Between the lines or “How I got here”
Heartbreak, excitement, anxiety, fear and embracing the unknown; this might be the realest post I have on my site for quite some time. The title suggests that this is a post about my PCS to South Korea, but it’ll be more between the lines than that. Read on for this wild ride.
When I started to write this, I was sitting in my (almost) empty two-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs, CO, listening to the military-hired moving company wrap everything I own in brown packaging paper and sealing boxes shut with cheap tape. They’d already taken the couch, so I was propped against the wall on my bedroom floor watching the USAF Thunderbirds practice around the USAF Academy for their upcoming graduation with Pikes Peak framed perfectly in my window; it’s not a bad sight at all. One that I’ll miss.
To be honest, it’s sad knowing that the home I worked so hard to create after my divorce is going to be packed up in wooden crates and shipped to South Korea without me alongside it. Conversely, it’s equally exciting knowing that if it all burned down with the ship or plane carrying it across the Pacific, I’d be more or less OK with that. I think this is what they meant when the hippies and tiny house people said, “don’t get too attached to anything, bra”. On second thought, I think I would miss my drums…
To digress a little, I’ll tell you that after my divorce, I had basically nothing. Not just in terms of tangible items, but emotions and physical energy as well. I felt like the joy I had was gone and I wasn’t sure it was ever going to come back. As the famous Randy from Lamb of God would say, I was full of nothing but deprivation.
I was kicked out of the house I paid the rent for; the same house she cheated on me in, in the bed we swore was ours “until death did us part”. The house that my two dogs ran around in the morning as I was getting my uniform on to head out to Schriever and the house they ran around in when I would get back, full of excitement.
It was in that house that I found out about her infidelity by walking in on his army shit all over my bedroom floor one day like she didn’t even want to hide it. I called a friend, asked if I could take a spare bedroom, and luckily my carload of clothes and uniforms were welcomed with loving, open arms as I moved to the north end of Colorado Springs.
I had a bed frame, a 7-year-old mattress that was in the storage room, a dresser, some clothes, and my instruments. That was pretty much it. This divorce was the closest I had come to tapping out and if it weren’t for my church, not my faith, I just might have. My faith had all but disappeared; it was just too much.
I was afraid that my joy wasn’t coming back. I felt like I was in this dark, dark tunnel and every time I thought I saw light at the end of it, it turned out to be just another freight train coming to deliver another load of crushing weight that would pummel me back into the ground.
For that reason, I thought that if I just tried to control the situation a little more by working just a little bit harder, if I would just grab what was going wrong with my already-white-knuckled hands and squeeze just a little bit more, that maybe things would finally go the way I wanted them to and maybe I could salvage some of the wreckage. You know what? It didn’t work. And I got hurt no matter how hard I tried to stay in control.
My control wasn’t working, and it felt that my entire life was in a downward spiral at 100mph and the only person that I thought could help me steer this thing into recovery was running off with some punk, all because I wasn’t sure I wanted to have kids anymore.
My pastor got up on stage just before Christmas Day and shared his story about going through an unwanted six-month sabbatical which (the more I listened) was actually my story in a way. He was the man, running everything in his life as best he could and he wasn’t about to let anything slip. If something got between him and his or the church’s goals it had better move because he’d do anything to make sure that what was entrusted to him (e.g. the 8th largest church in America) would survive. Nothing and no one was going to take away what he had worked so hard to create and *boom*, just like that, a group of elders told him he needed to walk away for a while, which in church speak is usually “you’re done here, here’s your severance, now be gone”.
A monkey could’ve drawn the parallels between his situation and my own. I was that same man; he was talking about me and my situation.
I was the man running 1,000mph in every direction also, trying to ensure my wife and the finances and the cooking and the cleaning and the date nights and the romance and the sex and the excitement and the bills and the income and the budget and the dogs and the flea medication schedule and the car inspections and the insurances and the extended family relations and my job and my Airmen and my boss and all the U.S. citizens who rely on GPS and the soldiers down range using satellite communications were being taken care of to the absolute best of my abilities and if anyone or anything was going to come in between us, up to and including God (at the time), I was going to power up and fight it until I died of exhaustion. And *boom*, just like that, something pulled on my heart and changed my mind about kids because I felt I was just too tired and alone in the partnership of marriage, so I got told to go away for a while which in marriage terms means, “we’re done”.
