Asymmetric Spiritual Warfare

     While I was growing up I was introduced to Christian Rock by some friends at church. There were quite a few different styles all equivalent to some of the mainstream artists of the day to include Steve Taylor (Weird Al), D.C. Talk (Beastie Boys), Amy Grant (Belinda Carlisle/Tiffany), Michael W. Smith (Peter Cetera), Carmen (Henry Rollins post Rollins Band), Tourniquet (death-metal) and my all-time favorite Petra (pick your hair band). My dad (who reads this blog and will either chuckle at this or shake his head and sigh deeply) still referred to all of Christian Rock as “the screams of Satan” even though it was Christian because electric guitars and hair band metal were not the way he was raised to praise Jesus – but I digress. I had a couple favorite albums by Petra but the one that I automatically think about when I hear “Petra” is the Album “This Means War.” In fact in a fit of inspirational genius I just purchased the album from iTunes and am currently rocking out to it. It is so fantastically hair band awesome I know why I liked it so much. The whole album is about, you guessed it, spiritual warfare in quite the literal sense.  That album sings and plays on numerous different themes we hear in church on a regular basis: Put on the full armor of God; be prayer warriors; be available to God’s call; we each fight the good fight in our own ways; etc. So I grew up wanting to be a warrior for the Lord, in fact I had the t-shirt and everything. Somewhere along the way I must have gotten my wires crossed because I ended up enlisting in the U.S. Army as opposed to God’s Army and in 2005 I found myself in Iraq… yes folks, it’s time for some war stories.

Very important qualification that I want to make up front: This post is not about Lieutenant Galstad. This is an allegory. The fact that I am in this story is completely inconsequential to the message I’m trying to convey. I am DEFINITELY not trying to put myself on a pedestal because as you will see this post is quite self-deprecating. As my friend most eloquently stated once: Jesus Saves. I’m no Jesus. On with the war story…

     When we arrived in Ad Dawr, our first area, one of the first things we did was go for a little area-familiarization tour. And of course that tour was interrupted by excitement so I spent my first day on the ground doing exciting things like shooting locks off houses with shotguns, clearing rooms, and running over donkeys with armored Humvees. The unit as a whole started off driving around in tanks, setting up checkpoints, and generally trying to keep the peace. Since I was one of two assistant intelligence officers it was my job to identify and find the bad guys and then send our Soldiers out to get them. After a couple weeks of getting acquainted with the area our intelligence shop got pretty good at finding the bad guys. Meanwhile the Squadron Commander started to change things up a bit. He started to really truly engage with our local hosts. He started to invite them onto the FOB, talk to them, find out what they needed, go visit them at their houses, and promise and deliver money to them for projects. There was a distinct lack of talk of finding bad guys and I also took issue with giving money to the local leaders because they were all corrupt and that money would them be used to fund operations against us… and me. But I was very junior and was not in any position to argue with the boss so I saluted, moved out, and continued to find the bad guys while the boss was out dealing with the local sheiks and civic leaders.

     Eventually our unit, due in no small part to the excellent intelligence section, had calmed our first area of operations. We had found our #1 bad guy, attacks were way down compared to the rest of the theater, the local Iraqi Army unit was getting better, and there were other places to use our expertise. Our unit was ordered to move and as a farewell gift my boss put together one last project for the local leaders: he turned our entire base over to them and gave plans and money to turn it into a factory to create jobs for the local community. I thought that was a pretty decent going away gift. We said goodbye to everyone in Ad Dawr and headed to our new assignment, Muqdadiyah, one of the most unstable and violent areas in all of Iraq at the time. Muqdadiyah had it all, Sunni on Shia on Kurd violence; lots of attacks against the Iraqi Army; regular mortar attacks; corrupt government; areas that if entered would guarantee a firefight; basically Iraq 2006 in a nutshell. There was also, as we would discover, a then-quiet minority who were actively seeking to stop the violence.

