“I am so thankful for my life. A few months from now will be the ten-year anniversary of my deployment to Iraq. During a routine mission, I took shrapnel from a roadside bomb in both my feet. At first I thought it must have just been a small bomb, but I learned later that the insurgents had simply buried it too deep. If they had gotten it right, at the very least I probably wouldn’t be able to walk now. I spent almost six months in multiple surgeries, physical therapy, and recovery at the army hospital in San Antonio, TX.
In five months I will graduate law school. I have three beautiful kids and a beautiful, talented and absolutely amazing wife. The past ten years have not been easy for us. We have worked really hard. I think often of how everything I know could have ended in 2006, if the bomb had been buried a few inches shallower. That awareness runs in the background of my mind all the time.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in Ohio during my summers in college, listening to the stories of when they were young. Grandpa always said “life is hard.” I have thought back to their stories often over the past ten years. Nothing that we go through is really new. Life has always been hard. I am so thankful for the time that I have been given. The fact that I did nothing to earn it drives me to work harder for the people that I love.”
