Everyone meet my wife
My wife, 
My wife and I got married young, like super young. She was 16 when we got married and I was 18. Everyone told us that we wouldn't last more than a few months. Well we have proved all of them wrong.
First trials
I had just went active duty in the Army after my wife and I got married, and then I was sent to Virginia for training. A few weeks later, on September 11th, 2001, our country was attacked and that changed the mission of the US military. I had no clue what the future had in store for us.
My wife boarded a plane a few days after 9/11 happened and was one of the first airplanes to fly out of Salt Lake City airport since the attack. We spent the next 6 months in Virginia and during that time our son was born. Shortly after his birth, we moved to Texas.
When we arrived in Texas, we didn't know what to expect. We knew that the military was preparing for war, but we did not know what units were preparing to deploy. Shortly after I got there, I was notified that my unit was one of those that was prepping to leave for the impending war in Iraq.
I spent the next year training, and spending a lot of time away from home while I was preparing to leave and be away even longer. March of 2002 came and that was the first time that I left. My wife took a picture of me kissing my son before I left. It is a weird feeling to leave to go to a war zone, but I could only image what was going on in my wife's mind as she watched me hold our son and kiss him for what could have been the last time. While I was gone, my sister had one of her friends, who is an artist, draw the picture and we have had this image up on the wall of our house ever since.
One of the worst moments of our lives
Before I left for Iraq, my wife was pregnant with our second child. We were both super excited about the prospect of having another child.
Communication was extremely limited during my first deployment and about 3 months into the deployment, I got a Red Cross message that my wife had suffered a miscarriage of our child. I was devastated. My main concern was the fact that my wife was alone in Texas and did not have any family to help her through this time.
I was able to get a satellite phone to call back home to check on her and my son. I talked to her for a couple minutes before the connection was lost, but at least I knew that she and our son were safe and being taken care of.
I made this photo a few years ago as a tribute to our Angel Baby. This photo was a way of coping with the loss of our child and knowing that even though the baby isn't with us here, it is with the angels and we still love that child with everything we have.
After the first deployment
We didn't have much time to mourn the loss of our baby together before the Army sent me away again. About 3 months after I got home from Iraq, I was sent to Korea for another year away.
Faith found out she was pregnant again shortly after I left, so she decided it would be best to move back to Utah to be with family to help with with our son and lessen the stress of me being gone. Nine months after I left, I was able to come home and our daughter was born.
After Korea, things seemed to start to fall into place for us. I was getting ready to get out of the military and the kids were getting older. In 2007, I was supposed to get out, but I was told that I was stop-lossed, which means that I was stuck in the military until my unit's current mission was complete. That mission was another deployment to Iraq.
This picture was taken the night before I was leaving for Iraq, and my children knew what was coming as I read them their bed time story. So things got put on hold again while I left yet again. This time, I was gone at war for 18 months.
I wasn't the same
After the military, I got into Law Enforcement, and did what I could, but my experiences as a police officer brought up a lot of the things that I was trying to forget about my time at war. I knew that it wasn't mentally healthy for me to remain in that profession, so I quit.
I didn't know who I was or what I was doing anymore. My mind was destroyed from the things that I have been through, but the one person that had remained by my side through everything was my wife Faith.
I had lost myself, but she never gave up on me. So many veterans experience what I go through, but not all of them are lucky enough to have such an amazing support structure as what I was blessed with. I know that I would not be here if she had done what so many other military spouses do while their husbands are going through the things that I have gone through.
It takes an amazingly strong woman to put up with a combat veteran, and that is something that everyone in the veteran community can attest to. Veterans around the world are sent to into unimaginable situations and experience the worst that life has to offer, but then they are expected to be normal upon their return. The only thing that helps them keep some resemblance of normality of their lifeline, and for that, it is my wife
