Somewhere in Europe, Somewhere in Iraq

That's me with the blonde hair and my head down surrounded by backpacks.  I offered to watch my friend's stuff while they went into the British Museum in London.  It was a self serving purpose though :)  It gave me a chance to fill out a postcard for a soldier I had never met serving somewhere in Iraq.

...and here's the soldier serving somewhere in Iraq, receiving the post card from a girl traveling somewhere in Europe.

*Ben is the one with the mustache.

Haha!  JK!
Ben is the one on the left of the Iraqi soldier giving the thumbs up sign.  He emailed me this picture while we were just pen pals. I was hoping he was the one doing the thumbs up, because I thought he was the cutest one in the picture.

Scroll back up to the picture of me. Notice how I'm just sitting there while the world is still going on around me?




None of those people have any idea that my whole world had recently stopped, or that my heart was broken and I was grieving the loss of all my future dreams.



What I didn't know was that my postcard was making its way into the heart of one soldier serving somewhere in Iraq. I also didn't fully realize that my dreams were taking a different course altogether. I didn't know in this picture that the Lord was guiding me into a bright sun-shiny future full of new dreams. I only hoped that He was.



Now it is almost 6 years later since those photos were taken and 5 years since I married that soldier giving the thumbs up sign. I didn't know I could love someone so much, or that it was possible for the Lord to compensate for all those tears of a broken heart...but He has.