     Once again we took a little time to learn the area but right away I noticed that the Squadron Commander took no time to start getting to know the leaders. From the beginning there was a shift far less “find the bad guys” and a lot more “let’s work on building this area back up,” despite the fact that there was roughly 1000% more attacks and violence in this area than in our previous area. I was still working the “find the bad guys” angle of all of this and we were EXTREMELY busy with ongoing operations so the boss consorting with the enemy (as I saw it) was of even less concern to me than before. However, one morning I was providing intel support to one of the units out rolling around the battlefield.

     The unit called in on the radio that they were at a Sheik’s house and that the Sheik’s name matched that of a name on their target list. I tried to find the target packet for the Sheik but I couldn’t find it. The Intelligence Officer (remember, I was only one of two assistants) was out of the headquarters and my counterpart had just gone to bed after an 18 hour shift and none of my Soldiers knew the answer to the question, “should we arrest this Sheik?”. The leader on the ground was losing patience and I made the “safe” decision to have the unit arrest the Sheik and bring him in. Wrong answer, Lieutenant. Not only was the Sheik not the same guy as the name on the list, but this particular Sheik had been working with the Squadron Commander on the “calming the violence” campaign. We now call that campaign “The Sunni Awakening” and it was that initiative that I, single-handedly, almost aborted. And I almost aborted it because I was stuck with the “kill or capture the bad guy” mindset while my boss was desperately trying to get the unit into a true counter-insurgency mindset. It was only after my boss apologized profusely and ate a lot of humble pie that the Sunni Awakening continued in Muqdadiyah.

     Welcome back from Iraq. We’re here in 2013 and now I’m going to talk about the Christian church and our propensity to go to war against sin – and consequently against sinners. Our boss Jesus is desperately trying to get the message of his love and forgiveness of sins out to people and a lot of Christians, to include me, get stuck on eradicating sin and seem to miss the fact that for most of his ministry Jesus was focused on healing, loving, teaching, and preaching about how Pharisaical Law (there he goes with the Pharisee thing again) was not the way to God. We preach to and teach our kids that the way to be a good Christian is to be abstinent, stay away from drugs and alcohol, and try to live a good life instead of focusing on helping others and loving the unlovable. There is nothing wrong with encouraging our children to abstain from sex because sex has the remarkable power to make a young person lose their ever-loving mind and make some bad bad life choices. An easy goal to identify (yet very unreasonable) is to wait for marriage but at a bare minimum we should make them aware of the real and life-altering consequences of unprotected sex and even sex using protection. We should encourage our kids to be EXTREMELY cognizant of the addictive power of drugs and alcohol and make sure they understand the types of possible negative outcomes that they are dealing with. But we fail miserably teaching these things because it’s HARD to get all that info in a 90 minute youth-group session. And there are a lot of hard questions and awkward silences and maybe even some terrible revelations that might get out like, “Mr. Galstad didn’t wait until he was married to have sex! O. M. Goodness.” And so we simplify things.

     But during the simplification process the message is getting lost and we’re teaching our Christian youth that they are better than the other kids because they are Christian. We don’t mean to do this but we’re giving them an attitude of superiority and we are setting them up to go to war against sin and the sinner. And then those youth grow up to be adults who teach their own kids those same terrible terrible lessons. As Christians we tend to look at other people like single parents, drug addicts, the poor, and other less fortunate folks as sinners caught by sin. “You see, that’s the consequence of bad decisions, right there. Now be more like Jesus or you too could end up pregnant at 17/addicted/poor/whatever.” Everything becomes a morality play and a lesson and a modern-day Christian fable and the idea of compassion is relegated to the potential chance-encounter on the road like the Good Samaritan.

