Our handful of scattered soldiers have been gathered in, so I get to enjoy seeing the folks I visited in the west and north, and one friend I couldn't visit in the south.
One of my soldiers from the north is having a bit of a hard time in light of CPT Lyon's death. She apparently enjoyed a very warm relationship with him. He would rest his arm on her head because she was the same short height as his wife.
He was also going to redeploy in September, but pleaded with every person he could find to keep him here in Afghanistan with his wife. My soldier feels incredibly guilty because, as a senior NCO in the personnel section up north, she was one of the key instruments in moving him to a new unit to keep him in country and moving him further south so he could be closer to Dana.
He just didn't want to go home without his wife.
When he found out that my soldier had successfully kept him in country and moved him closer to Dana, he picked her up in the air and swung her around.
She feels partially responsible for his death. I reminded that God is has complete control over life and death. No one will die apart from his appointment. I told my wife before I left that no bullet could touch me or enemy harm me unless God desired to take me at a particular point. Until that point, I was untouchable. And if God did take me, nothing could stop it.
The same was true with David. God had decided in the eternal counsel of His own will take take His servant David at that time and in that manner and bring him home.
If, then, David's days were numbered in such a fashion, then the greatest gift God could give David in those final months was to be closer with the wife that he loved so dearly. Isn't that what we all would desire if we knew death was nearing? God used by soldier to grant that final gift to David.
And David, in the end, did go back home with Dana.
The Lord gives life and the Lord takes life. May the name of the Lord be praised.
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