My pastor and I were in somewhat of the same boat though, and I felt reassurance that maybe, just maybe, I was going to be OK because If Pastor Jim can pull through, then so can I.
During that sermon, Pastor Jim said, “Buddy, don’t give up yet.” Words that to this day bring me to tears (even as I write this). “Eventually when you’re about to quit, the light coming at you turns out to be the face of Jesus”. I cried like a baby when I heard those words.
Fast forward a few months and I’m in a much better place both mentally and emotionally. I went to therapy, wrestled with my demons and my faith, and came to peace with why I believe God let the situation unfold the way it did. I believe God had to take everything from me until I was left with nothing because that’s what it was going to take to turn me back to Him. And while I’ll never understand His methods, I’ll have faith that His plan is good and that He is good.
Fast forward a few more months and I’m head over heels in love with my girlfriend Ciara (the most functional relationship I’ve ever had in my life), a two-bedroom apartment that’s tastefully decorated, and orders to move halfway across the globe to South Korea. This PCS (i.e., military talk for “move”) was the result of a decision I had made back in March or April of 2020 and now the chickens were coming home to roost.
As the movers continued packing my things, I was forced to recognize all the feelings that moving brings anxiety, stress, excitement, fear, worry, anticipation, you know, all those good ones lol. I must admit that I’ll miss more about Colorado than I want to admit. Just thinking of all the memories Ciara and I had made traveling around during COVID puts me in a depression of sorts.
We used to camp every single chance we had and if we weren’t camping, we were taking random trips to Nashville, Orange County, New York, Portland, San Antonio, Dallas, Nebraska; anywhere we could go. Now all of that is being traded for a life in South Korea, 14 time zone apart, with a mandatory 2-week quarantine for anyone entering the country.
I had a great life in Colorado. Great, not good. I was only an hour away from my mom by car, four hours away from my brother by plane, minutes away from the girl of my dreams, and I had a job that I was good at. I could ride my motorcycle through the Rocky Mountains on the weekends with Ciara on the back, or we could camp in the San Isabelle National Forest on my roof top tent with little to no planning beforehand. If I wanted an organic smoothie, I could drive to my favorite juice bar and pick it up or if I wanted a perfect Ethiopian pour over, I knew exactly where to find one no matter where I was in the city. I was comfortable, and everything was familiar.
The concept of becoming an expat is enticing, right? Pack up all your stuff and move to another country and sip foreign drinks and experience exotic dishes with authentic culture. Eat, Pray, Love was a massive hit after all. “It’ll be good for you” they said. “It’ll get your mind off your divorce and give you a chance to ‘get to know yourself'” they said.
But what if I found myself before I ever got over Korea? What if God really did rip everything away from me so that I was bare and had nothing and nobody to rely on but Him? If that was the case, then why did He give me an assignment halfway around the world? Wasn’t He happy with who I had become in Colorado? Don’t I deserve a little bit of rest after that ordeal? These are the questions I intend to pray and ask for guidance on as my assignment here begins.
I guess the point of this post wasn’t to provide you with a “how-to” for PCS-ing to Korea. This was really just one person’s complex understanding of the route it takes for someone to PCS to South Korea or move anywhere in life; you must leave the known and go to the unknown. It can be scary. It can be exactly what you don’t want. It can be bad timing.
There’s a host of reasons why staying comfortable is enticing because after all, we are creatures of habit. Maybe you have your reasons for staying put where you’re at or maybe you’re on the fence.
For those staying put, I ask you one simple question: What if “someday”, as in “someday I’ll do that” or “someday I’ll go there” never comes? Would you have regret? Would you resent the ones holding you back or worse, resent yourself? Ultimately, could you live with yourself knowing you gave up on your dreams for *fill in the blank*?
For those on the fence, go for it. If it’s wrong, God will move mountains to get you where you need to be. Trust me on that.