     And meanwhile Jesus weeps because that’s not what he came to do. Jesus was a counter-insurgent against sin. He went to the people of the world and even though they were tainted with sin he gave them his love, his hope, his healing, and his everlasting life. He did not separate himself from the people and drive around in his armored tank of holiness. Instead he walked amongst the people, ate with them, loved them, showed compassion to them and pissed off the Pharisees to no end. Jesus did not call on us to put on the full armor of God in order to attack our neighbors. No, in Ephesians 6:12 we are told specifically that we wear that armor not against our flesh and blood neighbors but as spiritual protection. Our war is not with our neighbors our war is with sin and we defeat sin by acting like Christ which is by loving our neighbors; doing nice things for them; helping them in their time of need; wrapping our arms around them when they are sad and offering solace; rejoicing with them when they are joyful; and being there to answer their hard questions with a spirit of gentleness, love, and care. Leave the eradication of sin to the Holy Spirit because that is its war.

     Our war is one of compassion on a daily basis. Our daily prayer as Christians should be to live with compassion and love and understanding. Because here is the reality: we are all saved by faith and by grace. That’s it. We are all one bad decision/moment of weakness away from tragedy. I grew up relatively poor in small town in Minnesota and I turned out OK but only by the grace of God. I was one moment of passion too long; one drink too many; one credit card charge too much; one choice of the wrong drug away from terrible life consequences. So I encourage you all to remember that Jesus came not to condemn the sinners but to save them and I encourage you to do the same. Jesus waged war on sin and saved the sinners through compassion, healing, love, and sacrifice and we are called to do the same. That sounds like an Army into which I would enlist.

Why Billboard?

I just got back from a back-and-forth trip to Minnesota from Maryland. So before anything else I want to say “I miss you” and “Thanks” to my Mom and Dad. Now that the formalities are out of the way back to the posting.

During my trip across the country I saw ALL manner of billboards, bumper stickers, and advertisements and a couple of them really got me to thinking. “Lion’s Den Adult Emporium” made me think “Really? There’s a market for huge porn stores on the interstate in 2013? I thought those all died with the advent of readily available broadband internet.” Apparently not, since there are at least 4 outlets for that chain located along two different major interstate arteries. I also saw an old school multi-sign reminder to support gun rights. There were 5 signs with 1 line apiece with a little poem about a criminal breaking into a house and the owner stopping the robbery with a gun. Rural Indiana looks to be an NRA stronghold if that little display is any indicator. I also saw any number of anti-abortion advertisements, defense of traditional marriage billboards, lots of anti-porn billboards (oddly enough they were located right after the ads for the Lion’s Den), and any number of other ads supporting one side or the other of various divisive issues. And I started to wonder about what would possess someone to spend a lot of time, money, and effort to design, pay for, and erect a billboard to broadcast their position.

Since I was on the road for almost 36 hours over two days without a traveling companion with whom I could speak I had plenty of time to mull this question of “Why Billboard?” over in my head quite a few times. The simple answer is “because they feel really passionately about that particular subject.” I respect that answer and it adequately explains a single aspect of the question “Why billboard?” but since I’m of the scientific persuasion and I had the time I started to look for the ULTIMATE answer to the question “Why billboard?” and not the PROXIMATE answer because the answer of “passionate feelings” begs the question of “where do those passionate feelings come from?” And the answer I came up with was “from church”. Notice that I said “from church” and not “from Jesus”. [Good Christians that are reading this article, kindly pause right now and put aside your righteous indignation and finish reading the blog before you blow up my comments section. Thanks.] That distinction is VERY important to me for a number of important reasons. Let me list out those important reasons for you:

1. The homosexuals
2. The atheists
3. The women at the well
4. Assorted “sinners” of the world

Those particular people are very important to me because those are my friends whom I love. I love them dearly and see a clear tendency in “Christian” circles to attack my friends. This particularly angers me because, and read this carefully, JESUS WOULD NOT ATTACK THEM. I’m so sorry to break it to you but I can’t see Jesus gay-bashing, I can’t see Jesus slut-shaming, and I can’t see Jesus – even though he is GOD – indulging in elitism. And every day I see “Christians” all around me do those exact things and even have the gall to justify their actions with the Bible.

