Beautifully Broken

by Paige Wetzel

  But I wasn’t sure where I was positioned in all this. What purpose did my life have in Josh’s greater story? While Josh felt his calling was the Army and, day by day, we were seeing that his Army story wasn’t complete, I felt like I was drifting into the abyss. I was beyond grateful that my days consisted of caring for my husband—that he was alive was something I will praise Jesus for until my own last breath—I could barely even get a two-minute shower, let alone have a moment to myself to process what my life looked like now. Since Josh’s injury, his mother and I, and everyone else who came to help out, hardly ever left Josh’s hospital room. Personal hygiene and matching clothing were not necessities. We hardly took full showers; we either rinsed our bodies or stuck our heads under the faucet. Our daily wardrobes never called for more than T-shirts and sweats—outfits that could easily go from daywear to sleepwear—and makeup was just pointless. Night after night, I would lie in bed in my room at the Fisher House or in the hospital cot-chair, drifting in and out of sleep. Tossing and turning gave me so many moments to think back about our journeys. There was one thing I was certain of: I had grown up a lot since arriving at Walter Reed, which made reflecting on my previous self that much more frustrating.

  The day Josh received orders to report to a base in Washington state, I wanted to turn off my life like turning off a TV remote and go back to my regularly scheduled programming—my life playing volleyball, dreaming of coaching my own team in the near future, and my graduate classes. I had wondered whether this was the sign. Was my life turning into a big mistake that everyone else saw coming? I mean, I had tolerated a lot with this Army stuff. I gave up graduate school, a life and jobs in a familiar place, and proximity to friends and family. And because my husband failed a run by five seconds, I had to pick up my life and move to Washington? Pluto sounded closer.

  When Josh told me this news, I thought, I will never understand what God is doing with me. I can’t stand to hear people use the words “God-given purpose.” What does someone have to go through to be so certain of God’s plan? I have been in church my whole life, but it seems like some Christians are knighted with this holy mission, and I’m just trying to obey in case God needs me for something. Obedience, though, doesn’t control events like this. What is the purpose of this? Sanctification? Yay. Can’t wait.

  I prayed frustrated prayers. I didn’t understand how something like this could happen. How could a technicality have enough power to uproot a Special Forces candidate after he had completed a third of the qualification course? This was just another example of the many times I contemplated God’s intention with me. Up to this point, God seemed like the CEO of a big corporation or the president of the United States. He made corporate-level decisions that eventually trickled down to my little situation. Except this time, it wasn’t a trickle. This felt like the levee had broken, and I was watching all my hopes and expectations go floating down the river.

  I recalled the few days Josh and I had to scramble and put our two houses’ worth of belongings together in a U-Haul while also trying to squeeze in time with our families. I had a mixture of emotions as the big move approached. On one hand, I was excited about everything I had researched about Tacoma. It seemed so different from the South, with its big-city scenes, mild climate, and progressive views. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but picture myself living there during Josh’s deployment. How long would we have before he had to leave? What if I didn’t have any friends by then? I could feel myself dumping a lot of these feelings on Josh. If I had listened to the voice in my head, I would have acknowledged that my concerns were actually a backhanded way of blaming him for all my problems, but I just couldn’t hold back my attitude. I was afraid of acting like I was okay with moving, because then Josh might think he could sign up for another five years after this deployment. Amid my solemn inner soliloquy, I sat on the front porch of Josh’s home in Glencoe before our big move and started reading through Proverbs. God’s Word both offended me and convicted me in Proverbs 21–27 as it characterized the “quarrelsome wife.” I was reading it is “Better to live on the corner of a roof than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife” (21:9), and it is “Better to live in the desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife” (21:19). And then came this: “A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm” (27:15). My heart sank. How much time had I spent making sure Josh knew how inconvenienced I was? I just felt stupid. I had complained about leaving family, friends, and familiarity as if Josh were not leaving the exact same things. Except here’s one extra point for Josh: He gets to train around the clock with no time off to get ready to go to a war zone from which he may not return. Paige, Paige, Paige, when was life ever all about you? Again, I caught myself being double-minded toward Josh—proud of him one minute, guilting him the next. I would encourage him to work hard for promotions and leadership roles, and then complain about the responsibilities that came with them. I chose to tell him that I was supportive of his career and then blame him for delaying mine.

