I’m Not Weak
It’s not that I am weak if I fall. It’s not that I feel low, it’s about getting back up. I have fallen, and I feel like I’m laying on the ground. I feel battered and bloody. Am I weak because I took a hit and I fell? What is strength? Is strength that we never get it, or that when we do we find the ability to stand back up? While I’ll admit this has been the longer I’ve been down on the mat, I feel like I am making progress. I often feel that others have looked down upon me in judgment and have placed little thought about where I’ve come from. I often look to myself and place an unreasonable goal on myself. I look to myself and call myself weak for not being able to stand back up. While there’s no doubt I am trying, and there’s no doubt I have made progress, I don’t feel it’s been fast enough. I feel much of the time I’ve been on my own dealing with these feelings I have little experience with. Failure is not a stranger to my lips, but to this magnitude, to this extent, I have no frame of reference. The clock ticks and it’s maddening in my ears. The hours feel like years, and I watch as the civil war wages on inside my mind.
For years I watched men around me. Why didn’t I feel like I fit in? What was so different about me then others? I wrestled with my place for years. In school I didn’t fit in with the guys. I was an outcast, an anomaly. I watched the world move around me and I felt like a spectator instead of a player, I found the longer the status quo stayed the same, the wider the chasm grew. I was the friend to the ladies but rarely more. I was the annoying tag along for the guys, so I chose to walk the path of the lesser pain. I sat with the girls at lunch, I hung out with the girls out of school, and as I grew I was the one guy in the crowd of the girls. Not a bad place to be in my own mind, I was with the girls, but only as their friend. I found in time it was a place I could live to be. I learned to share my emotions, to communicate with the female persuasion, but in time the thing that once was a blessing seemed to become a curse.
How quickly innocence can be taken away. It’s funny how much some people change going through military training, and how some never let go of their old selves. During my training I dove into it. Mind body and soul I gave my all to learning all I could. I kept my innocence, I kept my core, I remained me. Through graduation I became more then I was. I was a soldier and I was proud of it. I left for a country foreign to me, to be the best soldier I could be. I grew, and I absorbed what I could. In my walk I kept a hole of my faith. Then the night we got the news, Lt. Brown was KIA. The war became real, and it was hard to imagine, he was gone. The morning my truck was ambushed, a well sought plan to kill the Americans. The memories from that day have stuck with me all these many years later. The facts were the fact, and I talked about the facts about what happened, but rarely have I discussed how I felt. How does anyone feel knowing someone tried to murder them? How does anyone feel in the face of so much hatred? We were trained to always put the mission first. We were trained to act, react, plan, and execute, but never did we talk about how to handle the emotions we would feel. For a year those emotions were buried, and rarely talked about. The mission tempo kept us busy, and we fought to stay alive every day. Even when we were on the base, our guard was never down because of the constant barrage of incoming mortars and rockets. We were such a hot bed of activity the USO couldn’t come to our base because it wasn’t safe enough. I remember going to Camp Anaconda and they had a pool, and movies, and a Burger King. The Green Zone obviously, a safe enough place to be. After all these years the memories have surfaced and after the events of September of 2016, it feels like all of a sudden the flood gates opened, and I’ve been trying to manage all of these incidences, all of these traumas and while I’m trying to put labels on the emotions, I feel as if I’ve shut down and I only take out some emotions per day. Am I weak, or the product of years of neglect?
I have found in my walk in the last year with this ministry I have grown. I can see the growth within myself, and even if I was a little biased, I have heard recently how much others have seen the growth within me. The fact is, we don’t know the pain someone’s in. We don’t know how strongly something has affected them, and it’s not for us to judge that pain. Instead it’s our place to be there to help them grow in Christ, and to offer mercy and grace to console them. In all our times we must learn there is a time for everything, and importantly, there’s a time to feel. Ecclesiastes 3:4 “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;” We don’t know how long it takes to heal. We don’t know how long it takes to feel. We don’t know what it’s like to loose, and to get back up and keep pressing on. We try to extend an olive branch by sharing our own experiences, and to that I say, there’s also a time and place. We need to learn when to listen, and when to speak. We need to learn when it’s the right time and place, and we need to find what we can do to help those who are suffering. Romans 12:15 “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” I don’t want to be told it’ll get better soon. I don’t want to be told things will get better. For over a year now I’ve heard the same cliché’ answers, and the broken record plays, and I don’t want to hear it anymore. We as people think we are in control but we aren’t. God’s in control, and all we can do is react to the situations we find ourselves in. We make our choices based on the good or bad in our hearts. In my time I’ve chosen to love and have faith in God despite my calamity. I have chosen to stand firm on the Word of God and have faith that when my time for prosperity comes, I will be blessed, whether it be in this life or the next. I trust in the Lord and put my faith in Him. This day shall pass, and when the storm passes I shall rebuild.
It’s not weak to take time to weep for a life lost. It’s not weak to struggle with the emotions from war. War changes people, and for me, I left something in the sand in that country so far away. It takes time to process, and to manage. I’m not weak because I have taken time for myself. I’m not weak for the tears I’ve shed for lost friends. I’m not weak, I’m human. My flesh is weak, but my faith is strong. I’ll never be the same as I was before all of this. I’ve seen so much, and I’ve lived through so much, all I can do now is share my experience and try to help someone else in need. I hope no one gets to the point I was. Let Jesus pick you up and give you shelter when you are in sorrow. Trust in the Lord when you’re in danger. Put all your hope in the Lord and believe that whatever hell you face here, paradise is waiting for you there. No matter if you are hurt, or angry, sad, or happy, in all things, try to uphold yourself in a dignified way pleasing to the Lord. Every one of our emotions is valid, it’s just a matter of how we manage them, how we face them. There’s a time and place, but if you have feelings you’ve not dealt with, it’s better to face them early, then wait till they have created other problems in your life. Don’t wait, act now. Face the pain, and face the day.
The Arrow Preacher 