And because of those actions by “Christians” I have the hardest of times sharing the Gospel with my friends whom I love. Because every time I bring up “Jesus” my target audience goes into super-religious defense mode. It’s like they are battle-mechs with a big red button that reads “Wingnut Protection System” instead of “Missile Defense System”. That means even when talking about my reasoning for adopting my daughters – a relatively safe topic – I have to thread the needle very carefully because the moment I mention “it’s a Jesus thing” my friends’ hackles go up, missiles and chaff are deployed, and the conversation is very much in danger of being aborted.

This is because my well-meaning “Christian” friends have erected billboard-esque arguments that directly attack my beloved non-Christian friends’ lives.

“Homosexuality is an abomination” 

“If she wasn’t such a slut she wouldn’t be in that situation” 

“Atheists are stumbling blocks placed in the paths of Christians by the devil.”

In response to years upon years of being judged and hated my non-Christian friends rightfully are a more than a little skeptical anytime someone brings up the big “J” or “G”. In fact the more scientific-minded of them have already formulated a fantastic plan. That plan is to instantly throw up every single scientific, logical, and well-researched argument as fast as they can in the hopes that the crazy right-wing evangelical will go away. And it works all too well. Congratulations, Christians, we have taught the world to hate us. “But Greg, in John 15 Jesus says that the world will hate us, so we must be doing something right.” Wrong. If the world hates us because we are loving the people around us, healing the sick, feeding the poor, and bringing comfort to the masses I would agree with you. But THAT is not the reason we are hated. We are hated for being intolerant, hypocritical, and arrogant pricks and for being modern-day Pharisees.

We as a Christian church have become as legalistic as the Pharisees and religious leaders of the pre-Christian era Hebrew synagogues. We have exchanged the love and openness of Jesus for the legalism of Paul. We have stopped eating of the fruit of the Spirit and indulged in practicing the judgment of Revelation. And all of my non-Christian friends know it and that breaks my heart.

And we do it because it’s easier than loving our neighbor. This is the real ultimate answer to the question of “Why billboard?” It is easier to classify and judge our neighbor and then justify our actions than to reach out to them. “Gay sex is icky and I don’t like or understand it” is not a palatable answer in today’s world so instead we say, “Jesus forbade it” which is false. We write off the atheists as enemies of the faith instead of embracing them with love, joy, perseverance, and GENTLENESS. We are so scared of our daughters and sons growing up and being damaged by drugs, alcohol, and the very real fear of an unexpected child that we cloister our children and teach them that those other kids are on the pathway to hell and that our children are to be “in the world, not of the world.” That’s a polite way to say that we’re teaching our kids to avoid the very people WITH WHOM JESUS WOULD HAVE HUNG OUT.

So do not write off my statement of “We are hated for being intolerant and arrogant pricks and for being modern-day Pharisees,” as hyperbole or exaggeration. Go read the Gospels with a critical eye and substitute “Pharisee” with “Stereotypical Christian”. “But Greg, you said ‘stereotypical Christian. I’m not…’” Yes you are and so am I. There are stereotypes for a reason and as soon as we wrap our heads around the idea that we’re not perfect, we’re not the exception, and we’re not acting like Jesus the sooner we can start to undo YEARS of hateful religious dogma. Notice how I used the word “religious.” We’ve been religious and it’s time to stop. It’s time to start acting like Jesus and I think I have a plan to do just that. Project Mayhem.