  Since being quarrelsome couldn’t change my situation, I decided to change my mind. I decided that this move and everything after would be our adventure, a chance for us to truly figure out who we wanted to be without the familiarity of life in North Alabama. Job 42:2 became our mantra verse for this move across the nation: “I know you can do everything. You make plans, and nothing can change or stop them” (ERV). I turned twenty-three on August 5, 2011. On August 10, we hit the road for the Pacific Northwest. Had I known what all was in store for us as we pulled our U-Haul across the United States to our new home, I might have backtracked into my old way of thinking. But I not only leaned on Job 42:2, I agreed to it. I decided to be more flexible and encouraging by first acknowledging that I wasn’t in control. I could have never known how badly I needed this training.

  JOSH

  The length of my surgeries began to taper off and my daily schedule became more predictable. We knew surgeries would be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday would be spent recovering and going to physical therapy. I spent the weekend sobering up from anesthesia and watching sports. The men on my floor, my fellow amputees, were always rotating in and out of my room, or I theirs. The room three doors down housed a single amputee whose wife was pregnant. After rolling by our room for a few consecutive weeks, Jenn Mullee and Sergeant Andrew (Drew) Mullee introduced themselves when Drew poked his head in our door and said, “Hey, you like college football?” It took about thirty seconds for a conversation about Ohio State versus Auburn University to begin. I was thrilled. Another football fan! Jenn and Paige hit it off, and Drew and I became absorbed by all things sports. We immediately turned on the TV to begin critiquing events in the London Olympics when I heard Paige asking, “When is the baby due?” I tore my eyes from the game and wondered the same thing. Paige and I had always wanted children, but I couldn’t imagine welcoming one into this situation. I was curious if Drew would actually be well enough to take care of a new baby by the time it was born. Jenn explained that she had about sixteen weeks to go and planned to have the baby at Walter Reed. Whoa, I thought. Can you do that here? What did I know? I had only been out of the room to go to surgery or PT or grab snacks since we had gone out to dinner at the Italian place, so I had not seen any other parts of the hospital. Jenn, however, did not seem fazed explaining her plan. She talked about her pregnancy with excitement and had a lot of confidence in Drew’s recovery. The four of us quickly became friends. And again, amputee etiquette did not disappoint. A few days later, Paige went down the hall to take them some cookies. But I noticed that she came back with the cookies, so I asked, “Were they not in their room?” Paige said, “Oh, they were. Jenn just said she needs a second to help get shrapnel out of Drew’s leg.”

  A few days after meeting Jenn and Drew, there was a light knock on our door, and an unfamiliar voice said, “Hey, would you guys like some cupcakes?” In rolls a guy in a power wheelchair with a blond girl walking behind, not mu
ch taller than he was in his chair. There were some indicators that he was further along than me in his recovery, the first being that they both were wearing normal clothes. She was wearing a dress, and he had shorts and a T-shirt on. He had a long beard and long hair that was brushed straight back and held in place by an American flag bandana. The only time I put a shirt on was for PT, and I lost it quickly when I got back to my room with all the hot flashes. Then, I began to notice his injuries. I had never seen anything like it. Assessing what I saw while trying to engage in conversation, I thought, Okay, no right leg. No left leg. No right arm… no left arm.… This guy has no arms and no legs… I didn’t know such injuries existed in people who still lived. I couldn’t pay attention to the conversation. How can you survive getting four limbs blown off yet somehow the rest of you stays intact? Yet, there they were, a quadruple amputee and his girlfriend going around sharing cupcakes. Taylor Morris and Danielle Kelly were on a mission to figure it out. Taylor was going to have a very interesting journey as a quadruple amputee, but today, he and Danielle were just trying to bring joy to other amputees.

