JOY

My dictionary defines Joy this way: Intense and ecstatic or exultant happiness.

We all have moments in our lives when we experience great joy. Graduations, weddings, the birth of a child, buying a new home for the first time, landing that perfect job, getting that long over due promotion, but only a proud few know the joy that comes with being reunited after the emotional roller coaster of a deployment. Tonight, I am honored and proud that I can celebrate that joy with you.

Military familes are a different breed. We stand a little taller and a little prouder when we hear the national anthem, or see a yellow ribbon tied around a tree, or a flag waving in the breeze, or a welcome home sign hanging on a gate, even if it doesn't belong to us. At any given moment any one of those things can fill our eyes with tears. Because we know the sacrifice, we understand the price that comes along with them. We are a family in and of ourselves. We support each other, cry with each other, laugh with each other, and perhaps best of all celebrate and rejoice with each other.

Tonight all over this post there are wives, husbands and children experiencing this most wonderful emotion we call joy! Families are reunited, and perhaps, for the first time in long time, they will lay their heads on their pillows and feel that all is right in their world again.

Today, the first soldiers from our unit began arriving from a long 14 months away from all they love. We're all finally realizing that we've made it! We've survived! The light is burning bright at the end of the tunnel for us all. But for those families who are celebrating tonight, I cannot begin to explain just how much joy they are feeling, or how joyful I am for them.

I know that joy. Twice, I've been in their shoes, and pretty soon, I will be again. After all the letters, all the phone calls, all the care packages and trips to the post office, all of the prayers...your moment arrives. It is simply indescribable. Next to the birth of Brady, I don't think I've ever known such joy! Those few hours or minutes, waiting in those bleachers, or on the tarmac, or in the hangar to see that face you've missed for so long, are the longest of the whole deployment. You wait and watch as little ones run around holding their signs and waving their little flags. You see the new wife waiting to spend more than a few months with her husband. You see the proud mother and father waiting to greet their son. And then, the music starts and in they march. You feel as if you're going to burst...burst with overwhelming joy, overwhelming emotion, overwhelming thankfulness, overwhelming pride...your moment has arrived. God has seen you through! And then, in the crowd you see your loved ones face. That memory is burned in your mind forever. It's one you'll never forget, one you'll take to your grave. It's one of the things that get you through the second...and third deployment.

So tonight, I rejoice with those of you who's husband, father, hero, is home and with those of you who's moment is yet to come!