On Tuesday evening, as I sat down to watch the president’s speech in Col. Darel Maxfield’s North Side living room, I was struck by how much Maxfield’s life has changed since we first spoke.

It was August 2007 when Maxfield’s voice boomed into my office telephone, connected by a satellite from Besmaya Range Complex in Iraq. A 51-year-old member of the U.S. Army Reserve, Maxfield kept his head shaved and led an operation that trained Iraqi soldiers.

Back then, we regularly discussed the Iraq war through e-mail interviews. I was dubious. He was wholeheartedly committed.

On Tuesday, we reconnected for a cup of coffee and an update on all that has changed in Maxfield’s life, the losses and rewards of military service and the nature of sacrifice. As a backdrop, CNN commentators prepared us for the president’s Afghanistan announcement, and Maxfield, who voted for John McCain, was now the skeptic.

He returned home in spring 2008, too jarred by war to resume life exactly as it had been, but by that fall, he was teaching social studies at Ferris High School once again.

Last summer, he and his wife, Lesley, invited their family and friends to their backyard to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. Lesley Maxfield wore a purple dress. Darel Maxfield held her hand. And a college classmate, Judge Sam Cozza, officiated as they renewed their wedding vows.

“If I am nearing the end of the show,” Maxfield said Tuesday, “that will remain probably the greatest of days for me.”

But a month later, as he was about to start planning another deployment overseas, he suffered a serious stroke.

His right side was paralyzed at first. His vision, short-term memory, speech and balance were all damaged. A cluster of orange prescription bottles on a kitchen table marks his new regimen.

Gone is his shaved head. Now he combs brown hair back from his M-shaped hairline. His rapid-fire eloquence has been slowed by an occasional stutter.

While technically still a member of the Army Reserve, Maxfield anticipates he’ll be asked to retire soon. He hopes to return to the classroom but doesn’t yet know if that’s possible.

He’s beginning to imagine a future that might include anything from counseling fellow veterans to ministry to serving in the Peace Corps. And in the meantime, he remains fascinated by the military life he loves.

Afghanistan, he argues, is not Iraq, where people connect through satellite television to the rest of the world. In Afghanistan, the severe terrain isolates people into small tribes ruled by Islamic extremists.

In a recent e-mail, Maxfield described Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “Personally, I wish he’d simply declare victory and come home,” Maxfield wrote, “but I’m afraid nobody and I mean NOBODY has the courage to do that.”

Instead, President Barack Obama plans to send 30,000 more American military. Maxfield doesn’t think that’s enough. And even if they’re successful, he said, “What are you left with? A government that nobody believes in?”

Nonetheless, Maxfield, as a member of the U.S. military, supports the president. “Tonight before I sleep I will pray that he is right,” he said.

Obama launched into his speech. Soon, like his predecessor, he was evoking the memory of 9/11, reminding Americans of the need to protect our country’s security.

I gazed at the hot, weary West Point cadets in Obama’s audience, and I thought of that abstract, emotion-laden word so often used in connection with American military service.

I interrupted to ask Maxfield one more question. How does he describe the nature of his own sacrifice?

Tears welled up in his eyes.

He did not mention the losses I recalled: the damage to his hearing on the Besmaya firing range, the toll on his back from wearing body armor, not even the lingering post-traumatic stress that sends him to appointments with a VA psychiatrist.

The stroke? “Just bad luck,” he said.

Instead, he named time as his greatest sacrifice. Time to support his son Ben’s baseball talent, time to play golf with his son Daniel, time to visit the bedside of his son David, who was injured in a serious car accident during Maxfield’s deployment.

Now 30,000 more Americans will be asked to sacrifice those irreplaceable moments with their families, to risk their health, their peace of mind and their lives.

Maxfield, the loyal, big-hearted soldier, has his doubts about this effort. Afghanistan strikes him as “Korea on steroids.” And yet.

Near the end of his speech, the president paid tribute to “the men and women in uniform who are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice that has made government of the people, by the people, and for the people a reality on this Earth.”

The Spokane colonel remembers his time in Iraq as an invigorating challenge that integrated every skill he’d ever learned.

“I guess I should be grateful I don’t have to go to Afghanistan,” Maxfield reflected Tuesday evening. “Truthfully, if somebody has to go, I’d love to go. And if they send me, then that’s one less of my kids at Ferris they’d have to send.”