In an unarmored Humvee, Lieutenant Heather Guck stared at a mile of trucks moving forward, inching closer and closer to the Kuwait border. Behind her was another mile of vehicles—27 in all—carrying 100 of her soldiers. The deep, penetrating thump in her chest seemed deafening as she considered her responsibility to get them out alive.

They were taking the only road out of Iraq because every bridge but one had been bombed. Marines in foxholes lined the road, and tanks met the caravan at the blown-out bridges. This was their third attempt to leave during one of deadliest months of the war. “I feared the enemy,” Guck says. “But I couldn’t show that fear. I was just sitting there praying—just praying that we wouldn’t get touched.”

Guck was 25, a new Iowa National Guard lieutenant, and part of one of the first companies to go to Iraq when the war started in March 2003. Stationed in the Green Zone as a communications officer, Guck was in charge of the phone system used by top-ranking officials to communicate throughout Iraq and back to the states to people like the president. This job required traveling to other cities where soldiers were setting up communication sites. Death was imminent because roadside bombs were the major source of the war’s casualties.

“Every day could’ve been my last,” Guck says. “It gave me new perspective.” Heather’s perspective, contrary to the “Army of One” idea in which strength and independence are prized, was that of a hopeful dependence. “Then God would remind me, ‘In your weakness, I am strong.’ He gave me faith that he would get me through,” she says. “I related a lot to Moses. Physically and spiritually I was in a desert. He took me into a desert to completely rely on him.”

Even greater than that fear was a feeling of loneliness. As the only female officer in her company, Guck was unable to have close friendships with other women because if she did she would overstep rank boundaries.

She leaned on the Lord.

“My heart hurt. It was horrible,” she says. “But it caused me to develop a relationship with God that I wouldn’t give up for anything. Being in Iraq was the first time I realized that he is my first love. I understood for the first time that he really will never leave me or forsake me.”

She learned to hope in God alone. Even though the next day was not certain, her relationship with him was. Her prayers became laments: “Lord, I am not ready for this. Why are you letting me experience this?” But it drew her closer to the Lord; she knew that God wanted her to come to him with all of her hurt, confusion, anger, and loneliness.

And God brought her through. Three years after being in Iraq, as Guck remembers the most tragic, trying time of her life, her voice is full of joy. She knows she can rely on God’s promises, and that it was tragedy that sparked an intimacy with the Lord.