With many apologies to Chuck Palahniuk I exhort all my Christian brothers and sisters to start an insurgency within their own churches. I’m not talking about creating yet another denomination. I’m talking about subverting your current church to start acting more like Jesus and talking less like a Pharisee (I see you squirm when you read that word. I’m not going to stop writing it.) I have no concrete plan, no tracts, no 3-step path to restoring the legitimacy of the Christian church in the modern world. But you can start by guiding discussions away from the “don’ts” (Don’t listen to rock music, don’t drink alcohol, don’t wear skimpy clothes, don’t watch Harry Potter) back toward the dos (Love your neighbor as yourself being the big DO, here). When your Christian cohorts start to say things like “I love my gay friends I just can’t accept their lifestyle” I want you to think really hard about how that sounds to someone who is truly in love with a member of the same sex. And then I want you to realize that JESUS WOULD NEVER SAY THAT. Look in the Bible. Find an example of Jesus saying something like that – ANYTHING like that – to anyone but a Pharisee. You won’t because Jesus, despite being God didn’t really judge the sinners. And he certainly did NOT gay-bash – and non-acceptance of the gay lifestyle is gay-bashing. (No, really. Imagine your friends didn’t approve of your hetero-marriage and reminded you of that each time you saw them. How long would you remain friends? It’s gay-bashing. Stop it.)

Outside of the church in your everyday life I encourage you to truly love your neighbor. Do kind things for them, love them unabashedly, help them out when they need it, take care of their needs, be wise and gentle in answering their hard questions. Instead of judging, comfort them. Instead of moralizing, rejoice in their happiness. Allow someone who is broken hearted to simply cry on your shoulder because you truly love them and empathize with them. This is Project Mayhem – teaching your church to love the unlovable, take care of the needy, feed the poor, and generally both act and preach LIKE Jesus and trying to do it yourself. It’s revolutionary.

This subject is of particular interest to me because of those four people groups I mentioned earlier. Notice how I used the term “beloved” and “love” when describing my friends. That is because the homosexuals, the atheists, the women at the well, and the “sinners” of this world have brought so much joy into my life. I love them all dearly not because they are in need of my saving message of Christ’s love but because they are simply some of the most fun, most intelligent, and most lovable people in the world. I want to spend eternity with them because they are just that cool and unless I can undo about 400 years of dogma-damage I’m not going to get that chance. I truly love my neighbor and want to see them in heaven and the way of getting them there is not to judge them, not to convince them with your bullet-proof theological argument (my atheist friends will SOOOOOO eat your lunch so do not even try), not to convince them of the error of their ways. The way to get my friends into heaven is the same way that Jesus convinced me 2,000 years ago: through his unending love and his absolute joy in ministering to the people around him. So help me out and be more like Christ. I have a lot of cool friends.

The Face of Fear

I’m having a hard time writing this article. First off I don’t want to come across as some sort of holier-than-thou internet spokesman. “Look at me! I HELP THE HOMELESS!” So allow me to remind you what started this whole chain of events: I caught myself judging a pan-handler; judging them to the extent that I cooked up an imaginative world where there was a sinister group of people with nothing better to do than stand on street corners in 95 degree heat in order to collect money… just because. I didn’t want to help a pan-handler because I wanted to believe they were debasing themselves as part of a game. THAT is what started this. So to reiterate: I’m really a jerk. [edit: for anyone new to the blog here is the posting that spawned this one.]

The next reason I’m having difficulty writing this article is because I’m trying to come up with good answers for some inevitable questions that people may have. And the bottom line is that I don’t have any really good answers. Questions like: Do you think this is really going to change anything or are you just doing this so you feel better as a Christian? I really don’t have a good answer to that one. I very well might be doing this in order to pay penance for being a jerk. I very well could be that shallow and this might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up.

I’m also afraid that writing this article might make me lose sight of the humanity at stake in this operation. I met a guy. He’s homeless. He’s trying hard to straighten out his life. He very well may have lied to me for an hour over lunch today and I very well could be the sucker of suckers. But at the end of the day there’s a homeless guy out there and judging by some of his stories there are a lot of people just happy to curse at him for that reason. Correction: There are hundreds of thousands (650,000 in 2009 numbers) of homeless people with a lot more folks happy to curse at them for it. I am afraid that this article could detract from the plight of these PEOPLE. Not numbers, people. Lots of them but today I want to focus on one: The one standing in the median of HWY 175 and Dobbin road who was very worried when he saw me walking down the middle of the street to the median on which he was standing.

