My technical skills do not extend to embedding the clip from MSNBC about the departure of the 4/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Iraq: they are the last combat troops and they are driving their vehicles to Kuwait as I type. It is odd to think that this is the end of the Strykers in Iraq. For the last six years really (since I didn't really know about them before Thomas began talking a bit in the summer of 2004), I have been aware that various Stryker Brigades have been in Iraq, in Mosul and then Baghdad. I have prayed for their safety and mourned when they have died. Now it seems that my mission is over too. I feel oddly bereft, even though it is a good thing that they are not being shot at or living in danger of rolling over an IED. But, maybe someone can understand this even if I can't, it's as if that last piece of Thomas now goes too. His part of this conflict is over. Operation Iraqi Freedom has been completed.

Conflict rolls on in Afghanistan--I will still be praying. A new mission.