  We suddenly were on a wave of making new friends. Another new friend, Sergeant Andrew Smith, had both seen and unseen injuries. His obvious issues were his two missing legs, but Andrew’s legs were actually the least of his problems. Andrew was blown up on his first patrol, which occurred two days into his deployment. I remember thinking, Two days in and this guy was medevaced home? I couldn’t imagine losing my legs on my first patrol! When the IED went off, the explosion ripped through him, severely damaging his insides. This resulted in Andrew undergoing dozens of surgeries to repair holes in his stomach—real holes on the inside of his stomach that opened to the outside world. Andrew had an x-fix that wrapped around his waist because the bomb practically ripped his pelvis out of frame. His condition caused several trips back to the ICU and food through an IV for almost a year.

  So this was my new life. Sharing war stories, watching football, and resting was all I had time for around my recovery as an amputee. Paige and I barely talked about anything more than my care and to our new friends. She’d happily made friends with other wives in the amputee wing of the hospital, and we each did our best to cheer others on while also anticipating similar results for ourselves. Even though this was my new life, we had barely gotten the old one started before I got injured. We’d been married just over a year when I left for Afghanistan and had never really had a honeymoon period early in our marriage because my job caused us to move across the country to fulfill my duties.

  When I got orders to report to Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington, we’d packed up everything we owned and started our cross-country journey. I remember feeling like we were teenagers on a road trip. Despite the time crunch, the road trip from North Carolina to Alabama to Washington state made for some of my favorite memories with Paige. We got to see so much of our great nation. Our tourism stops included the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, legendary Rosenblatt Stadium, Mount Rushmore, the Montana Rockies, and even the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. I showed my ignorance about the Pacific Northwest when we crossed the state line into Spokane, Washington, and saw that most of the terrain was dry and dead. I thought it rained every day in Washington. It was like the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry says, “I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” I soon learned that the great state of Washington supports four major ecosystems. I could tell Paige was feeling right at home. Rain forests, sand dunes, saltwater, fresh water, and city life were all within two or three hours from anywhere in the state. She could be at the beach one day and mountain climbing the next. She was loving Washington already. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what came next after reporting to JBLM. Were my deployment orders already being drafted?

  We arrived in Tacoma after four days of driving across the country, which left us five days before I had to report to JBLM. We were going to need all of that time to look for our new home in Tacoma. After a good night’s sleep, we unhooked our U-Haul trailer and ventured through our new community. We decided to look for a place in the center of Tacoma, which would be a pretty brutal drive to JBLM during rush hour. However, after Fort Bragg, Paige knew we did not want to live anywhere near the base. The day I decided that I liked Tacoma and being at JBLM was the day we tested the commute by going to the base to take a tour. In Fayetteville it is very easy to tell proximity to Fort Bragg. The surroundings transform from schoolyards, dog parks, and antebellum homes to strip clubs, tattoo joints, and Ranger Joe’s Army supply stores. Paige explained that if she was going to have to live in this place by herself during a deployment, she did not want to be anywhere near the dodgy part of town. Yet, as we approached JBLM, all I could see out my window were evergreen trees, running paths, mountain ranges, and shopping centers. When we had reached the entrance to the base, we saw a huge log overhang that said WELCOME TO JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD. That rare clear August day, we had our first Mount Rainier watch at JBLM Airfield. This 14,450-foot dormant volcano is a sight to drool over. Even the locals can’t help but stop and stare at Mount Rainier. Every detail of the snowy reservoirs and the folds in the mouth of the crater can be seen as if it were just across the parking lot. Its elements are so distinct that it’s hard for the mind to accept it as a three-dimensional shape. It seems more like a painted backdrop than an actual piece of Washington’s unique landscape. I remember Paige’s shocked face when she asked a worker at JBLM how far away Mount Rainier was and he said, “About fifty miles from where you’re standing.”

  After a three-day search, we found an apartment in Tacoma. Unpacking didn’t take long in our new place. Returning our U-Haul to a drop-off place took about the same amount of time as unloading our one couch, one bed, a closet full of clothes, and a couple of TVs.

