Introspection usually hits me when I’m fairly isolated (deployments do that…phonecalls are just difficult with the echo, the scratchy lines, and the bad connections…emails always lack the emotion you intend…etc., etc…)
I tend to focus on the whole ‘To whom much is given, much is expected’ phrase that I have really started to see as the mantle God’s given me – and that’s a good mantle, to be sure!
I’m seeing, though, that it can teeter rather dangerously into focus on Self – and I’m coming to learn that that is never what God intended or wants.
Lately, as is likely the case with most women my age, I’ve been internally asking the questions: ”How can I possibly have a profound impact on anything if I’m not a mother?” and “Why is it so easy for some people to have lots of babies – and John and I can’t even have one?”
I mean, we have a great friendship – a true marriage of the mind and heart – and I hate to “waste” that on just ourselves. I didn’t always feel this way, but of course I had plenty of time then.
Funny. You serve in the military in these times, and you realize that nobody has plenty of time.
You watch as the CasReps come in (and they’re almost always men in the unit I’m serving in), and your heart aches for the ones left behind…the little kids who will never know how great their dad was, or what it would have felt like to giggle when he used his scratchy chin to wake them up in the morning, or have him make a really crappy peanut butter and jelly for supper because their mom’s busy and he’s more interested in showing them how to make a firefly-jar lantern or hold a hockey stick, anyway.
You think about the family and friends, and most especially about the fiancées, the wives and the mothers. They will wait for the Hero Flight to land so they can lay their hand on that casket and connect, somehow, some way – and say goodbye to him one more time – and let him know that he’ll be missed forever, and that nobody will ever be the same now that he’s gone.
And then you think that it’s been nine long years. There are movies out now that are the Epic War Movies of our time and they’re chronicling now.
And you realize…this is it, guys.
This is the New Normal.
So, I opened my Bible, searching for something, anything that would take my mind off the careening track it was on – which at that moment felt like the narrow, cramped tunnel of a mine shaft with my thoughts all loaded into a coal cart, spiraling down and down and down.
And this is what I read:
“You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.
…Therefore my heart is glad,
and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in Hope.
…You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”*
I think He was trying to tell me that He is Enough. And that every day we’re given is part of our journey – wherever it takes us.
Don’t waste a minute of it.
*(Psalm 16: 5-11)
~ John, Holly, Spectre: Normandy Beach, 2005
