The Big D: Passed the 100 Day Mark

09 July
Ok, the kids are in bed and it's late but I'm going to crank this out while it's on my mind.

A while back someone asked me why I moved to our FDS when my husband deployed so quickly. I responded hastily and without much thought that I am 33 and too old to be living with my parents and gave her a little smiley face. This is all true, but after spending a LOT of time with my family on a little "vacation" (that's only half over--ugh!) I kinda feel like I owe it to her to find that thread and let her know that my reasons really go much deeper than that.

I love spending time with my family. They spoil me in some ways--not in others--but generally, we are a happy, healthy, functional bunch.

At an amusement park over the weekend after the 4th, my sister and I are in this little boutique that sells bath salts and body lotions and stuff. I'm sniffing bath salts and there's this one I keep going back to. I nudge my sister and tell her she needs to smell it too because I really like it. She takes a sniff and says, "Ew. It smells like a man." I tip back the container and see that it is called "American Cowboy," and is, in fact, a man's scent. Oops. I sheepishly put the lid back on and tell her I guess it's because I haven't smelled a man for so long. She quirks her eyebrows and shudders a little bit like she doesn't know if she should be amused or grossed out and leaves the shop but I steal another sniff because I realize that it faintly reminds me of my husband and I'm not ready to pull myself away from it yet.

I consider buying a little package of it but don't feel like explaining to my family why I'm buying men's bath salts so I just let it go.

When our day is nearly over there's a free concert when the park closes. They do this big patriotic tribute and ask the veterans to stand up and be recognized and there's the usual smattering of gray-headed old guys in leather vests from Vietnam who stand.   No big deal. But then the guy on stage says that last year a soldier who had just come home from Afghanistan personally requested that he also thank the families of those deployed, specifically, the wives and children who are left behind. I just about lost it. I'm shrinking in my seat, trying to hold back tears and my 7 year old spins around to flash me a big smile because she knows that guy is talking about us. I give her a watery grin and hope she doesn't notice and ask me why I'm crying. I wouldn't be able to speak if I had to and even if I could, I wouldn't because there isn't anyone here who understands.

That, friends, is why I couldn't stay home, 120 miles from the nearest Army post, 1000 miles from where the home is that I will share with my husband. He may not be there with me right now but the promise of him is. His things are there: his uniforms hang in the closet, his tool box is in the garage, his soap is under the bathroom sink. The office where he will work when he gets home is down the street. And there are thousands of people there who have been right where I am. They're living it right now. They know. You don't have to put words to what you're feeling when you are so lonesome for your husband you could cry. They don't baby you and they don't need to because in the presence of those who've gone before you and endured one or two (or more) deployments, you feel a little stronger and you know you'll survive it too.

I am here tonight in my parent's living room, surrounded by people who know me and love me and feeling a little bit lonely. I am actually sitting on the same old hard blue couch that I grew up with and finding myself homesick for our duty station, where I now feel that I belong, even though I had never stepped foot in the state prior to moving there in January. It makes me marvel at how wonderfully, miraculously adaptive we human beings are. We can pretty much get used to anything that's thrown at us and have the capacity to make the best of anything. Everyone has this capacity, I think, but most people are so afraid of pain that they avoid change in order to cling to a thin thread of comfort (which is really only just a facade, isn't it?). Those people really sell themselves short. We Army families are lucky in a way to be forced into big life changes without being asked. I would have never said to my husband, "Let's move to another state and start over," but here we are, happily adapted to it, calling it "home," and craving the new comforts of it.

Night, all. *Yaaawwwnnnn*          

This is Home

I looped the strap of my carry-on bag around the metal stem of my suitcase, then looped it again so that it was all one intertwined black mass of nylon straps and heavy duty zippers.  I let it rest on my foot, an added measure of security in case some wacko tried to pick it up and make off with it while I stood there, looking around, taking in my crazy surroundings.  I tried to be smooth and seem as if I was just taking it all in with thoughtful fascination, or even better--with a sense of longing and sadness because I was about to say good-bye.  But the truth is that I was looking around like a lost child, eyes darting here and there, skittish, watching my back.  I was in unfamiliar territory in the middle of this airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

There is an added layer of craziness when the language that is spoken all around me is not my own.  It has been an exhilarating and exhausting week of work, and sickness, and friendships formed, and preconceptions shattered, and watching God move in Honduras.  I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.  Really.  And I will come back if the opportunity ever presents itself.  But after 7 long days out of "The States," I am ready to go home. 

There are 14 of us conspicuous-looking Americans (though much less conspicuous after 7 days abroad), and many of us are minors.  Most of the grown-ups are slightly worn down after this week but the adrenaline starts pumping as we stand in clusters at the airport, checking bags, double-checking the flight status, triple checking the time on our wrist watches.  So many things can go wrong when one person travels.  Throw in a handful of teenagers and a foreign country, and disaster can fall in any of a multitude of ways. 

