillery proper initially, and then we transitioned into like provisional rifle company with extra heavy weapons. And then the second deployment, and the first deployment it was pretty reactionary. We still had a lot of the old gear and we weren't prepared for IED strikes. So, first deployment, if you can imagine, we're driving around in thin-skin Humvees with no doors on them, legs hanging out, and just going and moving and scooting. The second deployment, though, it was IEDs were like the main threat. So what year is this? This was in 05-06, somewhere in there. The second deployment.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. First of all, I was thinking Elis was born in 04. She was 05. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
SPEAKER_01Am I mixing up the right?
SPEAKER_00It was 05.
SPEAKER_01First deployment was during the summer, second deployment was in the winter, going from 05 to 06. And 05 to 06, so we had we had gone over, and instead of going to Iraq and with our artillery cannons ready to support in that way, we knew even months before we left, like, hey, we're not even bringing our our cannons. We're just going as, you know, we're gonna control an AO or we're gonna do some some walking around the city, checking out things, looking for the enemy. We also knew we were gonna be doing some convoy security. And so that was one of the things we did there was a lot of convoy security, a lot of driving around, taking this gear over to here, and then maybe participating in operation and then and then driving back. We were stationed out of Ramadi, which is if you're familiar with the area, Ramadi's right next to Fallujah, which is right next to Baghdad, all connected by some of the same freeway systems. So that's where we're at.
SPEAKER_02That's great. So your provisional infantry, so you're an artillery unit, which is artillerymen and communicators and truck drivers and some other enablers and supporters, but now your provisional infantry, lots of convoys, so that's that's your deployment. So before the attack, how long are you in country? This is your second deployment. So you've you've been there, you've done that. How far into your second deployment are you?
SPEAKER_01So second deployment, well, we're well into it. We're somewhere in the middle of it. I don't even know if it was three months or five months into it. I'm not even sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, we had we had been there for a little while, so we had we had gotten pretty used to you've been on a convoy before.
SPEAKER_02You're really fallen into, yep, got it. What's it, what's it, the chow hall tonight when I get back from this thing? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we got into a pretty good routine. We were doing mostly night operations. So so basically we would sleep during the day in Ramadi, and then in the evening, it seemed like as soon as the sun went down, it was pretty regular. We would get rocket attacked, and as we were setting up the trucks, and then we'd roll out for a mission to go somewhere to do something. And so, and a couple hours prior to that, we'd get the mission brief, we'd go do it, load up, roll out, probably coming back somewhere in the middle of the morning, hopefully before the sun comes back up. But sometimes there's a multi-day mission, it just depended on the mission set.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, what's your
Deployment Setup And Convoy Security
SPEAKER_02mindset going into the to the patrol where the attack happens?
SPEAKER_01Well, let me tell you what the mission was, and then you'll you'll understand where I was at, because I was just super tired. So basically, we were in Ramadi and we get this call where we're going to do a mission north of Baghdad. So we were told it was gonna be a two-day mission because we're gonna go there and we're gonna come back. And so we we load it up for a two-day mission, we get in our vehicles, we head across through Fallujah, through Baghdad, up to the north. I the the city was escapes me, but it was kind of where Saddam Hussein's like hometown area was or whatever. We roll up there and we we we stopped there, we get the the other trucks that we were supposed to get and bring them down. And we remember I remember wanting to stay there because it was really nice. Like the the base there had like better food and it was just looks really comfortable. And we were like, man, this place is great. It's way better than Ramadi. And we were like asking around, like, hey, do you guys get attacked here or whatever? And they're like, no, we haven't seen anything in months. And we're like, oh sounds like a great place to be. And so we left there, went back to Ramadi. We get back to Ramadi