Beautifully Broken

by Paige Wetzel

  Everyone was freaking out about his legs being gone, but he had a long way to go before any medical professional would say, “I think he’s going to live.” It had only been a few hours since Josh had been transported. We didn’t know if the information Cathi and I had been given came from someone who had laid eyes on Josh during surgery at Kandahar Airfield or from someone who threw his mangled body on a helicopter at the scene of the accident. A lot can happen between the two events.

  My father-in-law, Patrick, did not take the news so well. The other fearless adrenaline junkie of the Wetzel family lost every glimmer of hope when he learned his oldest son might not make it out of Afghanistan. Josh’s stepmother, Kristie, was called to be the fearless one. She had to tell Josh’s twin sisters and younger brother the debilitating news. We all have defining moments in life—that was a big one for Kristie, at least since I’ve been around. There is a superpower all mamas have. It’s the ability to see the world around you crumbling and stand up in the middle of the noise and refuse defeat. I saw both mothers-in-law stand up and refuse defeat that day.

  Two new friends I’d made since moving to town, Shane and Mandy, came over and packed my things for me. I think they also dropped me off at the airport. I have no memory of how I got there. Yet I found myself looking at the date, time, and destination on my boarding pass and thinking, I hope that’s right. I trudged through the airport and made it onto my first flight to San Jose. At some point I must have communicated to Shane and Mandy that I needed to fly to Josh’s mother in California first. It was my first real moment of gratitude; I was so thankful that I didn’t have to travel by myself. Cathi would be with me. I didn’t even know where Josh was going once he got to the United States. All I knew was he would not be coming back to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, so I needed to get out of Washington and be near my family. Cathi worked and lived in California, so we might as well travel together. I sat down in my seat in the back of the plane and prayed that no one would talk to me, realizing how hard it is to be nice to people when you’ve just heard horrible news. I could not control my thoughts. As soon as I would convince myself, He’s going to make it, things will be fine, my mind would flash to year-long comas, severe brain injuries, and even a funeral. I squeezed my eyes shut and called my thoughts to the present with an audible “Stop!” I opened my eyes and received the puzzled stares of other passengers. I glared back at them, and they each slowly turned back to face the front of the plane. Finally, I was on my way to Cathi. One flight closer to my husband.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, Is God here? Is He aware of what’s going on right now? I have prayed for Josh’s protection every single night, and he could die while I am on this flight. I have been a Christian my whole life, but until May 31, 2012, my faith had been superficial, predictable, and uneventful. Sure, in my twenty-three years I had encountered some bumps in the road, but I just prayed the usual “Thy will be done, Lord” and left it at that. I had never been this desperate or this afraid. I had never needed anything this specific or this urgent. My default prayer didn’t seem to be enough: Thy will be done? What is Your will? Was this really the reason for Josh’s service? Or our marriage? We’ve built this life together for this? This was not the plan! As the emotions and thoughts ran together in a maundering roar, Jeremiah 29:11 chimed like a bell tower: “For I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I felt no hope, and thus no future, but in my pixilated confusion I could somehow digest that God knows the plan. It was the only comforting thought that got through the silent screaming in my head during the two-hour flight from Seattle to San Jose.

  Midflight I started thinking about living a military life. How many people on this plane knew what it was like? We’re all together here now, but what separate lives we lived on the ground. I started to think about my induction to military life. Before Josh, I knew nothing about it. I lived on thirty-three acres just outside of Fort Payne, Alabama, with my mom, dad, sister, and countless animals. I lived in the same house from the day I was born until the day I left for college to play volleyball at a school just an hour away from home. I never changed school districts, moved houses, or even had to change bus drivers. My family sat in the same pew in the same order at the same church for my entire childhood. The same people who would ask me how many teeth I had lost in first grade would be the same people who congratulated me on winning an all-county award in high school because everyone’s family had a pew as well.

  Josh, however, has a completely different story. Josh was born on a military base in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 13, 1986. His father worked on tanks, while his mother did what every other military mom and wife does: tried to figure out what to do with herself without the support of any friends or family. Military housing for an Army sergeant is less than desirable, especially on foreign soil. Josh’s home in Germany came furnished with items that some might say were not choices you’d make if ordering from a catalog. Their apartment was emblematic of post–World War II life in Germany. It had bare walls, bars on the windows, and no carpets. Josh and his mom did their best to live as normal a life as possible in Germany.