We vaguely and half-jokingly discuss what we'll do if a flight gets cancelled or someone doesn't get through customs.  I tell someone, "I don't care WHAT happens as long as this plane get me to 'The States.'  I can take it from there no matter where I am."  I said it with a smile but I was dead serious.  I didn't care if the plane got grounded in Ft. Lauderdale or Seattle or Timbucktoo.  I didn't care if we missed our connecting flight out of Houston and had to rent a car.  I  would be home and I could make it the rest of the way. WHATEVER.  I'd be home.  Even if I was still 1,500 miles away, I'd be home.  Do you get what I'm saying here?  After being out of the country for a week I was never so glad to be born an American citizen and get to call this great place home.  And I couldn't wait to be on American soil again where the language was mine, the roads were recognizable, the bathrooms had toilet paper in them, and all that good American stuff.  Home. 

Is there a sweeter word in the English language when one has been away for a while?  It instills such a longing for that which is warm, nostalgic, and familiar.  It's a place where you know you belong.  Where you're welcome.  Where you're accepted even though you were an idiot when you were a teenager and cringe to think of the dumb things you did while you were there.  You still want to go home and feel that comfort, that loving embrace, eat that meal that only your mom makes, see that little potpourri on the back of the toilet that's been there longer than you can remember. 

The airplane in Tegucigalpa took off on time and it got us to Houston on schedule.  I rushed through the International Arrivals hallway with the rest of my group, searching desperately for a bathroom since some of us were still dropping off little burning Honduran deposits.  Who cares?! We were HOME!!!  It looked like America, it sounded like America, it felt like America.  I handed my American passport to the customs guy with pride while he flipped through it, looking a bit bored, stamped it, and handed it back to me.  I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, "Wake up, man, and show a little pride!  You're an American!  You're the luckiest guy on earth!"

And then my prophecy came true.  The inevitable happened and we all missed our connecting flight.  Seriously.  How the heck are 14 people supposed to claim their bags, go through customs, recheck their bags, and get themselves two terminals away in 45 minutes?  Not gonna happen.  After being shuffled around for hours, we were told we would be staying the night in Houston and would leave bright and early the next morning.  Who cares?!  We were HOME!! 

I thought about that story a lot as I came to the end of my Genesis study.  It is the story of a people who long for home.  They all had to leave for one reason or another.  Adam and Eve left Eden.  Abraham left Ur, Lot left Sodom, Jacob left his parent's home after lying to his father and royally ticking off his brother, Joseph was taken out of Canaan and lived 93 of his 110 years as a foreigner in Egypt. 

After 7 days in another country, I just cannot fathom the longing he must have had.  He had one chance in all those years to go back home.  He was allowed to return and bury his father, Jacob.  And then he had to turn around and go right back to Egypt.  That must have been a pretty excruciating promise to keep. 

He is not the only Hebrew who never got to go back home.  There were the stubborn wanderers who waited to enter the Promised Land and never made it, Daniel spent a lifetime in exile, as did the rest of his generation.  And even though the New Testament 1st Century Jews were technically "home" they lived in a Roman outpost under Roman authority, and were never more miserable.  Even today God's people continually fight for what they believe to be their home.  I am not even dipping my toes into THAT debate, except to say that I have come to understand that there is no place on this earth--not a single place--that is truly home.

As good as it felt to be in America that day, I wasn't really home.  For though I was born in this body as an American citizen, what I REALLY am, is a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20).  What I felt when I walked through the International Arrivals hallway in Houston is a faint glimmer of what I will feel when I get to heaven.  What I feel when I walk in the house I grew up in and smell the familiar food cooking on the stove and see the same old décor up on the walls in that place where I belong--that is NOTHING compared with heaven.

It is dangerous to get so attached to a place on this earth that you are afraid to leave.  God still had work for Joseph to do in Egypt and even though it felt to Joseph like following God meant moving backwards, he was obedient to that and his life ended well.  He finished by passing on the eternal mindset to the next generation that they weren't home.  Not yet.

Well, you don't seem to be freaking out!

Reactions to our news--that my husband at the age of 33 has enlisted in the Army--has run the gamut from from, "I'm so proud of you," to, "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," (yeah, we haven't been thinking about what it means for us AT ALL).  But, "Well, you don't seem to be freaking out!" is by far my favorite.  I like it because it was spoken by a friend who knows exactly what military life is.  And the truth is, I'm NOT freaking out even though life as we knew it is pretty much over and hubby ships off in less than five months.

Most people who know us know what we've been through in the last three years or so.  Job loss, followed by the struggle to be grateful for crappy, undesirable, low-paying jobs, followed more job loss, etc.  It's been difficult.  Imagine in those three years getting more letters than can be counted that all begin with the following statement: "Thank you for your interest in (fill-in-the-blank) law enforcement agency.  We've selected a more desirable/qualified candidate."  Over and over and over.  A never-ending stream.  What they're basically saying is, "We don't want you (even though you tested really well).  You have baggage (even though we all have if we're honest with ourselves).  We believe we will regret hiring you (even though you could bring with you a vast amount of training and experience).  We know your old bosses and what they say is far more influential than anything you've got to say to redeem yourself."  Ouch.

