The Greatest WarriorSample

 God Will Light Your Path

Hernando & Mari Peña 

Master Sergeant, US Army, Retired

I was deployed away from my wife, Mari, and our 16-day-old son just two months after the Twin Towers fell. When I returned home, I decided to retire after many years in the Army.

We decided to have another child. But my retirement was stopped and when our new daughter was about one-year-old, I was deployed again.

As I led a team in tracking down insurgents, I witnessed some of my men getting killed – men that I had desperately wanted to return to their wives and families in one piece. 

Then I found myself in the middle of an IED blast that shook me severely and left me with a brain injury. 

As I tried to leave the war behind me, I found that I had actually brought it home with me to my family. The flashbacks and nightmares led to jumpiness and anxiety. I was unleashing a full-blown rage. As my drinking became heavy, my moral compass began to spin out of control. I needed help.

I’ll let my wife tell the rest of the story.

Hernando went from being an attentive, kind, affectionate husband and father to a paranoid, hallucinating, spirit-crushing stranger. 

I received an email from a friend, inviting me to church to hear someone speak about combat trauma. As they described the symptoms, my jaw dropped. I began to pray with desperation and hope. 

A couple from the church asked us to get together with them once a week to pray. As they learned our story, they immersed us in the Bible. 

Slowly my husband’s heart began to soften. I knew I’d never have the man that I married, but God gave me a deep love for the new man that my husband had become.

Life is still challenging but I believe that God will continue to light the path that we are on together.

PRAYER: Lord, bring Your life and truth of Your Word into the pain of my past. Bring Your healing. Shine Your light in the darkness of my life and give me hope.