18d • General discussion
War Within
The Marine Corps taught me how to survive.
How to steady my breath in the middle of gunfire.
How to hit a moving target at 500 yards without a scope,
like death was just math and muscle memory.
They trained my hands to solve problems
before my mind could panic.
Trained my eyes to scan every rooftop,
every shadow.
Trained my voice to stay calm
when the world turned to fire.
But they never trained me for Gethsemane.
They never showed me what to do
when the enemy was inside my own skin.
When the battlefield followed me home
and pitched a tent in my chest.
No one said that stillness could feel like danger.
That silence could sound like war.
That peace could feel like betrayal
to a system built on survival.
There was no manual for 2:17 a.m.
in a kitchen dim with refrigerator light,
where I stand barefoot and haunted—
my daughter asleep,
my soul still scanning rooftops.
They taught me how to fight.
But not how to hold a child
without flinching.
Not how to answer the door
without imagining breach and clear.
They taught me to survive the fire.
But not how to live in the absence of it.
Not how to sleep in a bed
that doesn’t breathe danger
but still wakes me up soaked in sweat,
gripping grace like a last weapon.
Jesus didn’t give me a drill manual either.
But He met me somewhere between
memory and mercy.
He didn’t bark orders—
He knelt beside me.
Didn’t flinch at the blood on my hands—
He showed me His.
He didn’t say, “Get over it.”
He said, “I was wounded too.”
He didn’t rush my healing.
He just stayed.
Stayed when I couldn’t feel my own pulse.
Stayed when the scripture made no sense
but the silence between verses did.
I came home with every limb intact.
But sometimes I look in the mirror
and can’t find the man who left.
Sometimes I still wear my boots around the house—
not out of nostalgia,
but because peace still feels too soft,
and I don’t trust softness.
But He’s teaching me.
Not how to forget—
but how to carry it differently.
How to unclench my fists
without losing the strength that got me through.
He’s teaching me
how to lay it down.
How to lose the war
without losing the warrior.
How to let go
without letting go of who I am.
“And by His wounds, we are healed.” —Isaiah 53:5
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War Within
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