Now imagine that you are sitting in the Army recruiter's office.  It may seem like a move of desperation to some but the truth is, you are kind of excited about it.  Some guys are just meant to do this kind of work.  There's just one problem.  There are no jobs available.  The military really isn't beating down anyone's door to join up because "the war is over" and all that, I guess (does anyone really believe that?).  But the seargants you are working with are determined to get you in because they see something in you, or because your test scores are really high, or because they felt some unexplainable nudge from above, or because you brought them Slivinski's donuts at 7am, or whatever.  The point is THEY WANT YOU. 

They want you so bad they are willing to make a call and subvert the system and manually input the job you really wanted to begin with but were told it wasn't likely you could get because the availability of jobs is so limited.

Now, I'm not an empathetic person by nature but...wouldn't that just turn your whole world around?! 

I'm still too busy being ecstatically happy for my husband to bother with freaking out.  I'm not sitting here in blissful unawareness that the future will indeed hold many challenges and trials for our family.  I'm already trying to figure out how to live in the tension of security (steady job, healthcare, housing, etc.) mixed with the insecurity of not knowing where we will be living a year from now.

But I'm not scared.  I'm not sad.  I'm definitely not freaking out.  I have even entertained the notion that perhaps the difficult and crooked path we have been on for the last three years has been sifting away the chaff of materialism, needing a false sense security to feel safe, hanging on to things I need to let go of, and thinking the wrong things are important.  I am ready for this adventure.  I am prepared as much as my limited knowledge of the future can allow me to be.

This next chapter is going to be very interesting.....

Inspiration has struck!

Did you know that the Pilgrims spent nearly 10 years in Holland before coming to America?  They left England not with the original intent of laying the foundation of the greatest nation to ever grace this broken earth.  They just wanted to get out from under the corruption of the Church of England and escape the persecution they faced for resisting its authority.  Not very romantic, is it?

I'm not sure why they picked Holland.  Maybe the politics of the region led them to believe they'd be left alone there.  Maybe someone had family there.

I want to share a paragraph that I read in a book about the early days of American history that just fascinates me.  This came from a letter written by William Bradford, a man who, though not the pastor of the congregation, had been with them from the beginning and was always considered a leader among them.  These are his reasons for giving up on Holland by the time 1620 rolled around:

"1. Their life (though they never complained of it) was so hard that almost no others were coming from England to join them..., 2. Their life was aging them prematurely (everyone old enough to hold a job worked 12 to 15 hours a day), and was so debilitating them that, should the time come when they would have to move again, they might not physically be able to do so, 3. Their children were also being worn down, and many were being drawn away by the lures of the world around them, 4. They had cherished a 'great hope and inward zeal' of at least playing a part, if as only a stepping stone for others, in the carrying forth of the Light of Christ to remote parts of the world."

Can you guess which sentence in the paragraph above sparked an idea for a new story?  Ok, ok, I'll just tell you.  It's sentence number 3 about their children.  I read that and thought to myself, "Aha!  They were humans like us!  They had the same challenges in raising their kids to love God--just like us!" 

I forget this when my kids bring home worksheets every Thanksgiving with silly-looking Pilgrims donning huge black hats and shaking hands with Squanto.  They bury the fish with the corn kernels and the next thing you know, it's time to eat!  Happy Thanksg-er, uh, Happy Turkey Day!

The Pilgrims become cartoon characters to us, ceasing to be real. But if you dig around through history, you'll find that they were, in fact very real.  Both in their superhero-like abilities to deal with hardship, and in their weaknesses, of which they had in abundance too. 

This is what makes a story really great, I think.  I don't need my hero or heroine to be so pure and flawless that his/her perfection is completely unattainable and thereby unrelatable.  In the same way, I want my villain to have some redeeming qualities because we ALL have a little bit of darkness in us, right?   

To think of the Pilgrims, or any other historical figures as any less complex than that is to misunderstand history.  And to miss out on a great story.

So, inspiration has struck.  I'm living in the world of 17th Century Holland, at least in my mind.  And when you're a teenage girl who has lived a brutally challenging life and you finally get a taste of freedom, who is the villain?  Why it's your parents, of course, who want you to stay the course of a faithful life of servitude and sacrifice.  Or maybe...it's the hunky guy who calls himself a Christian but who only lives for himself and diminishes your parents and their crazy notion to go to the New World.

Will she she make the choice in the end that honors God?  Will she end up on the Mayflower with her family?  I can't even say for sure because the characters and the plot tend to take on a life of their own as they develop in my mind.  But one thing I DO know.  They will be human.  They will breath life into a group of people that seem plastic and cartoonish even to those of us today who know our American history.

As a Christian and an American who has benefited in so many ways from the toil and sacrifice of these 102 brave souls who left such a giant thumbprint on the world, it's the least I can do.