I couldn’t fit my 9/11 thoughts into a tweet.
Today, I’m thinking mostly of all the Soldiers, the Sailors, the Airmen, the Marines I know. Many of them are overseas fighting a war to end terror. I figure they’re often scared, and if they’re not scared, they’re alone… doing anything they can to fight boredom or fear or the distance or the breaches in life that the distance can bring. I can’t make them any less lonely from here. I don’t know what they’re going through. I don’t know the terminology, the acronyms, the emotional makeup, the psychological cost, the commitment to freedom, the sacrifice. I can’t fly an A-10, or read a satellite display, or inventory supplies at a cafeteria, or manage Army Wives’ health care plans, or write Public Relations articles for the Navy–goodness, I can hardly make my own bed.
My military service for the past two weeks consisted of installing a retail fixture at a Marine Corps base. That and I go to church with a lot of servicemen and women, and I hear stories. And I never listen well enough. I don’t understand all the way, the way I should.
Both my paternal grandparents are buried at Rosecrans. One of them was at Pearl Harbor. I have his uniform and a flag and a small box with several medals inside. My father was a Marine. I am not, and was not. I hear the music and read the books and watch the films, but I don’t have that component in my soul–and what I do not know, I can only respect, and nurture a sense of awe.
The Lord has sent along dozens of friends these past few years who are in the Navy or Marines Corps or Air Force or Army or Coast Guard or National Guard. They come and go–often quickly. One night I’m sitting at a friend’s house on Camp Pendleton playing board games, listening to a .50 cal pop off outside the window… and the next, they’re gone. The idea of ‘home’ becomes an afterthought in light of The Sacrifice, the Nation.
And so they sacrifice, and because of that I have freedom of speech, and there’s no way to respond to that freedom except with gratitude.
Thank you.
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