I remember sitting there, my back aching from a week of framing—that old church pew was unforgiving, even with the faded velvet cushion. The sermon was about divine providence, a benevolent hand guiding us through life’s tribulations. And I just kept looking at my calloused hands, hands that had built half the subdivision this pastor lived in, hands that had seen things in Quang Tri that would make his hair stand on end. And I thought, *benevolent?* Where's the benevolence for the Rodriguez family down the street, whose boy needs an expensive surgery and his father works two jobs, honest work, but still can't make ends meet? Or old Mrs. Henderson, meticulously tending her little garden, barely scraping by on social security while her roof leaks and her son, good kid, just can't seem to catch a break at the factory. It’s a peculiar kind of cognitive dissonance, isn’t it? To hear about an all-powerful, all-loving entity, while observing the stark reality of financial precarity in a neighborhood full of people who *work*. Hard. No malingering, no sloth, just honest, bone-deep effort. It felt like a perverse joke, a cosmic dark comedy that only I was privy to in that moment, the humor of it catching in my throat. I’ve seen enough actual combat to understand the brutal indifference of the universe, the sheer randomness of who lives and who dies, who suffers and who prospers... but this was supposed to be *different*. This was supposed to be a system. A promise, even. And the hardest part, I suppose, is the feeling of impotence that accompanies it. Decades spent believing in duty, in order, in the idea that if you simply put in the effort, you would be provided for—a fundamental tenet of civilian life that felt profoundly alien after the military. We were trained to secure, to defend, to build, yes, but also to *survive*. And survival, for so many of these good people, feels like a constant, grinding battle against an invisible, indifferent force. I just sat there, the drone of the sermon washing over me, wondering if anyone else in the congregation felt the disconnect quite so acutely... or if I was simply too old, too scarred, to pretend anymore.