I return from that horrible deployment in September of 2014.

I am so happy to be home and back with my wife, whom I am planning on marrying for the second time. We have set a date for June 4 for our big wedding and mostly picked that time because it is clear of deployments. I am promised I won’t be deploying again until after the wedding, so wedding planning becomes my top priority.

Natalie and I do all of the wedding planning together and love working on it as a couple. We are trying to keep costs down, so we do almost everything ourselves. Natalie designs and handmakes the invitations, and we add personal touches to everything.

Just as we are hitting our stride with the planning and making real progress, I get the call that I will need to pick up another deployment. My wedding planning window will be cut short by a couple of months.

Natalie begs me not to go.

“Can’t you tell them you need to get married and plan a wedding?”

I wish it was that easy.

Reluctantly, I have to say goodbye to her again and go out to sea. Luckily, I am with one of the most experienced HITRON pilots in the history of HITRON, “Philthy.” He is a former Army pilot with a ton of experience, and this is his fourth Coast Guard flying tour. He has been at HITRON before and liked it so much that he came back and is now on his second tour here. I look up to Philthy and want to be like him.

Everybody does.

On one of our first tactics flights together, I am nervous about what he will think of my flying. I fly the profile aggressively and push the aircraft as far as I can, trying to impress him.

He is not impressed.

Phil simply asks me, “Would you be able to fly it like that on the darkest night you can imagine? That’s what we’re training for.”

On the next flight, he demonstrates all the maneuvers, and I am amazed by how smooth he is. He never uses a lot of power or flies anything aggressively. He makes it look easy and repeatable. He teaches me that the best pilots are smooth and in control at all times.

Philthy and I have a great deployment, and I learn a lot from him. He is confident, makes sound decisions, always protects the crew, and does not accept unnecessary risk. Flying with Philthy is exactly what I need after scaring myself on all my other deployments.

I feel bad because while I am deployed, Natalie is planning the wedding herself. She is going to venues, talking to vendors, and sampling menus without me. It’s hard to miss these important days in my life. Initially, they have me returning home a week before my wedding. I beg the command to let me come home earlier so I can help with the planning and not have to worry about getting stuck somewhere and missing my own wedding. Luckily, Kenny agrees to take the last few weeks for me, and I get to come home sooner than expected.

One of the first things we do when I return home is go pick out my wedding band. We shop around, and I pick something simple, get my ring finger sized, and put it on order.

The next day, I go to jiujitsu to get some training in. Toward the end of class, we are doing some rolling. I take it very easy these days and don’t want to get hurt. I have no problem tapping out or letting someone beat me, and I pick partners who aren’t trying to bury me. I am rolling with an older guy I often try to pair myself with. He has had a pretty bad back injury, so we take it slow and work on technique.

Right at the beginning of our roll, I attempt to grab the sleeve of his gi, and he pulls his arm back. His gi catches the tip of my finger, and I hear a snap.

I look down, and my finger is clearly broken.

I call Natalie to tell her I’m going to the emergency room for a broken finger. She asks which one, and at this moment, I know I am in trouble. I look down at my mangled left ring finger, the only one I need for our upcoming wedding, and give her the bad news.

Natalie is not pleased.

I drive myself to the emergency room. I have a manual transmission, so it proves to be very difficult one handed, but I make it work.

Natalie meets me there and brings me a shirt and some food since I am still in my gi, looking ridiculous. I eventually see a doctor, and they tell me what I already know. It’s broken. A spiral fracture. They numb it and set it so it’s pointing in the right direction. I call the duty corpsman on base and let them know what happened. They tell me I’ll need to make an appointment with a doctor on base and get it evaluated by a flight surgeon. I am in a soft cast with my hand wrapped. I’m thinking a couple of weeks and I’ll be back in action.

I am surprised when I wake up the next day and see my finger is again pointing in the wrong direction. I have a feeling that’s not good, and I’m not looking forward to getting it set again. Luckily, I have an appointment in a few hours with the doctor on the Navy base. I drive myself to base, getting a little better with the whole one handed manual transmission thing.

When I see the doctor, he takes my soft cast off, and my finger is discolored, twice its normal size, and very crooked. The doctor has me try to make a fist. As I try to curl my fingers, my ring finger veers off toward my pinky and overlaps it. I get a little queasy watching it.

