So here it is, the last update from Afghanistan, and this wandering in the wilderness is coming to an end. It’s been a long month of passing the torch, preparing for christmas, and making sure all the boxes are checked for coming home. That said I apologize (sort of) for the lack of updates, but in the grand scheme of things this blog has been relegated to a back seat for the more pressing matters at hand. That and without Internet access it’s hard to post anything, such is the way of transition.

So here I sit in Camp Dwyer, our last stop in Afghanistan before we begin the flight home. Incidentally I’m actually typing this blog on my iPad (shameless plug) and will updated wirelessly. Yes I’m halfway back to civilization now with unrestricted Internet, and more food than I care to eat* 

*tangent: So I was in the chow hall yesterday and was feeling very guilty about eating lunch, not just lunch there but lunch in general. My normal has been two meals a day and small snacks. Point in fact I had to stop running about 2 months ago due to shin splints so no exercise, and I’m still loosing weight, and no I’m not dieting per-say – I’m eating less because there is less to eat. So here I sit in the chow how with a plethora of food to choose from and I get a cheeseburger and some fries. The guilt is overwhelming, fat kid food – and as I see another marine walk by with not one but TWO cheeseburgers, it dawns on me that I’m feeling guilty over normal portion sizes, it’s not that I’m over eating it’s that for the past six months I’ve been under-eating. So to stick it to the man, I got ice-cream.

/end guilt trip 

So here I sit in the same place I typed my first blog in country about losing my earthly joys and I’m discovering that the thought of them approaching me through space and time as my path takes me back to them has grown in measure due the experiences and moments in this place. This time apart has been good. The food is a good example. I used to over eat simply because I could, but go without or rather go with less for so long and you find you appreciate the simple things more. See we tend to over indulge on everything that bring us happiness (and food really makes me happy) thinking that the more we have the better we will feel, but in reality, saturation leads to mal-content, in everything save one.

It is in His presence that my joy(s) are made complete. Because I’m designed to be saturated by Him, nothing else can ever fill me up.

 So here I am on the verge of rediscovering my wife, my kids, my earthly joys and they are to me far sweeter then when I left them. I’ve known what it is to want and not have; I’ve learned how to be content when I have nothing.

Because losing yourself is finding joy.

Chaplain Carson

I’ve spend the better part of this year away from my family, away from the comforts of home, away, for all intents and purposes the things that matter. Or have I?

 I find myself in a pensive mood these past few weeks reflecting on just that question. What really matters? We fill the void of that statement with a thousand different things from health to family, from riches to accomplishments. We talk about things such as legacy and honor, courage and strength, and miss the mark by miles too distant to measure.

I thought my life was built upon the Lord, His foundation was the beginning of who I was, of what I was. I felt a call to serve Him, and out of that calling I built my list, my things that matter most. Those ordered priorities. God of course, and family, and friends, and ministry, and honor, and strength, dare I say personal glory. Those things matter. And yet over the course of a few short months God has turned each of those things on its head. Were I stripped of personal glory, still I would go on. Were my courage to fail, my honor shamed; if I left no legacy, stripped of friends, were my family lost to me still I would go on. The only thing I cannot escape is that God matters, without him all that matters would cease to matter at all. It is such a simple thing to say, such a simple proposition and yet my wandering heart craves more then just God. I’ve often felt He can’t possible be enough.

Yet He is.

There have been moments out here, in this Afghanistan, this wilderness, when I feared for my very life, when I was afraid to my very core that I had no answers for hurting hearts. In those moments I wept for the loss of my father, my mentor who guided me as Paul guided Timothy. I thought I needed Him and could never survive without his guidance. Moments when the phone would not work and I desperately needed to hear the voice of my wife on the other end of the line and the phone was dead. There are times too numerous to mention when I feared as if I was undone because some “thing” some hurt to great to bare alone would bow my spirit low within me because I lacked something that I thought mattered. I prayed, I cried out to God, to make the phone work, to grant me luck of the draw, to give me some clue as to what my father’s words would be. Silence followed. How could a loving God remove from me the things I needed most, the things that mattered?

Yet as I write these words I am not undone, I am not bowed low under the despair which consumes so many. I am full to the overflow, of a peace which destroys doubt, of a joy which makes no room for despair.

 What matters? God and nothing else. Scripture says to seek first the kingdom of God. I was using God to bring me what I thought I needed what I wanted, and He was silent. Or was He?

When you have nothing else to pull you though the long dark night is God enough? Is he really all that matters?

 Life is simply the discovery that God is the All in All.

Because He did, I can.

Chaplain Carson

So deployment is an interesting enigma in itself. I find myself wishing for home more and more these days; as is natural with anyone over half way through with a deployment cycle. There is a light at the end of my tunnel and I can see it more clearly each day. But something else has transpired in the last month or so that has awoken within me a realization that we live in a very diverse nation, more diverse than perhaps any of us truly realize. It is only in speaking with the men that make up 3/6 that I have begun to see the scope of the culture that make up our United States. I’ve met farmers, singers, dancers, artists, businessmen, actors, football players, flute players, comedians, construction workers, cooks, writers, geeks, jocks, nerds, and heroes all of them.

There are a thousands dreams across a thousand faces and it has been a wild ride so far. They have each of them left their homes, and some their dreams to come here to this place for a season – for some the time apart has focused their goals for others it has changed them. Deployment is really not so much where you lose yourself but it where you find out who you really are. You discover weaknesses long dormant, strengths that have never seen the light of day; and a resilience that you never knew you had. You understand how to be light on your feet – how to deal with less – how to find joy in the simplicity of the little things. A shower becomes Christmas morning, and quiet moments under the windswept sky are priceless.

I am having more and more conversation about weakness and the true value of discovering them than I ever have before. Weaknesses or rather knowing them is at its very root – strength.

“Know thyself,” said the sage.

Ignorance of a weakness doesn’t save you from the consequences that are born out of it. And so here in our Afghanistan, our desert we find something powerful, something eternal in nature that moves us from a place of immaturity, where we arrogantly walk in ignorance to a place of maturity where we acknowledge and humbly embrace the weaknesses within. Scripture tells us that in our weakness then we are strong. I’ve always wondered how this can be, and at last I know because I have finally walked in such lengths along that path, that the full meaning comes to light:

Weakness revealed, and humbly acknowledged becomes strength because finally the one thing that held back the power of God in our lives is removed; The arrogance built out of a spirit ignorant of its own frailty.

In acknowledging, I am weak Than I become strong.

In His Grips

Chaplain Carson