  Before long, Josh’s father, Patrick, was ordered to come back to the United States. He was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, outside El Paso at the United States–Mexico border. This is the part of Army brat life that Josh remembers best. The house in Fort Bliss was affectionately named “the square house.” There were hardly any walls separating the rooms in the house, hence its nickname. The lack of walls inside mattered less once Josh discovered the backyard, his new oasis. It was a yard filled with lava rocks surrounded by a cinder block wall. Beyond that wall was the desert—a haven of mysterious creatures, extreme temperatures, and lots of dirt. They first moved when Josh was five years old, and he needed a lot of supervision in the backyard at first. Any adventures beyond the cinder block wall usually led to a whipping for one reason or another. In the backyard, Josh had a toy box. I suppose the toy box was once filled with normal things, but a Josh Wetzel toy box is useless unless it’s harboring wild animals. Rattlesnakes, horned frogs, tarantulas, lizards, and rodents would take turns living in the box. Whenever he could sneak away, Josh would hop the wall into the sand and come back with pockets full of desert-dwelling critters. He does not have a single scar from a scratch or bite to show from any of them, but what he lacked in animal bites I’m sure was made up in gray hairs for his mom. Josh wouldn’t lay down roots until after his parents split up when he was almost six years old. He and his mom settled down in her hometown of Glencoe, Alabama. When Josh landed in his family’s North Alabama homestead, he began attending church with his nana on a regular basis. Church was an event Josh enjoyed well into his teenage years, even if it was just to hang out with his friends. As is the nature of a small town, these same friends would also be Josh’s classmates and teammates. The daring kid born in Europe who had once entertained himself with catching hazardous animals finally had a homestead.

  Somewhere between his father’s genetics and his early years of adventurous boyhood lies the reason that Josh isn’t afraid to do anything. Being afraid of something and afraid to do something are different things. I think my husband is actually afraid of a lot of things, but there’s something inside him drives him toward danger instead of away from it. He would be the first to admit that he is afraid of heights, but he could not wait to jump out of a plane during Airborne School. I guess that’s what makes him perfect for the Army.

  Josh was made for the Army, but he joined after he flunked out of college. It’s actually pretty ironic how much he embraced the structured military life, because a year before he enlisted, he couldn’t wake up in time for a 9:00 a.m. class. I guess the learning environment makes the difference sometimes. Josh would prefer someone yelling and cursing in his ear while he’s doing some kind of grueling physical activity over a PowerPoint in a lecture hall any day.

  I, on the other hand, am nothing like J
osh. If it looks scary, I won’t go near it. I need predictable, safe outcomes with little risk. Deep down, I have always known I needed someone like Josh in my life. Someone who would help me live and try to put myself out there, but fear and doubt were rooted deeper inside me than I think I understood.

  He couldn’t survive without his optimism, but I don’t know if he ever thinks twice about his decisions. There’s a lot that can go wrong even if most of it goes according to plan. Regrettably, I am often double-minded when it comes to Josh. I don’t always respect his laid-back attitude, thinking, Oh, he thinks this is just a big joke. The other part of me is so jealous of his perspective. How amazing would it be to live in such freedom? To not care what people think, even though you know that they know you messed up? The whole world knows how Josh ended up joining the Army, despite how much I tried to control the narrative with sugarcoated versions of the story. Yet, he still walks around with a smile on his face, never stopping to think someone might think less of him. Even if they did, he would say that’s their problem to sort out.

  We were ignorant to what this would ultimately bring to our marriage because we positioned ourselves in our faith the same way. Ironically, we agreed on a similar theology—there is a God, and He knows what He’s doing—but we had completely different approaches for what that meant for us as individuals. I approached faith and religion believing there were blanket rules that I needed to follow so God didn’t have to work overtime to correct my mistakes. Kind of like obeying the speed limit for the sake of the police having an easier day. The adults in my life guided me on what to stay away from, and as long as I could give them the impression that I wasn’t doing those things, I would be good. Josh, on the other hand, felt that God is God, and He’s going to do whatever He wants no matter what I do. Might as well live life! What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the worst that could happen? I would think. God won’t help us when we actually need it because we keep Him busy with your stupidity! These rules are here to protect you! I couldn’t help but believe Josh didn’t think he needed protecting because he truly didn’t worry about what could go wrong.

  Regardless of our differences, both ideologies left us feeling like God could not be approached. I didn’t think I could approach God because prayer felt like I was telling Him what to do. Josh didn’t feel like he could approach God because his prayer wouldn’t change anything. By default, our faith was nothing more than a subtle wave of the hand to God. We were grateful to exist another day, and tipped our hats to whatever God thought was best. We would just tend to our business and let Him know if something big came up.

  I sat in my seat twenty-five thousand feet off the ground, pondering how I didn’t know if I would ever see life the same way Josh did. My people-pleasing personality went so far beyond wanting others to be happy. Not pleasing meant disappointing—a dagger straight to my heart. Mistakes were labels that I couldn’t shake. Scars that people would spend the rest of time forgiving me for. Then, I thought that must be proof that I had broken one of those faith-based rules. I had spent the better part of the day after hearing the news calling about a dozen other people and fielding their emotions and concerns. I had bottled up my own emotions and had no productive way to process them.