  “Finally roommates,” I said as I plopped down on the couch next to Paige in our new 700-square-foot apartment.

  “Yep, it only took eight months of marriage and a move across the country, but we are finally roomies,” she quipped back with a sideways glance as she stared at the empty wall.

  PAIGE

  The Army wastes no time when it’s time for a family to go to a new duty station. It was mind-boggling that I was now a resident in Washington state when ten days ago I had not even packed my stuff to move. In nine days, we had packed up our homes, driven across the United States, and found this little place. On report day at JBLM, Josh gave me a kiss goodbye around 4:30 a.m., and I wished him good luck on his first day. I couldn’t go back to sleep because I still wasn’t used to the time change. I sighed, remembering that I was stuck in our new apartment all day because Josh took our only car to work. I walked to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and back, watched TV, and rearranged our drawers. After Josh’s second day of work, I told him I wanted to find a job.

  I quickly found the coolest job: hanging out with elementary school kids before and after school in a YMCA program. The hours and the kids were so awesome. I loved spending time with them. Since we only had one car, I had to learn how to use the city transit system. I got on the bus every day at 5:30 a.m. and rode to my stop with some of Tacoma’s most interesting people. Most people who rode that early typically slept on the bus. They’d hop on the bus when the routes start around 3:00 a.m. and ride back and forth throughout the city until someone woke them up and told them to get off at the main stop. These people were nothing like those in my community back in Alabama. In Tacoma were likable characters like Mags, who kept a flying squirrel in her bra, and Tap, who was always trying to sell me some of his “art” so he could buy more weed (I’m not speculating; that’s what he told me he needed it for). But there was also a voodoo witch who cast spells and spit on people as they got on; I didn’t care much for her.

  The Pacific Northwest also had another amazing surprise for this young transplant—great volleyball! Everyone knew how to play. I signed up for every tournament in every format there was. I played with some amazing players. One day I was
approached about coaching a junior club team. I thought, Why not? Having busy weekends might make this deployment go faster. I was invited to a coaches’ meeting at Lake Tapps Volleyball Club. All the coaches sat around a table and discussed upcoming events for tryouts and fundraisers. One coach in particular seemed to really dominate the room: Mandy Flores-Handley, but everyone called her Flo. She asked for explanations of a few things and brought up several things we still needed to plan. I wasn’t sure if her face knew how to not be so intense. Her husband, Shane, on the other hand, seemed super friendly and chipper. Either way, I was intimidated. Two days later, I found out she and I would be coaching the sixteen and under team together.

  JOSH

  At Walter Reed, it was easy to think about paths not taken when all we had was time to sit around and be consumed by our own thoughts, memories, and “what could have been” daydreams. Now Paige and I were looking at a future that was entirely different than either of us had ever imagined following our move from Alabama to Fort Bragg to Tacoma. Paige was living out of a suitcase, and I was still barely even wearing clothes. A shirt was pretty standard, but pants were now obviously pointless. I would wheel around in boxers or basketball shorts, and I hadn’t seen a pair of my own shoes since my combat boots on May 31.

  I loved being in the Army, but it’s a love that is hard to explain. Before I joined, I had half-heartedly tried everything—college, sports, working a job—but it all seemed like I was just trying to pass the time. I had fun and made great friends with the people I met in all these segments of my life, but there was nothing that meant so much to me that I was fully devoted to it. Because of that, I squandered many opportunities. I hated to sit in a classroom and listen to someone talk for two hours, so I didn’t go to my college classes most days. After a few years of that, I found myself on academic probation. It sounds so awful to say this, but I was sort of relieved when school was out of the picture. I came home and worked the same job I had in high school for a while, but I was then reintroduced to the idea that if I didn’t have a degree, I might be looking at a job like this for the rest of my life. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I just knew that while I was not making great choices in life, I also felt I wasn’t meant to be in these places to begin with. Flunking out of school and having no direction caused Paige to break up with me. Her early adult life was completely opposite from mine. She was a college athlete with a plan to enter the workforce as soon as she graduated. I didn’t even know what it would take for me to graduate.