Well I am finally writing another email. My apologies for the long silence but in many ways it was unavoidable. It seems like most of the action around here happens on the weekends and we have been extraordinarily busy for the winter season. The extremist groups have been extremely busy in their efforts to manifest their power prior to the Afghan election in April. They have been targeting officials high up in the Afghanistan National Army and unfortunately they have had some success. We have an ICU full of leaders of all sorts that they have injured. It is difficult to know how to feel emotionally when you see these things continuing to happen despite our efforts to suppress the violence. I think that the main problem lies in the fact that the ‘bad guy’ is an ideal not an individual so your friend today can become your enemy tomorrow. People who have access to our plans and facilities can feed that information to our enemies undetected until it is too late. There have been multiple incidents here on base of people that have been infiltrated by these extremist ideals and have been caught poisoning our food or trying to plant bombs on base. The hand of the Lord has been clearly evident in sparing life and is a testimony to me that God is aware of us always. There is a lot of ‘tall-tale’ exaggeration going on about the specifics of these occurrences and so I will not join the speculation as I do not know the actual facts and leave it with what I have already said on the matter.
This April 18th will be the first Boston Marathon since the bombing last year. The Boston Athletic Association that puts on the race each year is putting on a Boston Marathon Bagram version for us. We found out about it with just over 7 weeks to prepare but who would pass up an opportunity like that? I have been training putting in about 35 miles a week. I injured my foot attempting to change my running style to a mid-foot strike which was extremely dumb on my part considering the short training time I have. Someone told me that the mid-foot strike helps with knee pain which I suffer from so on a ten mile slow pace run I tried it and my knees didn’t hurt or at least I couldn’t feel my knees hurting because my calves were on fire for the last 4 miles. The next morning I could hardly walk from the soreness in my calves but I also noticed the tendons on the top of my right foot were really hurting too. As I stretched and moved around the calf soreness abated but the pain in my foot got worse. I decided I had to stop running until it was completely better. I started soaking my foot in a tub of ice water for ten minutes at a time which is a thrill in and of itself. I highly recommend trying it if you have not had the pleasure. After three days of staying off it and soaking it regularly it was on the mend. I did my first easy three miles on it yesterday and it felt good. I am going to continue to soak it after each run but I think I am back in the saddle. I have a fourteen mile run next Saturday so hopefully I am all better or I will surely find out about it. The race on the 18th starts at 3 am and they give us six hours to finish so even if I have to crawl for part of it I should finish. This will be marathon number three for me. I swore them off after the first one but somehow I just keep going back. As I understand it we will receive the same T-shirts and medals as the people running the actual Boston Marathon and since I am nowhere near fast enough to qualify for Boston this is the only chance I will ever have to run in it even if it is 9000 miles from Boston.
The last thing I wanted to write about this week is a lesson that I learned on attitude and duty. Most of you know that on March 13th it will be five months since I left home. I feel like I have had a pretty good attitude about this deployment up until about 10 days ago. It seemed as though a black cloud settled over our entire department. There was a lot of complaining and whining and I was right in the middle of it. I was doing my best to make Laman and Lemuel sound like Pollyanna and was succeeding. I was confronted by the chief of my department about doing a task that I thought was unfair but gave a sort of noncommittal shrug to. I did a mediocre job at the task and for about 4 days each time I came in there was a note of the board about some part of that task that was left undone. On that fourth day I sort of lost it and went off on how I thought that it was unfair that I was assigned this task when it was really everyone’s responsibility. I gave my tantrum of a speech and felt the righteous indignation of my cause burn in my heart and my coworkers balked a bit but finally agreed that I had a point. As that night wore on I ‘came to myself’, playing through what I must have looked and sounded like in my mind. I was horrified. I was embarrassed and ashamed. The attitude and tantrums had brought me nothing but misery. Winning the argument had not solved anything or changed my situation or even made me feel better. That night I decided to accept whole-heartedly the assignment I had been given and to do it to the best of my ability. I sat down and wrote out the basic details of what I had been asked to do and then expanded upon them adding extra things in that I knew would make things better for my co-workers and for future deployers. I went to work creating a system to make doing a great job easier and organized thing into a logical sequence. By the end of the night I had a system in place and reported off what I had done to my department head. She was clearly shocked at the complete reversal of my attitude from the day before. That night when I came back into work there was no message on the board about things left undone. I was filled with a tremendous sense of satisfaction at a job well done. I continue to feel that satisfaction each day as I check off the tasks I have given myself. Not that it really matters but since I have started to do my part others have stepped up and have found ways to lighten the burdens of others as well. I still marvel at the difference in the way that I feel now and the way that I felt when I had the attitude of being picked on and unfairly yoked. I think that this lesson is so applicable to our lives. Relationships, callings, parenting, working, playing can become so much better as we accept full responsibility for their outcome. We have way more control over situations that we like to realize. Avoid the temptation to murmur to look at what you have compared to what someone else has, that comparison never yields anything but discontent. Incredible growth and satisfaction comes to those who do their duty to the best of their ability and it is entirely independent of what anyone else is doing or not doing.
I hope this coming week holds great things for each of you. Whatever is worthy of your time is worthy of your best effort. Thank you all for your love and support during this amazing but difficult opportunity. I wish you all the best.
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