Mortars are not like on TV.  You barely hear them coming and you do not have time to run.

Mortars being lobbed onto the International Zone and bases around Baghdad have been the theme in May.

I was walking on base a few weeks ago when a series of crashing booms filled the air--a brief high pitched 'shhzzzz' before the next crashing explosion.

One of them exploded 25 feet from me. 

It was a 60mm, not one of powerful 120mm.

The ground was soft from recent rains and the round sunk in deep before exploding.

If the round had travelled a few inches more it would have hit the concrete and I would have been pelted with shrapnel instead of dirt.

Marine Sergeant Jason Huber used to always say, "If it is your time to go, it is your time to go."

God decided it was not my time to go.

I have more work to do here in Iraq.

Until that day mortar and rocket attacks didn't bother me.  I fell back on the old maxim that the safest place to be in a mortar attack is someplace.

Outside of the sturdy Saddam era buildings that can take a few hits, there is not much one can do to take cover in most situations.

Now I dread the sound of any loud boom.

I have to remind myself--usually unsucessfully that worrying is a sin.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught us not to worry and to trust in God.  Worrying is not trusting in God and is a sin.

In book of Joshua, God says to the new leader of the Israelites:  "Have I not commanded you to be strong?"

God has put me here for a reason and kept me alive in some of the most improbable situations--always deciding it was not my time to go.

I see this as a sign to keep going and to do the work here without worry.

Only God knows the number of my days, and has given me more than I deserve.

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Producter's Note:  JD actually wrote this blog in the middle of May right after the mortar attack.  I held back on publishing until he was out of that AO.  David

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