He takes some X-rays, and I wait anxiously in the examination room. When he comes back, he asks me the last time I had anything to eat or drink and if I have someone who can drive me. He says I need to go into surgery today, and they need to put some temporary pins in. If I don’t get the surgery soon, my finger will just keep going out sideways and will heal like that. He tells me it could jeopardize my flight status if my hand and fingers aren’t all fully operational.

This just went from bad to worse.

I ask how long before I can work out or fly and if I’ll be in a cast for my wedding. He says I will likely be in a cast for three months and will be able to fly and work out soon after that.

My wedding is two and a half months away.

I don’t have much of a choice, and I call Natalie to tell her she will need to pick me up from surgery. She drives in immediately to see me before I go in. The operation doesn’t take long. I wake up in a hard cast up to my elbow, and the surgeon tells me he had to put some pins in my finger to keep everything in place.

I am worried that with this broken finger and not being able to fly or work out, I might start to fall apart. I have focused on these things for so many years to try to help me through some pretty dark times. I am also worried that I will be getting married and going on my honeymoon with a cast on my arm, but I don’t let myself wallow for too long.

The next day, I wake up determined not to miss a day of working out. I rummage through some of our home fitness gear with my good arm and find some useful equipment. We have a couple of sets of those flexible ankle weights. I pick them all up and find one that is just the right weight. I throw it on my right wrist and use it as a counterweight to balance out the cast on my left arm. Then I grab a weight vest and some headphones and take to the streets. I don’t have much of a plan, but I decide I can do about an hour of walking around downtown Jacksonville like this and get some good cardio in. I throw on a podcast, and the hour flies by. When I get home, I do some online shopping and get some more important equipment with next day shipping.

I spend all morning stalking the delivery driver and anxiously await the arrival of my new gear. It’s like Christmas when it arrives, and I tear into it as aggressively as I can with one hand. There’s a whole set of resistance bands ranging from 5 to 50 pounds, some neoprene cuffs with D-rings, and various carabiners and straps.

I put some straps around the bedroom door and attach some of the carabiners. I hang the exercise bands off the various attachment points and connect them to the neoprene cuffs that I am wearing just above my elbows. I develop an entire fitness routine using these bands attached at the elbows so I can continue to work out without using my hand. I draft up an upper body push day, a pull day, and a leg day that I can do at home with this equipment.

After my band workout, I don my weight vest and cast counterweight and walk for an hour listening to podcasts. I listen to podcasts about health, leadership, finance, and anything else that I feel will make me better. I don't want this time to go to waste.

After a few weeks of these daily workouts, I get cocky and decide to go to a regular commercial gym. I feel like this will open up some new equipment and exercises that I can still do in the cast. One of the first exercises I attempt is the seated cable row machine. It has two weight stacks, each with its own pulley and cable. I stand up close to the weight stacks and connect the cables to each neoprene cuff that I brought from home. I walk back a couple of steps to the padded bench and sit down. I do some good quality rows, pulling from the elbows, and feel my back getting a great workout.

At the end of the set, I stand up, stumble a little bit, and crash into the two weight towers. My face is between the two weight stacks, and my arms are pinned down, attached to the machine. It makes a huge commotion, and everyone is looking at me. A couple of people are hovering around me, debating if they should help. I try to get a foot up and lodge it between me and the stack to hopefully get some distance from the machine and disconnect myself. After a short while of fighting with the machine, with the weight stacks clanging and the whole gym watching, I free myself.

I am not deterred.

I continue to wander around the gym and find various pieces of equipment that I can use. Despite my rocky start, I have an amazing time at the gym and love doing something other than my resistance band routine. Focusing on all the things I can do helps me forget the few things I cannot do with my broken finger. I am surprised that without flying or being able to do my regular workouts, I feel totally fine.

I start to notice the power of consistency.

When I was flying with Phil, I saw the importance of mastering the basics and flying the maneuvers in a repeatable way. It didn’t matter what I could do when I was flying my best in perfect conditions. What mattered was what I could do consistently, no matter how bad the conditions were or how dark the night was. Focusing on consistency made me a better pilot.

When I broke my finger, I initially focused on how I wouldn’t be able to do my normal workouts. I was worried I would struggle and start to unravel. Instead, I found that I could maintain consistency with my workouts and continue to train around my injury. It didn’t matter that my workouts weren’t perfect. It only mattered that I still showed up every day.

Consistency kept me grounded when I would have otherwise fallen apart.