Home of the Brave!

I can't tell you enough how this movie touched me and affected me in ways that I never thought possible.

Look, I'm a military wife, I live on a military base and I'm immersed in this way of life daily, I see the comings and goings, the deployments, the hard truths of what it does to the family left behind and the troops going overseas....but for some reason, when you actually SEE what the war in Iraq does to the soldiers when they return home.....it affects you and it opens your eyes to a lot.

Home of the Brave is the story of 4 army soldiers in Iraq and right off the bat you are thrown into the middle of an ambush on a convoy. I don't know, or actually I DO know that they're highly trained for things like this, but to sit there and watch it happen it broke my heart, it made me cry and it made me want to grab them all and bring them to me, to a safe place. I honestly don't know how I would ever react if I was in that moment.


So you watch the ambush and you watch the repercussions of it, deaths and injuries and then you watch them return home and try to go back to a normal life, to a life that is not constantly watching over your shoulders to make sure there's no sniper hiding in the shadows, or a young child with a weapon in his hand trying to kill you, or the noises and the screams.

This movie was so well done and it has HUGE names attached to it......Samuel L. Jackson being one, Jessica Biel, Brian Presley, Curtis Jackson, Chad Michael Murray and even Christina Ricci.

I can't begin to tell you how affected I am by this movie, I mean I've told you already but there just no words to describe it, I'm stuck between anger and repulsion for what goes on over there and heart wrenching pain for our soldiers.

One thing this movie showed me is that most of the American public does NOT know what it's like for the soldiers once they return home. Like I said, I'm a military wife and I know some of it but not to the extent of how bad it is, how hard it is for them, it's certainly educational and it's made me aware of what they may be thinking, feeling or wanting.

I urge you to please please watch Home of the Brave if you haven't already.

According to an Army report, one soldier out of three returning from Iraq suffers from mental problems. The proportion of personnel affected is the highest of all recent conflicts, from Bosnia to Afghanistan. "In Iraq, there's no front line," explains Colonel Charles Hoge in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Eighty to eight-five percent of personnel have been witnesses or participants in a traumatizing act: enemy combat, death of an adversary, IED attacks.

"In Vietnam, there were secure zones where people could recuperate," indicates Steve Robinson, director of an association that advocates for veterans in an interview with the Washington Post. "That doesn't happen in Iraq; every place is a war zone."

Do you want to see what I wake up to every morning?

I can count on there being at least one lemon on the ground, just sitting there waiting for the little hands in this house to run out barefoot, scoop it up and rush it back inside, yelling with excited voices "another one fell".

I don't think the kids EVER get tired of seeing the lemons on the ground, they still get so excited over it.

I guess we'll have a lot more of these happy days ahead, look at all those beauties still hanging on the branches? And then there's tons of tiny green ones growing already. Just love it.

This morning we have a bit of a cloudy sky, not that it matters, the temperatures have been in the upper 80's for the past two weeks. In this place we have seasons........Hot or Hot as Heck! Pick one LOL


Now I want to tell you about something really exciting. You know Karon Phillips Goodman right? I mean, if you don't you SHOULD by now, I talk about her books all the time, remember this one?

Well she's starting a new project on her blog and it's something she's really excited about and I think that a lot of us will be too. Go on over and take a look and tell her that I sent you....let me know what you think ok?

She's got a great post today on Grace to Laugh. Her description of her husband looking for the camera he couldn't find was hilarious and made me think of my own husband.

Perfect example....it was 11pm one night and I was already fast asleep. He was up late and comes walking into the room, asks where his PT uniform is because he had to be up at 4am for mandatory military exercise.

I lay there and think "seriously, why didn't you look for this before?". So I quietly answer that I have no clue where his shorts are, I did all the laundry and they were NOT in the hamper. He starts stomping around and throwing out the usual "what did YOU do with it, YOU lost them and I need them" (Yes, because I had nothing better to do so I went out in HIS shorts and did some exercise LOL). I stay in bed a little longer and finally get up to help him search for HIS shorts which I know for a fact I did not see or touch or misplace.
After about 30 minutes I give up and tell him that obviously he must have left them in his backpack....he quickly tells me that is not true, he wouldn't do that.

Would you believe that they were INDEED in there? LOL

Anyway, I urge you to go on over to Karon's blog and join in on her new project, she's such an amazing Christian writer and I would love for her blog to have as many visitors as some of ours do.

If you're looking for ideas for your weekly menus, check out Laura's blog "I'm an Organizing Junkie".

My menu is also on there and there's yummy new recipes I'm trying this week, like....Lemon Linguine Shrimp Salad, Deli Monte Cristos, Garlic Chicken and Gravy. I'm already hungry.


With that I'm out of here, I have laundry to do and floors to mop. Hope you're all having a wonderful Monday.

God Bless,