and we drop off whatever we were dropping off. I don't even remember what the trucks were. But when we get there, they go, hey, there's an operation going near Korean village. So what we need to do is drive up to all Assadic base, pick up these trucks that have some different equipment on it. It was some AAVs, some tanks, and and bring them down to where Korean village is and then come back after that operation is done. And we're like, okay. So we went from a two-day mission that ended up being a day, to then a mission that was going to be two to three plus days. So we get the the packets, we're like, all right, we've been to Al-Assad a ton of times. We've been out to Korean village a couple times. It was no big deal, a bunch of just open desert. So we we load up, we go to Al-Assad. On the way to Al-Assad, it's this you start out on a open freeway, and then you take this like back highway that's been blown up a ton of times. So there's just potholes everywhere. And some of the holes are huge, and some of them you can't avoid, you just kind of have to slowly go over them. So we're going over these holes, and we finally get to Al-Assad. And when we get there, the guys loading up the trucks that on these trailers. It's a I'm pretty sure it's an army or an Air Force unit. And they have these like tractor trailer, little boys where they're putting the equipment on it. Huge semi-trucks with like sleeper cabs. Oh, yeah. And then they have these trailers are I don't even know how many wheels are on these things, but there's a lot. Like they're the multi-directional wheels where they like all turn different directions. So you can move these trailers uh in tight spaces, but they can also carry tons and tons of weight. And so they're behind schedule. So we get to Al Assad and we're like, oh great. All right, the sun's coming up, we're behind schedule, and they're still loading up. So we took advantage of the situation and we were like, hey, we're in Al-Assad. This is an airbase, they got a good chow hall, they have a PX, like they had a place where you could go and like purchase things, and we're like, sweet, yeah, let's go. We get in there, we're like buying all sorts of you know snacks and drinks and stuff. And so we get back to the convoy, we we make sure we have everything we need, and we know we have a long trip ahead of us. We're like, all right, let's let's get some rest and then we'll get going. So we try to sleep, but it's pretty hard to do. And because we're just on our trucks, which we did pretty regularly, but you just never fully get into really rim sleep, right? So we're sleeping, they're finally ready. All right, we're gonna load up, and we start moving these trucks down. Here's what what the problem is it's the middle of the day, which isn't a problem for where we're driving through, but it's middle of the day when we're
A Mission That Keeps Expanding
SPEAKER_01normally asleep, and so everybody's pretty tired, and we have to keep stopping over and over and over again. Because we leave all Sad and we get back out onto that road to get to the freeway, and the road is like this skinny highway with a bunch of potholes in it, and those multi-directional large, you know, trailers can't handle the potholes like our Humvees and Seven Tons can. So they keep having issues having to go super slow over them, and then they keep popping tires. And so this like this, you know, 45-minute hour long drive turns into like an eight-hour drive. Like it is long. Yeah, like it is taking just forever, and we're just slowly lumbering down this road. And to give you an idea where I've where I'm at in all these convoys, myself and a buddy of mine has he was Sergeant Rock. Um, I was Sergeant Brown at the time. We were the two lead vehicles in in all the convoys. So I was navigating in the in the front vehicle, and what our job was was to go ahead of the main the main body, check out any possible dangers, and then radio back and make sure everything was clear for them coming forward. So we're checking all of these holes for IEDs, we're checking all these areas for IEDs as we're moving forward, but they keep telling us to stop because we're getting too far ahead because they're going that slow. And so we eventually get out on the highway after a whole bunch of stops. It's nighttime again, like we're going on to like the the third day out. It's nighttime, and we're like, man, we're exhausted. We've been out on the road for a long time, and we've just been slowly going over bumps this whole time. Like just miserable. So we get out on the freeway, we get down the freeway with the we then head, we head west towards Korean village. There's this little town out there that they had they were having some issues with, and that's where