HOME FROM WAR!

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God is really good. I walked into a meeting tonight and screamed with joy.

My friend Mary Jo is alive and well and looking gorgeous. Back from 90 days of hell, she is living proof that heaven is listening.

Mary Jo just returned from the much feared war zone of Iraq. She and the other Army doctors were stationed in the middle of nowhere saving lives while endangering their own. She made the ultimate sacrifice by being of service to others in a profoundly heroic way...but she said, "It was awful...I wouldn't want anyone to have to experience it."

Awful means battered and bloody bodies...rocket fire and near death...pain and suffering that has no beginning and no end...no rhyme and no reason. When you're on the ground, eye to eye with the horror of war...there is nothing anyone can say to convince you that this human drama will ever be a winner.

But tonight, I am grateful for the big blessings amid the madness of war...and
Mary Jo's safe return ranks number one. As I watched her speak and listened to her voice, I was reminded once again, how important our Loved ones are to our personal survival...Because when they are not around or when they are in harms way, something critical is missing-we are not whole.

I first learned that concept while producing a documentary in Bosnia during the war.
While interviewing Sarajevo Cardinal Vinko Puljic, I asked him why anyone in the U.S. should care about a war that was so far away...He looked me in the eye, but spoke to my soul, "We are all part of the universal body of Christ. When one part of that body is suffering, we are not whole." After hearing those profound words, I never looked at the world or war or any human experience for that matter- in quite the same way.

So tonight, I felt more complete as I headed home-to tell my kids the exciting news that our morning prayers had been answered...And as expected-they were just as psyched as me...Because they too-are learning at an early age-that when stuff happens to those we know and Love-it happens to all of us. The good stuff included!

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