Nicole's Promise

“I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

This is the oath that my little sister took just over a year ago. It is also the oath that she will be fulfilling in 5 days when she ships out on deployment. When I first heard this oath it was at her basic training graduation and I was so proud I could hardly stand it. These were the most eloquent, powerful words I had ever heard because she was saying them.

Now they are the most difficult, damning words I’ve ever seen for the same reason: she has said them and now she will honor them.

I’ve discovered a different kind of pride in her. At first it was a nebulous sort of pride; sure I was proud of her for enlisting, but it didn’t extend to all the unknowns that come along with military life. I was just proud that she made it through basic.

Now my pride is extending to the fact that her strength runs deeper than just surviving pushups and sleep deprivation. She’s approaching this deployment with much more coolness than anyone else in our family. She’s so nonchalant about it that it’s had a sort of numbing effect on the rest of us. Sort of like “Yeah I’m deploying, and…?”  She talks about it like it’s a brief business trip she’ll be taking instead of active duty in a rather hostile country. It’s made the rest of us stop freaking out before we even get to start. (If you had met my mom you’d realize how big of a deal that is.) Instead of reaching out to everyone else for strength she seems to have an excess of her own. She’s even lending it to the rest of us.

She isn’t facing her deployment with brash over confidence, just courage. The kind of courage that doesn’t know what’s coming, but knows that it will be faced head on according to duty. She is doing this because she must, it’s as simple as that.

So I will endure knowing that my sister is very far away in possible danger for the same reason: because I must. I take too much pride in my sister’s strength to tarnish it with my fears. The original giddy pride I had for my sister is changing into something much more substantial and intense: Respect.

Read through the Airman’s Oath again and realize the meaning behind the words and promises in it and realize the kind of person it takes to agree to this oath and then uphold it. More people than just my sister have taken that oath and more than just she deserve the respect that should go hand in hand with it.