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Good morning from AfghanistanÌý

Coming home, a homecoming, after military operations is more than the first welcome from family and friends.Ìý There is a mixture of experience and emotion which has to find its place.Ìý An accommodation of action and reaction.Ìý There is a poem called Fatigues by a young author, Bethany Anderson, which touches on it.Ìý In it she writes,

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Seven months in theatre with operation scars.
Then I'll be home with a medal on my chest, a silence

in my ears, a thunder in my head,

and always a darkness in my broken sleep

that I will keep hidden from you.

Finding peace isn’t easy when the scars and dreams of time spent in extremis struggle to move on, quickly or readily.Ìý ‘I held my wrath it held me fast, I spoke my wrath it did not last’, writes William Blake.Ìý Speaking an experience that does not easily want to find a conversation partner, for fear of exposure, of being misunderstood, or for fear of being thought weak, can be difficult.Ìý It is a struggle to make meaning of life and its purposes sometimes.

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Patience, tolerance, respect and love can ease the burden, allowing the storm to calm and a settling to fall.

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Lord God, you are our shepherd.Ìý Lord Jesus, you calmed the storm and brought healing to those broken by life’s struggles. We remember all of those broken by the storms of war, in body, mind or spirit and ask that they find a calm from their storm and a healing in you.Ìý Guide them to green pastures, a place, finally, called home. .. Coming home, a homecoming, after operations is more than the welcome from family and friends.Ìý Amen.ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý