My Soldier is Finally Home: 11 Things Learned From Deployment

You can find the Homecoming Vlog on YouTube!

330 days, 1 terrorist attack, and 1 global pandemic later… Lucas is finally home safe from his 11-month deployment in Afghanistan.

This past year has brought on a copious amount of trials and tribulations to not only Lucas and I, but many others in the world.  As I’m writing this, I’m still uncertain on what things will look like in the next few months.

Life has challenged Lucas and I in ways we never would have imagined.  We knew the deployment wouldn’t be easy.  I mean, when thrusted into a mandatory deployment, you can never fully prepare.  You can take as many readiness classes as you want, you can receive all the therapeutic support you can get, but ultimately deployments -- especially first-time deployments -- are filled with the unknown.

Now, take that amount of unknown and uncertainty, and add-on the amount of unknown and uncertainty that comes from a global pandemic on top of that.  Yeah… it’s a lot.

However, my parents have raised me to count my blessings.  And truthfully, I think that’s the biggest reason why I was able to make it to the other side of this deployment happy, healthy, and stronger than ever.

I’ve learned many lessons over the last few months.  As I reflect on all that we’ve been through the past 330 days, I’d like to share about 11 outstanding lessons that we learned from Lucas’ 11 month-long deployment.  This entry could potentially be a note to future Gen -- for when she might need to remember how strong she is.  On the other hand, maybe you can relate to these lessons, or can learn how to search for these silver linings in your life too.

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