  I huffed a sarcastic chuckle as I thought back to the day Josh told me he was joining the Army three summers ago. When Josh had told me he was joining the Army, I told him to go for it because we were broken up at the time. I thought it was a noble response to losing his girlfriend and failing out of college. I had been one semester away from graduating from college with my elementary education degree and had graduate school lined up, so I encouraged Josh with a “good for you” response and walked away, thinking it would never be my problem. I planned to make a career out of college volleyball. I would study sports management for my master’s degree to position myself for life in sports beyond coaching. I played for a championship team and was a third-generation Beasley attending Jacksonville State University. But Josh had continued to tug at my heart despite my best-laid plans. When I encouraged Josh to enlist, I thought I was pushing him toward a good plan for his life and getting him out of the way of my plans. Even when we got back together and eventually married, I believed that if we worked hard enough, we both could achieve our dreams for ourselves. How could something so well-intentioned have developed into this?

  And now there I was, traveling to see my Army specialist husband in a hospital after he had been blown up by an IED. My, how the tables had turned. I had just gotten into a good groove, living life as a military spouse with a deployed soldier. Now what does normal look like? I wondered as the plane’s wheels made contact with the tarmac.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THROWING OUT THE RULEBOOK

  Then even the bravest soldier, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will melt with fear.

  —2 Samuel 17:10

  PAIGE

  I felt so relieved to see Cathi at the bottom of the escalator in baggage claim at San Jose. Thankfully the airport was less than half an hour from her apartment. She understood my antisocial demeanor and didn’t demand anything more out of me. We both meandered around baggage claim and avoided eye contact and conversations until we got to our carousel. I’d just completed leg one of a journey, and only God knew how many more were to come.

  Because of Cathi’s precise questioning, she had learned it was going to take a while to get Josh back to the United States. The time depended not only on Josh’s physical state but also the complexity of transportation. Every vehicle and aircraft had to function like a satellite hospital. The pilot must know how to fly a plane and stabilize a patient. A nurse must know how to stabilize a patient and fly a plane. Even if they could get Josh back to the States as fast as possible, it would take at least five days. Learning all this from Cathi as we boarded our next flight to Atlanta, now together one step closer to Josh, I felt like I had spent a month just trying to survive my afternoon. Thank goodness Cathi kept her head, because she was able to book us a flight to the Southeast to be near our family until the Army decided where Josh would go next, while querying our messengers for more information on Josh. We would take a red-eye to a connection in Atlanta and then a short flight to Birmingham, Alabama, about an hour away from Josh’s hometown. Unsure of when he would actually make it back to the United States, we learned that Josh’s injuries were too severe to go back to the hospital at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. His options were Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas or Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington, DC. We would stay in Alabama until we knew more.

  I boarded the red-eye with silent nausea. My mind was occupied by fear. It took too much energy to act normal, so I stared at the wall, hummed to myself, and practiced deep breathing exercises. I could not stop thinking about Josh’s broken neck and our newest piece of information from our contact with the Department of the Army: Josh was unconscious after the moment of impact. What if he wakes up and doesn’t remember anything? What if the break in his neck paralyzes him? Will he recognize me at all? My face was stoic and motionless, but hot tears continuously ran down my cheeks. All the things I had imagined could possibly be coming true. I didn’t sleep the entire flight from San Jose to Atlanta.

  At this point, our entire families knew about Josh’s injury, but information on Josh was developing and changing with every phone call. Finally, we told our Army contacts that unless we were flying, they should expect a call from Cathi and me every two hours. With the need to keep the lines open for updates, I was encouraging people to spread the word until we knew more. Before we took off for Atlanta, there had already been a segment on the local news channels. Once we landed in Atlanta, something made me want to get on Facebook and see how many people knew. I was receiving phone calls and texts from literally thousands of people. I knew social media was going to be even more chaotic, so I had silenced all of it before we took off. Maybe it would make me feel better… at least there would be fewer people to tell? Aft
er nine hours of crying and not eating while traveling, hopefully fellow travelers assumed that I had a late night at the bar and would leave me alone long enough to see what was going on. I went into the airport bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and walked toward the terminal of (hopefully) my last flight of the day. I plopped down in my seat next to my equally exhausted mother-in-law and logged onto Facebook to see what kind of damage had been done on the World Wide Web. I had about a million notifications, because by this time all of North Alabama knew about Josh. His story was on TV and radio and in a few newspapers. Then I saw a message from the medic who deployed with Josh. Everybody called him Doc.

  June 1, 2012 7:07 am

  From Doc:

  Hey, I don’t know if you remember me. We met at SGT Kearny’s BBQ right before we left. Anyway, I’m the medic who worked on your husband right after the incident. He was definitely my best friend out here. It sucked for me, and I can only imagine how you’re taking it. He asked me to send something to your address as soon as I can, and I didn’t want to send it with the rest of his stuff because I don’t know if that will actually make its way to you. So if you don’t mind sending me your address, I can get this to you as soon as I can make my way to the postal service out here. Take care! Please keep us updated as well.