cherry cokes & car bombs

whenever i would hear reports of car bombings or iraqi violence, it always blended into to background – somewhere in between the weather report and traffic. i have friends with family over there, and my dad is a vet, but somehow it has just become something that never really stood out to me when i watched the news.

until i found out my friend nathan was in baghdad.

i’ve known nathan about half my life. he was always our waiter at IHOP on family-night fridays when my parents would take my brother and me out to eat. i really didn’t mind, and found him pretty cute. plus he would make me the best cherry cokes ever. i started my freshman year in high school and realized nathan also went to my school. we started hanging out, and after i moved to dallas my junior year, i’d go back to abilene and we’d always spend time together. about the same time i graduated, he moved to seattle, but we still kept in touch, writing letters (this was before email was as convenient as it is now)…i still have some of his letters…filled with awesome prayers and songs he’d write.

as life would have it, nathan moved to dallas and we ended up working at the same company four years later. we reconnected and hung out, but as our dot-com imploded, we lost touch again, and i moved to kansas.

occasionally i’d google his name to see whatever happened to my friend. i tried to find him to let him know i was getting married. no luck.

until just a few months ago when he found my blog online and left a comment.

i emailed him – so happy that a life-long friend was back in the picture. he had gotten married too, and although he’s not in the military, he works for the government in baghdad.

now each and every time “those” kind of reports come on the news, my pulse quickens a little bit and i get anxious wondering if my friend for the last 14 years is alright. i pray for his wife, who has got to be missing him something awful.

i just found out he gets to come back to the states for a few days in january, after two years of being gone. if you think about it, please pray for his safety there with the recent events and execution. that he’d have a safe trip home, and quality time with his wife.