Life is forever changing, and us with it

Can we say a lot has happened in the last year? My divorce was finalized last week, I transfered from one reserve unit to another one at Ft Bragg, where I was encouraged to put in an AGR Packet (go look it up on goarmy.com if you are not an army reservist), made a lot of friends at the unit, and then got accepted into the AGR program and moved back to Chicago for my first assignment. OMG! My friend who got me blogging has recently deployed overseas as a transportation officer with the Army Reserves, and I mean officer, as in I have to salute her if I see her in military uniform. She lost a soldier in her unit recently, and her writing has become even more... I don't know the word for it. She has a gift for being able to use just a few words of description to make you feel like you are there with her, and you involuntarily feel all the emotions she must have been feeling. And you can't help but cry with her, and I say with because you know she was crying. Reading it as I was getting into uniform, I had to stop dressing because I was crying too hard. She is living every fear I have about being a leader, but she is living in a harder situation... little experience, unfamiliar personnel, the outsider that is an officer. I on the other hand, will most likely go with lots of experience in leading (even if authority may be new to me), I have a strong desire to deploy (not just serve, but actually be boots on the ground), and I will probably deploy as a cross level with soldiers I have never met, but as enlisted, it will be easier for me to develope a bond with my soldiers, they will not instinctively regard me as an untouchable that doesn't deserve the respect they have to give the way many officers are regarded out of habit. I will have the upper hand compared to my friend. She wants to serve her country, and she was prepared to be deployed (granted, expecting to go with her own unitl with more time leading), but it is not something that most people relish the thought of. Now, she has experienced everything she desired, dreaded, loves and hates. I pray that with all these experiences, good and bone numbingly bad, she will continue to bring the best out of herself and the situation. As she always has in the past. She is an inspiration to people everywhere, and she does not even know it.