This note is written by Kim- I have a renewed sense of peace this morning, after reading a word from Isaiah and I was yet again reminded of something Maya said a few weeks back. Here is the story….about a week after Pete left I was folding laundry in our living room. Maya came over to me and asked if she could help me fold the laundry. I had a pile of socks yet to be matched up, so I asked her if she would like to find the matches and fold them. She was very excited!
I figured I needed to make the most of her excitement about helping with laundry. If you start them young they like to do it all through growing up years…right?! She was doing a great job and I was giving her words of encouragement, “You are doing very well with finding the matches and folding the socks together, Maya!” She very proudly looked up at me and said, “My daddy taught me how!”
I was speechless for a couple reasons….one, I have been folding the laundry, and secondly, I was immediately struck with how proud she was of her daddy. As I thought more about how she responded, I also could not help but wonder if I am that proud of my heavenly Father and the essential life truths that He teaches me, everyday. Matthew 18:3 says, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I felt like I saw a glimpse of what it means to “become like little children”. To be filled with such admiration, love and devotion to the Father! To have such a sense of peace that our Father is alongside us in life! The passage I read in Isaiah this morning was this, “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear: I will help you. Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you, declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” Is 41:13-14 (I added the bold)
I really have a sense of peace this morning in the truth that that my Redeemer, my God is helping me and taking hold of my right hand! I am proud to say that He is calming my anxiety about rushing the last weeks of deployment, and the little everyday tasks that build up around me! My Daddy is teaching me this!
~ Kim
February 23, 2011
January 8, 2011
I just got back from R&R. It was a short two-week vacation from the deployment that I spent at home. The past several months has provoked a lot of thought about “home” in the Robinson family. My Soldiers here and their families have thought about home, too. Some have forgotten the sacredness of home, some have missed home but they have all longed for it…at least in my opinion they have. There are two kinds of home I’ve longed for…one is my home in Fort Riley where a beautiful woman, spirited girl and a smiling boy are awaiting my return and the other is in the everlasting arms of God…Chad Bohi in his song, “Jesus Our Relief” describes it like this, “when I’m broken down and weak, it is your grace that covers me, it comforts me. In your everlasting arms it is where I belong, it is where I’ve found my home.”
Another look at home came from an article I read a few weeks ago that interviewed the wife of an Army Chaplain from Fort Carson in Colorado. Her husband was killed by an IED along with several of his Soldiers while he was out “bringing God” to his men. In the interview she said one of the most difficult things she had to do was to tell her young kids about what happened to their daddy…she asked the kids where the best place in the world was…they said “home.” She then asked where their REAL home was and they said “heaven.”
Home is best experienced when our relationship with both “homes” is in the right place. The past several months the Robinson family has worked hard and prayed a lot about those two relationships and though we would all say we are fine never experiencing a deployment again we are still in some way excited about the next several months of deployment that are left…not just because the deployment will be over and I’ll be back home for a while either. We are excited because God has been so involved in our lives in amazing ways throughout it…it doesn’t take a deployment to experience God and grow in your relationship with Him and your family but right now it is all we’ve got. We certainly experienced the love and goodness of God over R&R…since I’ve returned I haven’t stopped talking about how God has been so involved…from how impressive Kim is to how well Maya and Eli are doing. I hope you experience or are experiencing this with your family, too.
the fam...
I can’t wait to go home…both homes.
November 6, 2010
So, Maya stuck some keys in an outlet upstairs not even 2 hours after we (me and the kids) got back from our trip to Ohio. She started crying and came downstairs. I came running as soon as I heard the very distinct cry of something being wrong. When I got to her I noticed that her hands were black. I knew this was not good.
I was doing my 100 point assessment when I thought I should look upstairs and make sure nothing was smoldering! I ran upstairs to find the keys hanging from the outlet. Everything is fine thankfully!
The next day I went to the store and found the outlet covers that one would think, me being a nurse, I would have had covered already! So like a great mom I covered my outlets. That afternoon, Maya brought me an outlet cover and said “what’s this?” Well so much for being extra cautious.
Safety check take two: I put the safety knobs on the kids bedroom door today to prevent Maya from going in there to get to Eli when he is sleeping, or to go in and unload her closet to find the perfect dress about 5 times a day, or to go in and climb the dresser for a little afternoon adventure. While I was putting them on I had a thought: Are these really safe? I mean if there were a fire or something or Maya needed to go the bathroom she wouldn’t be able to get out. Well, not so sure that is a problem for Maya….I had just laid her and Eli down for a nap and about 2 minutes later I hear Maya saying behind her closed door. “I don’t want these here.” Then I heard, what I later found out was a book, hitting the door knob to get it off. Well, that was not successful so Maya, in her “I’m going to do what I came to do spirit”, just tried taking them off.
A few seconds later Maya was walking into my room with an arm load of safety door knobs. She dropped them on the floor and said, “I don’t want these in my room, you can have them in yours, but not in mine!”
Now Maya is laying in bed singing. Right now I just feel like laughing!
~ Kim
September 6, 2010
manly picture...
Most of us know what it feels like to be far from home. The feeling of unfamiliarity that surrounds you, lots of new places and going back to your new “area of residence” that feels cold and awkward. For most that story does not last very long…in the Army that story seems never-ending. You try to do things like add pictures of family, drawings from your kids, little nick-knacks and other pieces of decor that remind you of home but in the end they fall short of helping you have that feeling of home.
