“Her Warfare is Accomplished”

Excellent or Praiseworthy is posted on Monday and Thursday nights.

Editor’s Note: We are pleased to welcome Heather McColl Morgan home from Afghanistan, and post her first writing since returning. This writing is an excerpt from her blog “I taste a liquor never brewed” on liquorneverbrewed.blogspot.com.

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; And call out to her, that her warfare has ended . . .” — Isaiah 40:1,2a

This time last year I was nearing the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, living in a 25′ by 10′ container. Just outside the wire, I’d seen semi-nomadic camps of Kuchi tribespeople, their women brightly dressed, usually with a baby on the hip and several small ones lugging fuel and water to the collapsed mud walls where they draped their tents. It occurred to me that while I could wash my face and order an omelet within minutes, these women managed many more competing urges on waking: relieving the bladder after a full night, consoling crying children, starting a fire for breakfast, keeping skirts and head coverings from tangling with everything. Under this, they often face the nagging reality of being overlooked and under-appreciated for all these feats. They usually lack a voice in the family and larger society entirely. My worst mornings are still a cake walk compared with this.

Now back home I can report that it has not been a calm week in our house. Perhaps that is because we now live, by choice, in 350 square feet . . . somewhat larger than my container. Or perhaps it is because we just brought our new baby home. One thing is for sure—our almost three-year-old, like each of us, is adjusting. Her waking exclamations of “our tiny house is finally finished!” as the sunlight streams into her loft turn into groans of “it’s not time to get up yet, it’s still dark!” when her little sister has a wakeful night. These are, of course, problems faced by new families regardless of the size of the home, but perhaps we are more acutely drawn into life together by being totally at the mercy of each other’s rhythms in a smaller space as we experience the adventure of the small home movement.

But I have had time to recall the many homecomings I have witnessed in my life growing up as a Navy kid. And I have added to that the many current stories from peers, superiors and subordinates during my Army service of brief honeymoon periods, followed by an insatiable desire to escape and bury oneself again in work after returning from deployment.

Perhaps one reason reintegration with family can seem so defeating to us is that we feel a guilty kind of discontent that we spent so long missing family, and when we return, we don’t remember how to enjoy what we’ve been pining for. It may help to be reminded that this frustration is common, and that it is part of the “anxiety of becoming” experienced by all of creation.

We fall so far short of our own expectations because we live in a fallen world, and because we are still being remade: out of the distorted image of a parent who never gets angry but abdicates responsibility to correct bad behavior, or on the other hand berates a child over spilled milk. We should expect to feel futile sometimes, and when we despair of the “perfect parenthood” we imagined for ourselves, we find hope in the words of St. Paul to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. Romans 8:18-25 

I am also reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s words about the coming of Christ and his Kingdom:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
“Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together; 
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:1-5 

This passage, in rehearsals and performances during one Advent season in college, is responsible for my not abandoning the Church altogether, and for that reason continues to be a luminary for me. I keep it, like the bottled starlight given to the hobbit Frodo by the elf Galadriel: “May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out” (from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). When I went to war, it was in my arsenal to ward off despair and the sense of futility that threatens all of us when we are far from home on an uncertain path.

My husband sent me a mixed tape for our anniversary simply titled, “Her warfare is accomplished,” containing a track of the “Messiah” movement containing this passage on it, wedged appropriately between the electronica and classic rock. I felt an odd reverence to be on the receiving end of a mixed tape, as we had made many recordings for my father during his deployments when I was a kid. After thanking my husband for this labor of love (mixed tapes are, I’m told, a very precise art!) I also recall wondering with him how to avoid bringing my “warfare” home with me when I left Afghanistan. We knew I would certainly bring home some kind of scar, however small. We prayed that this would be for our good and that we would heal and recover well together. At that point, we knew, even as we did not want to acknowledge, that there would be some dark days of learning how to be a family again, up close.

Military training and experience teach us to set goals and pursue excellence in all matters, personal and professional. It also teaches us to balance this with intimate knowledge of our own capabilities and those around us, helping to regulate our expectations. Sometimes the chance to war-game how badly something might go, and arm ourselves for that worst-case encounter is, oddly, comforting to us.

This week, as I reflect on my recent labor to bring our baby girl into the world, on my husband’s sacrifices to help us each thrive over the past three years, and on our preschooler’s struggle to choose a world that revolves around our life together instead of just herself, the expectation of difficulty is comforting. We do what’s hard all the time – we train for it. With a wry laugh that comes from tough, resilient joy, we remember that the struggle to become better members of a family is as epic as it seems, because our very souls – and those of our children – are at stake. It makes sense, then, that it should be tough and adrenaline-charged at the same time that it is fun and exhilarating: all of our most gratifying experiences are.

Questions to Share:

1. Which of Heather’s points about her return home can you relate to?

2. Heather shares a favorite passage of Scripture which helped lead her like “a luminary” through the journey of deployment. What Scripture has helped you? Share these thoughts with your spouse.

It is possible for students to write their essays on their own, but it always takes a lot of time to handle different stages of writing. Moreover, you will find yourself in trouble when you have to deal with a dissertation, research paper, or thesis paper – these assignments are quite lengthy and make it difficult for you to research, write, and proofread in a short time.