Trainees

They sit there staring at me, with pleading eyes.

What's it all really like?
What's your favorite duty station?
Are you happily married? They say you can't be and be in the Army.
Do you care about us?

Every time I see them, something in me is changed. Every time I drive past, my heart aches. I love seeing how they change around their families, the version of them that I am blessed to spend time with disappears, confidence swells and joy overwhelms. America, I wish you could see how these boys are brave. They have a courage that I can't define, and it's simultaneously wrapped up in what-the-heck-have-I-done???

I tell them how much I admire them. They joined knowing that we are at war. There are no illusions in their minds about what they are facing. They know that a fight is ahead of them: fights against their fears, their drill sergeants, their desire to sleep, the enemy...

My husband asked me why it impacts me so. I told him it's because I know what's ahead. I've been to too many funerals and hospitals. I've had a front row seat for too many divorces, and fears. I know the enormity of the task before them, and I know that the vast majority of them will have an extremely difficult time handling it. I know that they will desperately look for someone to comfort them, and then make it almost impossible for them to come anywhere near to their heart. I know the walls that will exist, and I know the effort it takes to tear them down. So I feel compelled. I feel burdened. Pour in as much Love, as much courage, and as much Goodness as I humanly can, in the few hours I spend with them, as those walls are being built up. And I hope that it will stay there, with them, forever.

To know is to Love

When I was younger, I hungered for information. I wanted wisdom desperately. I watched, I listened, I asked, I learned as much as I possibly could. I challenged everyone on practically everything. I had no desire to please my peers, or to seek out their approval. Where I turned to approval from, were people who had achieved, as far as my young person's brain could process: joyful marriages, joyful parenting, PHD's, doctors, etc etc etc. If you were joyfully succeeding in the world, I wanted your approval. Perhaps that's still true today.

My priest asked me who I turn to when I'm in need. The honest answer was no one. The conversation was striking, as I heard myself acknowledging, out loud, that simple truth. My children asked me a similar question that evening (a sign that the lesson really needed to be driven home) Mommy? Who knows you best? "I don't know.... No one."

I don't talk about myself. I like to make people laugh, and I love to listen, but there is oh so little to share, and oh so much at the exact same time, and words are solid. They're concrete. They can't be unspoken. For every opinion I have, there's an opposite. How can I speak words that are evolving? How can I formulate thoughts that are changing? How can I declare anything to anyone when what I "think" might be different in the next moment?

About the only concrete I have is Love. God's Love, and the love I hold in my heart for others. It's the solid foundation that exists, in my brain, in a verbal context. I can Love, clearly, because it's been firmly resolved. It isn't a question, but an action. I do it with the fiercest energy I have in my bones. I hope I do it well.