they were bringing all the gear to to stage. And so they staged it. They had some other operational units out there. They were doing the assaults and doing the checks in that in that town. I was not a part of that particular operation. We just were getting the gear there for it. But after they were done, we had to get all of those low boy trucks back to where we were going back to. At this moment, we were just going back to Ramadi. They were coming with us to Ramadi, and they were gonna leave from there to go do something else. But we've been on the road for about three days. We offloaded the gear, we start driving back. Now, if you know anything about Western Iraq compared to getting towards Ramadi and Fallujah, it's just this long straight stretch with like a gas station in the middle of it. And so myself, Sergeant Rock, we're ahead of the convoy and we're driving now. Now the trailers are empty, so we're able to move at somewhat of a good pace and with a lot less stops, although we had a couple. And so now we're we're into our third day, but now it's light again. So it's bright outside. And and all the reports we were getting for for like intelligence for IDs was always, you know, check potholes, a lot of times they're in there, check any recently covered up mounds because they're stuff in there. Look under dead animals a lot of times they're in there or or just hidden in some way. The the one we came about, so we see this gas station up ahead, and so we we motor ahead and try to try to get ahead of the main convoy, so we have some more time to check out the gas station and make sure everything's clear. So we start heading forward, but before we get to the gas station, there's this there's this IED on the side of the road, and it's on the right hand side of the road. It's and ironically enough, I'm pretty sure it was the same size projectile that we shoot in artillery. It was a 155, just sitting on the side of the road, and it was sitting on the side of the road with what looked like a tarp, just kind of like I don't know if it was taped or if it was like bungee corded around the top of it. And so it was just standing upright on the side of the road with a tarp over it, with like with it taped on it. And it was windy, it's always windy because it's in the middle of the desert, so it's just blowing. And and so we we're we're pulling up, I'm just exhausted, everybody's exhausted, and we're driving, and when when my mind registers, I see I see the tarp, there's garbage everywhere. But as soon as I see the tarp, I realize what it is when we get closer to it. And now we're in up armored Humvees. I'm in the right side, so I'm I'm the vehicle commander, so I'm on the in the passenger side, on the right side. We're driving on the right side of the road. I have a gunner up in the in the turret, and he's got a 240 with him, and then we have a passenger in the back left, and then a driver. And so as we're driving up to this thing, usually when I see something in the road and I want to go investigate, we have him stop. He just, you know, angles across the road, and and I'd go out and take a look at it, make sure it's it's safe before we go forward. But we're flying down this road going trying to get 55 miles an hour. And as we're coming up to what we see is the danger is is or the possible danger is the gas station, because we need to go and check around that. But before the gas station, we see all this garbage. So we're flying up to
Three Days Exhausted On The Road
SPEAKER_01it, and the garbage is right there, and we're like, oh man, the the second it registers in my mind that oh no, that's that's a projectile. Like I can tell just by the shape of it, it's covered by this target. Covered by the target shape, yeah. But I can tell this is a 155. I've been shooting one five fives for years at this point. So I'm like, I know exactly what this looks like. So I come up on this, and and as soon as I see it, I'm getting ready to yell stop, we're passing it, and it just goes off, and then it's just a big cloud of dust. Truck rocks pretty bad. We we then swerve all over the place and then and then come to a stop. When it went off, by the time it went off as we were passing it, it was like if I didn't have a door, one of those up armored doors, I could have reached out and grabbed it. Like I was that close to it. Yeah. So the the benefit of that though is my gunner, he He was the one who was mostly exposed. So because we were so close to it, the door took most of that shot blast. If it was, if it was, you know, five or ten yards away, further, it would have shot a lot of shrapnel and hit him. He did have his arm out, so he got a bunch of shrapnel in his arm. But I t I took probably the most of the the actual blast.
