A reflection on embracing the new normal

On a cold Sunday evening in October 2009, I dined at Panera Bread in Manhattan, Kansas. A half-eaten bread bowl in front of me, I observed people as they ate dinner with their families, sipped a chai latte, or flirted with a date. As I sat there, I felt a swell of emotion wholly unfamiliar to me. One year earlier I had boarded a C-130 from nearby Fort Riley to deploy to Iraq. I spent a year crisscrossing Baghdad in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom — effectively hitting the eject button on life…