I grew up in Ukraine for 10 years as a missionary kid. I had been to numerous places beforehand. My parents and I lived in New York in an attempt to start a ministry outreach to Russian speaking folks over the course of nine months.
When they went back to another city in Ukraine the following year, I enrolled at a college in Florida only to return back to Ukraine again. Afterward, I transferred to another college in Missouri and returned to Ukraine again.
It would not be until 2008 that I would begin my own life journey away from home. This article will talk about how the Army impacted my life for good and will serve as part one of the series.
Enlisting in the Army was the last thing on my mind.
The Army was the last place I wanted to go, but it proved to be very beneficial and very challenging. Basic Training completely took me by surprise. For starters, I thought Drill Sergeants were supposed to be nice people, NOT. Who would have known that you were signing up to be yelled at for eight consecutive weeks? Not me. Basic Training was challenging in many ways but the most severe challenges were mental and spiritual. It was mentally challenging because I had difficulty overcoming repeated defeats. Whether it was not knowing how to build a rucksack, going out to the driving range to qualify with an M16 weapon, or trying to survive in the gas chamber, I just struggled to find my way. But I did eventually, and graduated with my parents proudly witnessing their youngest child, their only son completing the first phase of military training.
Deploying to Iraq was not what I expected it to be.
When I was on the plane headed to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, I remember thinking and praying, "God I hope my unit is not the one slotted to deploy!". That immediately made me nervous because I had no idea what to expect. Was I going to be shot at? Would I be able to do what was expected of me? A few weeks or so before I deployed, I had asked the Lord to do something powerful in my life while on deployment so that I would not look back on it with regret. Well, let us just say that I had no idea what I was in for.
God allowed me to experience doubts about the truth of Christianity. You see, prior to my encountering apologetics, I did not have a library of my own. I had read only a handful of books in my life but they were primarily fictional and adventurous types of novels. They were not intended to be intellectually stimulating. I was not much of a reader. From reading Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ," to Norman Geisler & Frank Turek's, "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist," God opened up a new window entrance into my soul that I had no idea existed. God brought to my attention that the life of the mind is a fundamentally important component of relating to Him and growing as a person.
So for the remainder of the deployment, I took advantage of audio books and listened to them at leisure whenever I was on the night shift to help the time pass faster. It was honestly the only way to keep my sanity when the surrounding guys on my shift would usually talk about at least one of the following things: girls, sex, and partying. It should not be surprising why they would have spent their time talking that way. You're extremely bored and have hardly anything to do. You can't take a nap because you will get yelled at. So you have to find something productive to do. Thankfully for me, I was allowed to wear earphones that enabled me to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Next time I will talk about what ended up happening after the Army phase was over. Stay Tuned!
