The Final Choices!!!

These are the three pictures that have the most votes (I mean A LOT of votes). I am thinking the second one for the yearbook and the third one for family and friends.

Well that stinks!

While editing my latest post from November 2nd, it seems I have deleted it on accident. For those who saw it, you know what I said. For those who have been "lurking" in my blog, you also know what was said. Bottom line is I still hold a particular person responsible for making a great Coast Guardsman put in his retirement letter before HE was ready. I am still working on harnessing my rage I feel for the events of the past 11 months. I guess you could say it's still a work in progress. We recently went to the CCTI dinner. To listen to the speeches, I was really disappointed. You see they were talking about how the Chiefs were about to embark on a new adventure. That commands were going to look at them differently because they were Chiefs and there would be respect for those Chiefs by the commands they were serving. In theory that would be true. At every other unit Mark has served with as a Chief that was so true! What people need to understand is that these "senior enlisted" have so many years in the Coast Guard that they are there to mentor the junior enlisted and to teach the new young junior officers how things really work. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. I will say my prayers for the remaining Chiefs at this unit and hope that they come out of this unscathed.

We saw the Chaplain last week and he said I should forgive...at this point I just can not do that! Forgive a person who purposely targets people at his unit and makes sure they are forced to retire or make his life more difficult is hard to "forgive".

One particular passage the Chaplain read to us was Matthew 5:1-12a:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,for your reward will be great in heaven.”

Father Dan felt that this particular Gospel of the Lord was very relevant to our situation. I was very much moved by this. I have to say that Father Dan is quite an asset to the Coast Guard. He has calmed me quite a bit. We have to be positive about our future. We take it one day at a time. That is all we can do at this time. We can not change what has happened, unfortunately. I guess that is what angers me the most at this point. There is just nothing that we can do.

We are slowly getting our belonging sorted through and downsizing. After 21 years of marriage we have been pretty good at keeping and throwing stuff out because of weight limits for our moves, but we have a pretty large storage shed full of our past and some of it needs to go. As most of you know, we are retiring back to the Seattle area. We look forward to our next chapter of our lives. We will be around family and friends there. As I said in my now deleted post, Mark and I have a strong marriage. We have been through a lot in our 21 years. We will take on this new adventure with as much enthusiasm as we did every time we transferred to new units. Again, I thank my friends and especially my family for being there for us. You all are wonderul people. We couldn't ask for more!