Once in a while something cool will happen. You will get something from home…a package, a card, cookies, Mom’s pound-cake, more cookies, more of Mom’s pound-cake, still more of Mom’s pound-cake and its a special feeling that helps to serve as some pseudo drug that temporarily makes you feel a little more at home. I remember getting a package from my Mom when we first got out here and I was pumped…then I got a card from Mom…then I got another package from Mom…I confess, by this point in the process I had tears in my eyes and an “I love my Mom” smile.
Recently I got an email from my uncle who is also in the Army. He was traveling through and was going to have about an hour or so to chat. I ended up getting to talk with him for nearly an hour and left feeling refreshed like I had expeienced a little slice of home. It was a big morale booster for me and got me through the rest of the week bragging on how I got to see my uncle. Enjoy your time at home!
manly picture...
May 14, 2010
For the first time in several weeks I was feeling really good. Not just “good” like things are going good and I’m feeling “good.” But good in the sense of the kind of “good” that nothing else really is like. The way you feel only when you are with a very, very small group of select people and sometimes the way you feel when you listen to a certain song or go to a certain place and to me its like those people, those songs and those places are sacred…they feel like home. I feel close to everything “God-related” when I’m “there”, listening to “that song,” spending time with “those people.”
The past weeks but especially the last couple of days I have been a hard charger. I’ve been at the “office” at 4am, which happpened to be the rifle range this morning and I’ve been at the office late 10pm doing staff work and combating my arch-enemy, powerpoint. Not to mention the fact that I am at war and therefore do not have the luxury of days off…I have resiliency time. Bits and pieces of a day where I take off and go get recharged; whether its reading a book about being a better dad or a better leader, doing laundry, talking with Kim and family, writing cards and emails home, working out or going diving in the Persian Gulf I do something that recharges me. Today, I took a nap.
I was out hard, the first time since being here that I haven’t had to lull myself to sleep listening to Bach or Pachivelli. I had just pulled up to the driveway of what must have been my house. It was dark outside and I remember just knowing that the house I was looking at was my house. Garden lights led a pathway from the garage door and garden area over to the front door of the house. I remember looking through the windows that were on the garage doors and seeing Kim’s care inside the garage and then my reflection. I was wearing a white shirt, chaco sandals (the best ever) and some crazy looking board shorts. We must have lived near the beach and I was still young…the grass looked really nice, there were a couple palm trees in the yard and I remember it really feeling like home. The front door was opened and light from inside the house was shining through the glass storm door and I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to see Kim, I really want to see Kim.”
The annoying carribean ring of my cell phone went off and the dream stopped. I…was…ticked and hurt at the same time. I felt like a golf ball was in my throat and as I put my boots back on and walked back to my Soldiers I was glad I was wearing my huge sunglasses since they would hide any tears that were shed. Just as I thought they were about to start flowing a couple Marines driving by in their truck slowed down and asked if I wanted a ride. Shoulders rolled back, chest out and chin placed sharply up I said, “yes.” They told me that God works in mysterious ways…I laughed and said, “he does.”
April 21, 2010
The dreaded day has already come and gone. Ever since I found out that I would be assigned as a batallion chaplain to Fort Riley I knew that I would be deploying and had an idea within a week or so regarding when that day would come. We (the fam and I) took advantage of as many opportunities as we could to spend time together and make good memories leading up to the day of deployment. I ate lunch with the family as much as possible, worked my hardest at work and came home as early as possible, played soccer, went to hundreds of balls at Cinderella’s castle, took Kim out on some hot dates and a lot of family walks combined with trips to the playground.
Kim and I talked about the day a lot, too. We talked about what things we should expect like how often we will be able to talk/communicate and what modes of communication we would have; we talked about what things we feared and were nervous about regarding the deployment; we talked about how we planned to stay strong in our relationship with God and we talked about how we could make this year apart one of the best years of our lives.
So far our hard work has been paying off. We are still early in the deployment but Kim and I each feel as though we have been growing closer to each other, even though we are far apart. Theologically, we have to believe that the best years of our lives are not the ones behind us or the ones to come but its the one we are living in right now.
December 18, 2009
Wow! It is hard to believe how much time has passed by since my last note and how much has happened. Here is just a quick “drive-by” on what has happened since then:
-Got moved into the house…pictures on the wall and all
-Enrolled Maya into a ballet class which basically gives her some playtime with other kids and some new dance moves for dancing with me 
-Helped my come to the conclusion that The Three Amigos is one of her favorite movies…I frequently am asked “Daddy, can we cuddle on the couch, eat popcorn and watch the amigos?”…yeah, makes me melt, too.
- Planned and pulled-off my first marriage retreat
- Completed several invocations at deployment ceremonies and change of command ceremonies for my Soldiers
- Took a military tactical vehicle driving course, so that I can drive my Humvee while my assistant runs security with his weapon (I’m not allowed to carry a firearm)
- Counseled a lot of Soldiers
- Worn myself out exercising with Soldiers in the mornings
- Gone on a ruck march
- Watched the most amazing woman in the world go from pregnant to not pregnant as she delivered our first boy, Elliot (per Maya he was delivered through Mommy’s belly button)
- Got to spend Thanksgiving with my girls, my boy and my parents
- Got promoted
- saw my chaplain-assistant leave to deploy with another unit and got a new one, today! Seems like he is going to be a great assistant…19 year old guy from Illinois, I’m pumped!
- And, finally…got to spend a day and two nights with a real piece of work who I consider to be on a short-list of best friends
Lots of good stuff has happened.
My unit is now beginning to ramp up in a more intense fashion to prepare for our up-coming deployment and I’m beginning to work with a woman who works for Soldier’s Angels that helps to provide things for Soldiers…and Chaplains Please keep the coming deployment in your prayers.