I was coming back from ferrying around some of my children and decided that it was a good opportunity to swing by Target to see if anyone was pan-handling. Yesterday the 3 or 4 times I drove by there was no one there but today on the first shot I saw him. A skinny white kid with a black baseball hat on, a small sign that I didn’t get a chance to read as I pulled in. I was conflicted because a: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had my chance – and – b: I had been trying to do this for the last couple days and I finally had no choice. I pulled into the parking lot with a million what-ifs going through my head. I got out of the car into the hellish heat (95F with really high humidity, not a cloud in the sky, just after noon, mid-July in Maryland) and started walking down the hill playing through any number of possible scenarios in my head. As I approached the kid I saw his backpack on the ground slumped up against a street sign as well as a couple empty water bottles. Surprisingly the kid walked away from his backpack to the other end of the median as I approached. When I called to him and asked him if he wanted to grab lunch he froze. I saw the look on his face go from fear to shock to gratitude in less time than it took you to read that sentence. And that change was amazing and I instantly remembered something my parents or some teacher had told me regarding dangerous animals. “They are more scared of you than you are of them.” The kid quickly agreed, asked if he could grab his bag and then guided me over to the crosswalk. I had planned on walking back up the hill. The smart homeless kid knew that there were more and better restaurants across the intersection – ones that did not involve walking up or down large hills in the sun. I asked him his name and he told me it was Sam.

I had been afraid that I would have to force myself to not talk and endure a bunch of awkward silences but that wasn’t the case. Sam was quick to start up chatting and immediately told me how he had been frightened that I was going to cuss him out or beat him up. He was animated, well-spoken, very polite, and a bit defensive. He had quite a bit to say about the people who judged him and even more to say about his history. We sat down in Chik-Fil-A and he explained how he got to where he was: Christian High School student, kind of a wallflower, started hanging out with some drug users, found out he really liked heroin, finished school and got kicked out of his parents’ house, just came off heroin last year and has been on methadone since, has a job, currently pan-handling to pay to get his car (in which he’s living) tagged and titled, and generally trying to get his life put back together. The longer we sat and ate the less defensive he got and the less he talked about people judging him. He got comfortable enough to confess that he was going to grab some cigarettes before he headed back out and that he really needed to kick that habit, too. He seemed genuinely shocked after lunch when I handed him a couple bucks and wished him well. I think I did pretty well with the whole “less talking more listening” thing but he did ask about my job so I did talk about the Army a little bit. So what?

And that’s the big question I’m trying to answer right now: So What? At the very root of all of this is my desire: that other people who call themselves Christians will do the same thing because I believe it will help make you a better Christian. I know it’s definitely restored my focus on the dignity and humanity of the people around me and caused me to look more at those around me as I think Jesus Christ would look at them. But what else? Do I have an endstate? Do I have an all-encompassing plan to start up a church ministry in my own community and spread the love of Christ on an industrial scale? No I do not. I will champion Social Justice. I will wholeheartedly support David Batstone’s “Not For Sale” campaign, I will volunteer in my church’s outreach and ministry programs. I will do all these things as part of a greater movement to spread Jesus’ love. But in this little aspect I’m going to do it alone. Call me selfish (Greg, you could do so much more GOOD if you applied yourself) if you must – and I very well might be – but this one is for me.

So maybe I’ve answered my own hard question with a bad answer: This might be an elaborate spiritual bandage that I’ve cooked up. However, for one kid out there that bandage came in the form of an air-conditioned lunch, a couple bucks for cigarettes and anything else he might need, and an hour of someone listening to him. My Jesus-shaped bandage will hopefully motivate others to make themselves feel better by helping others, loving the unlovable, showing kindness where it is unexpected, and maybe even providing wisdom. I’m strangely comfortable with that.

