You can worry. I'm cool with just trusting.

This thing is out of hand. I swear, who knew a couple inches of snow and a few days of single digit temps could put an entire post into such an uproar? I may be from Florida, but I'm a Leonard Wood soldier, so this is strange to me since I have done a lot of training in much worse than anything this place would ever see, and shockingly, lived to tell the tale. I'm not some superhuman entity either. I was a young soldier who was issued the bare minimum, and found a way. If I can do it, anyone can.

The strangest thing is that I was accused of being a bad wife, not caring at all about Thak, because I would not worry about his safety if he were out in this. I didn't worry for his safety any time he was out on some training mission and I doubt if I ever will. I have spent enough time worrying for Thak's safety for one lifetime. When two choppers left Tal Afar, and one went down in a sandstorm, killing everyone aboard, and all I knew was that Thak was on one of them, I worried for his safety until he called me from Baghdad several days later, and let me know he had been on the one that did not go down. When his position was mortared while we were on the phone (on multiple occasions), and I heard the rounds hit, but did not know if he had survived the attack, I worried for his safety until I found out that he did. When he was sent forward early, to look for four soldiers who had gone missing, in a very volatile part of Iraq in 2007, I worried for his safety as he maneuvered through terrain that is the enemy's dream and every American soldier's worst nightmare. I have spent years of my life worrying for Thak's safety, but honestly, after a few years of the enemy trying to kill him, and him somehow coming out of it alive and in one piece, it's a little difficult to conjure up worry for field training on American soil.

Let me also tell you a thing or two about Thak. Thak enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard when he was 17 years old. He was an Infantryman, such a good Infantryman, in fact, that even though he enlisted as an E1, he had attained the rank of Specialist (E4) in just under a year of service, and was a shoe in for the next team leader slot to open up. He was a very good Infantryman. He trained at Camp Ripley, Minnesota and in Hoenfels, Germany. Both of these places are extremely cold. Like, if it rises to 0, that's because it's summer time. These places are where Thak learned to be a soldier. They didn't have things like heaters, or hot meals, or a source of water other than the snow itself. They did things the hard way. They didn't even have tents. Thak can tell you how to stay toasty warm in a snow tunnel, because he spent plenty of time doing just that. Now, over the course of the past 18 years, he has gone from this extreme cold weather Infantryman, to desert soldier, and every other situation you may imagine in between. He was part of the invasion of Iraq, and they didn't have all this safety gear back then. He was part of the Anbar Awakening two years later, and was the crew chief of the plane that caught the #2 Al Quaeda operative in Iraq. Not long after, he was called up again for the Surge on Baghdad, and dodged mortars for 15 months on a FOB that was known to everyone as "The Shooting Gallery" because it was hit so much.

Knowing all this about Thak, what could I have to worry about when he is on US soil? He's been doing this soldier thing for longer than some of the subordinate personnel have been alive. He's seen everything there is to see, just about. Who am I to doubt him, and worry about whether he can hack it in any type of conditions? I know he would rather I just trusted him to do what he's been doing for the past 18 years, over half his life, might I add. He doesn't want me to worry about him. He's given me no reason to. This doesn't make me a bad wife. This makes me the wife of a seasoned ex-grunt who has done more than his share, and knows real danger well enough to recognize when it isn't present, and just go on about his job of taking care of the young soldiers, so that one day, they may, too, be as seasoned and good at what they do, as he is. I'm not worried in the least. I know that Thak is one of the best. If anything, this makes me a good wife because I am well aware of who I married, and what he is capable of. I highly recommend.