SPEAKER_02And then did you lose consciousness at all? Or do you sound like you're very aware in this moment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a little unclear. Yeah, I was I kind of put it things together afterwards, but after we we came to a a halt at some point, the truck was completely messed up. And I was just checking to see if everybody was okay after everything kind of calmed down. I had I was concussed pretty bad. And then my shoulders, so I know you've been in a Humvee before, it's pretty tight quarters, but when we got rocked, it it it rocked the whole vehicle pretty good. And since I was on a a Blue Force tracker and I had all this gear tight to me, it it messed up my shoulders, separated one of them pretty good. And so I'm concussed, my vision is is a little blurry and going in and out, and then can't really move my one arm very well. So I'm but I'm sitting there and I'm cognizant of what's going on. So I'm checking on the other guys. Sergeant Rock is right behind me, so he comes pulling up. He's got a medic in his truck, so he's starts working on the the guy who has shrapnel right away. Meanwhile, me and I had to get the the passenger I had had to get him up on the gun so that he could get worked on the other guy. So we get get set up behind the trucks and Rock is calling it
Spotting The IED Too Late
SPEAKER_01in, but we also we're also right next to this gas station. So we have to figure out what to do with that because we have to deal with the wounded, me being one of them, and deal with what's ahead. So so we we grab our our weapons and start setting up a little bit of a cordon and try to look for a trick possible trigger man. We're not sure if there's a trigger man or not. We don't know if we're in a kill zone and there's gonna be a uh secondary attack. So we set up a little defensive perimeter. I go into the gas station with a couple guys to make sure it's not coming from there. And so we go in there. By this time, a couple of the other vehicles have made their way up from the main body, and those guys come with to go and clear out the gas station to see if there's we can find the trigger man. There's a there's quite a few people in there, and so we're we're trying to figure out if they know anything, they deny everything. Meanwhile, I'm while you're concussed with blurry vision and a dislocated shoulder. Yeah, I'm just one arm in the rifle and and and moving. And so after we're done and everything settles down, all the reports have been sent up, we're loading up the truck. I get put in with our our our platoon sergeant's truck in the in the back of the convoy along with the other wounded guy. And we we head from there back to Ramadi because we called for air, but it was it would have been just as fast to get to Ramadi at that point. So it would just by by ground. So so we just speed off with a little a group of guys, bring the trucks back. As soon as we get back, we just go to the the medical tent and get get treatment there. That was the semi-long-ish story.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot more to that, but yeah, so what's a bit what's going through your mind? So you're in the back of so you go from your vehicle commander, one of the lead vehicles, doing reconnaissance even after the blast, you're going into this gas station trying to figure out what the threat is, all like you're very much in your job. And then at some point, you're in the back of, did you say in the back of a seven-ton or in the back of some other Yeah, it was a Humvee. Yeah. So these are you're in the back of another vehicle as as now a patient at this point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So what's going through your mind as you're like as as that shift is happening?
SPEAKER_01Well, I was gonna try to leave this part out, but since you asked, I'm gonna I'll have to be as uh uh transparent as possible. When I'm sitting in the back of the Humvee, one of the one
After The Blast: Cordon And Clearing
SPEAKER_01of the the symptoms of a of a concussion is sometimes you you throw up or you have you dry heave. And so I was back there dry heaving most of the time. And so I was I was back there just not feeling well and in pain. And and it the the the guy who was the vehicle commander of that vehicle, though he was the staff at the time, he was he was he was pretty good about just checking on us, making sure we're doing okay while we're in the back getting you know taken care of. And so what's going through my mind is partially just I don't feel good. This is not fun. It's not like the movies. It's it you never really and then the guy who got shrapnel, like what's also going through my mind is in the movies you always have this like perfect looking wounds that end up happening. When somebody gets shot, it's like perfectly two shots in the chest, you know, that kind of thing. Or when somebody gets blown up, it's like the whole body is just like blackened, or shrapnel and an arm looks like little holes, you know, put in there. But in this scenario, it was just so randomly placed, you know, as if you took a pile of rocks and just threw it through somebody's arm. And so it was just a little more gruesomely random. He he was until we started to until we took off, and then he went off to a different truck. But yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And then were you out of were you out of doing your job for a season of time? Yeah. You didn't get evacuated out of country. Right.
SPEAKER_01So that was miserable. Him and I went back to the medical tent after getting looked over and and getting all splinted and taken care of and all that stuff and given medicine. We're we didn't get evacuated out of country. We were we were basically put on like a medical hold from missions for a couple weeks, which was one of the more miserable parts of it. What's that like? What do you do with that? Well, there's this huge fear because you already have a rhythm set up and you're going on these missions and you know exactly what to look for, you're you know how to do your job. And then all of a sudden you're hurt, so someone else has to step in. And then there's this worry that okay, if if things don't go well and I'm not there, am I gonna blame myself? Is there gonna be some sort of like yeah?
