Let's Start at the Very Beginning.

Before getting into the story itself, here's a piece of information that might make it make more sense: the Army Reserves and the National Guard are mostly the same thing in that they both are parts of the US Army, and they both require you to go to drill one weekend every month and two weeks during the summer. The biggest difference is that the reserves is run at the national level, and Guard units are all run by the states. So the TN National Guard belongs to the governor of TN. As such, Guard units are also much more likely to be mobilized stateside for disaster cleanup, emergencies, etc. You would think that because the Reserves and the Guard are so similar in nature and function they would be "friends" but that's definitely not the case. They're separate enough that there's almost no connection and leaving one to go to the other is a pretty big deal.

So with that prelude...In the middle of January, I requested that my Army Reserve unit release me so that I could join a TN Army National Guard unit in Smyrna, TN which is very close to my house. I've been a part of the Ft. Knox reserve unit for almost nine years, having served first as an Apache helicopter mechanic, then as an Apache helicopter pilot. Yesterday I found out that my request to the new unit had been approved.

For the last couple of years, I've had to drive 2 1/2 hours to get to my unit at Ft. Knox, which I've been doing twice a month or so. I'm able to work basically as much as I want at my unit (and get paid), which has been great for us, but because of the distance, I'm having to spend extra money on hotels, food, gas, etc since it's not close enough to stay at home while I'm working there. I've also been spending a lot of extra time away from Michelle and the kids. Moving to a closer unit would remove all of those issues. I'm also leaning more and more towards staying in the Reserves until I can retire, so my current unit at Ft. Knox is not a long-term option for that. I needed something closer. The kicker is, when I started looking into changing units, I found out that the unit in Smyrna is getting deployed to Iraq in May. The first response, of course, was that we should definitely NOT try to change units to one that's getting deployed. The more we thought about it, however, we started to wonder if maybe God was presenting this as an opportunity.

Here's kind of what we were thinking:

1. I had to move to the closer unit eventually.
2. If I stay in the reserves at all, I am certain to get deployed. My current unit is slated to deploy in the summer of 2010. So we're basically in a deploy-now or deploy-later scenario. For several reasons, deploying now makes more sense for our family. For one thing, I don't have a full-time job to have to leave and come back to. I'm hoping to get a full-time teaching job, and getting deployed in the middle of a school year would be complicated, and not just for me.
3. Catelynn (and to a lesser degree, Wesley) is young enough that my leaving shouldn't be a major emotional issue. The older they get, though, the more difficult an extended absence can be for them, and for Michelle having to deal with being on her own with them.
4. Many of you know that I've been without a full-time job for about 10 months or so (I've been getting paid for spending a lot of extra time at my Ft. Knox unit). We've been ok financially, but are getting closer and closer to the point where we would not be. We felt like this could be God's way of giving us an opportunity financially. While deployed, I will make pretty good money, and it will all be tax free. While we wouldn't make a decision like this just for money, the fact that it would supply just what we need right when we need it certainly fits with God's way of operating in our lives.

So that's where our hearts were a month ago when we decided to put in the request for the switch. You should also know that the request was almost certain to get turned down. Within the last year, the Reserves spent well over $1 million to train me on the new Apache helicopter. When that happens, they're supposed to give soldiers what's called a "Military Service Obligation" (MSO) which basically means you can't get out for X amount of years (usually at least three). So we thought, "Well, it's not going to go through, but we think this might be what God wants us to do, so we'll just put it in and see if God continues to open the doors." Well, you know the end of the story, so obviously He did.

The first and most significant thing I found out was that for some reason, my official record was showing that I had no Military Service Obligation. Nobody exactly knows why. But even without an MSO, my request still had to go through several levels of my chain of command, all the way to the one-star General who's the Commander of the whole Reserves, and at each level I expected it to get turned down but it did not. At any one of those levels, they could have said, "Hey, this guy's record is wrong - he should have a MSO," and corrected the mistake and turned down the request. But they did not.

So that's how Michelle and I get here, looking at a fast-approaching deployment, knowing well the tremendous difficulty that goes along with that, knowing all the disappointments that surround being gone for a year (missing my sister's wedding, missing life's milestones with the kids, etc) and actually believing that it's a gift from God. It will certainly be a difficult year, and we will be relying on you all for support (especially for Michelle and the kids), and there will surely be plenty of times that we forget how much of a "gift" it is, but at least for now we rejoice in the fact that God's hand continues to be on our lives. What happens next is, from April 6-May 16 I'll be in Ft. Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania to learn a new aircraft (UH-60 Blackhawk). After that I'll come home for probably just a day or two, then meet up with my unit in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. From there I'll be actually shipping out to Iraq probably some time at the beginning of June. I'll be gone somewhere around 12 months total.

There are so many complicated emotions involved in being deployed and being married to somebody who's deployed, so I would ask that you would pray for Michelle to be able to live in a place of peace.

Thank you for being a part of our lives. We will definitely keep you all posted over the next weeks and months as to how we're doing.

m.