SPEAKER_02So you're you're in this, all these like what ifs, what ifs, what ifs. I'm here, I'm supposed to be convalescing, but there's still a mission going. Like the guys I care about, the guys I've been on all these multiple day things with. So you're kind of what ifing a lot of those scenarios while you're there. Yeah. Yeah. At what point do you get to call your family?
SPEAKER_01So it was it was right after, which I think it was either the
Medical Hold And Calling Home
SPEAKER_01day after, maybe it was the day after, or it was right after. The prop the problem was they give me they gave me a satellite phone, said, Hey, we want you to call your wife, make sure she knows that there was, you know, you you gotten into this, you got injured, so that you're she knows you're okay. I was like, okay. The problem is, is they had me call while I was on Viking, I think it was, or some sort of some sort of pill to suppress the pain.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And so so I'm already a little loopy, and so I call Brittany and I'm pretty excited about calling her because we don't we didn't call very often. That's an understatement. Yes. So I was like, great, I get to call my wife, that's awesome, but this is not the right situation to call her in. I'm not in the right state of mind, but I'm not thinking this. I'm just like, great, let's call my wife. And so I call her, and I don't remember too much of what was said. I just told her what happened. She probably has a better memory of this than I do. Understandably so, I don't remember too much of it, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, maybe next week we'll get Britney's perspective on some of these things. So that all now that happened like 20 years ago. Yeah. So what do you do with that now? Like, how does how do those type that experience and or some of the other experiences that have happened, like, how do you put that in perspective now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh man. It's hard to say. Putting it in perspective of in relation to what? Like what types of things have you had to process through? Hmm. Yeah, so during that deployment we had several deaths, lots of injuries, and you know, we we dealt with many of those going through that. The things I've had to deal with are more related to other stories, but that one in particular really showed me the sovereignty of God over things because I we've mentioned it a lot on this cast as we don't really control as much as we think we do. You can do everything right and and you know, God do things in your life that you just don't expect. So, yeah, I've just had to process a lot of a lot of that. And actually at the time, we were in a church that was more on the free will side of things. And so uh I think some of that maybe helped me walk through that and learn a little bit more about God's sovereignty. The doctrine of God's sovereignty. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You know, you might have preferred to learn that in a seminary classroom or something, or reading.
SPEAKER_01Probably would have been easier.
SPEAKER_02Maybe it wouldn't have stuck as well though. Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah, so just yeah, seeing God's sovereignty. I'm sure there's lots of other things as well, but yeah, I think are we where we at? Yeah, we're way over time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would just say one other thing I had to process was I don't like remembering a lot
Living With It: Pain, Faith, And Processing
SPEAKER_01of the things that happened over in Iraq, but there is a I had to reconcile that because the pain in my shoulders are pretty constant. So it's a constant reminder. And so I would just encourage people not to shy away from the things in their past, but to deal with them and walk through them because it's gonna be there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I hope one thing you're exampling well is talking about these things. I feel like a lot of veterans a couple generations ago, World War II vets, Vietnam vets, didn't talk about it a whole lot. Most people you hear about, like, hey, do you have any connection with the military? Like, yeah, I knew this guy, he never talked about it. Yeah, I knew this guy, he never talked about it. And so I appreciate you exampling that well and not making it sound like you were some, you know, bare chested hero, like just you were the one saving everyone. So I appreciate that. And I just encourage you guys that are listening, what what is something that has happened in your military career that you need to process? And how can you be honest about that processing? Who is somebody, a trusted person to process through that with? Maybe you're not ready to go on a podcast and air it more publicly, but is there it are you ready to talk about this with your spouse? Are you ready to talk about this with a spiritual leader, pastor, small group leader, a veteran in your church that you know? It's good to share these stories. There's something therapeutic about it. And so I encourage you to do that. That's one thing we want to example here is being open, honest, and vulnerable and encouraging you to do likewise. God is sovereign, even when things show up in our life that we're not sure why, and we're not sure his good purpose is. Maybe we'll have a few ideas about it 20 years from now. But trust God's sovereignty. Learn that valuable skill. Thank you guys so much for joining us. We'll see you next week.