P.S. Dear Sora, remember when I told you to focus on acting like a good Christian instead of trying to be a good Christian? I said something along the lines of, “Just get out there and help the people around you, do kind things for them, love them, and be wise and try to answer their hard questions. If you do those things your heart will follow the same path.” I don’t just say these things.

Blame my daughter for this one

Last night as I do from time to time I sat down with Sora and just talked to her before she went to sleep. We were just chatting about stuff and for some reason I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. She started to answer by talking about how she wanted to buy a house like the one in which we now live and some other things she wanted to buy. I interrupted (because I do that sometimes). She hadn’t answered my question about what she wanted to do or who even she wanted to be, she answered about things she wanted to buy. So I gently tried to correct her and convince her that it’s not about buying stuff but impacting the people around you. I talked about how it’s OK to want stuff but to not get too attached to those wants. I gave her the example of the Ferrari 458 Italia that I want but that I will never have – and that’s OK because I have 4 awesome kids instead.

And then we talked about what she was learning at church, it being Sunday night and all. After she told me she was learning to be a good person – a better Christian – I stopped her (a bad habit, I know) and told her how her father might be an idiot and COMPLETELY DISAGREES about going to church to be a better person. We then talked about who daddy believes that Jesus is and the people with whom Jesus would have hung out with if he was here today (the answer was he would most likely hang out with the kid that broke into our garage the other morning versus hanging out with the people at church). We talked about how it’s my thought that I go to church to learn about how better to help the people around me – how to show them love, how to help them, how to do nice things for them, and how to become wise in order to answer hard questions. Little did I know that I was setting myself up for a pretty massive test (spoiler alert: I failed). We chatted a little longer and then we all went to sleep.

So fast-forward to this afternoon. Since I have a little time off from work I’ve been playing the role of soccer-mom and errand runner. So at 12:30 in the afternoon with a sun-shiny 94F degree temperature and relative humidity well north of comfortable I was pulling in to the Target parking lot in order to pick up some cat food and cat litter. On the way in to Columbia Crossing I saw one of the pan-handlers in the center median with some sort of sign, obviously looking for cash. I see pan-handlers on that corner pretty regularly and I’ve come up with a completely asinine theory that there is a pan-handler cabal that actually collects all the profits from different corners here in Columbia and that the people I see out there aren’t actually homeless or destitute. And mid-thought I felt that warm and comforting embrace of Jesus’ love wrap itself around my heart and the Lord of Hosts softly whisper in my ear, “You’re an idiot. And a jerk. And you call yourself a Christian.”

I spent the next 30 minutes parking the car and shopping for pet products in a vicious spiritual battle with me on one side trying to explain that I really do love all of the people in the world and that I really do show them the love of God every day. On the other side was Jesus who really only said two words: Prove it. And so as I left Target I grabbed an extra $20 bill. I walked the cat litter and food out to the car and put them in the trunk. Then I walked across the parking lot, down the embankment and went up to the pan-handler and offered him $20 if he would come into Starbucks with me and have some iced coffee or water and tell me about himself. No judging, no ulterior motives. Just me acting like I think Jesus would and treating someone like a human being because they might like that. He could probably use some humanity.

No I didn’t. I got the pet products into my trunk and then remembered that my phone was at home and I was expecting an important phone call. I rationalized that as soon as I got home and got my phone, emptied the car, and checked my work email I would head back to Target. And I did exactly that. I also found that my phone was not at home, it was buried in my glove compartment. On the way to and from the house I tried to figure out what else I had to offer the pan-handler and what exactly I hoped to accomplish (I still am, actually) and I settled on “I’ll talk to the guy and trust that Jesus will help me figure out the next step.”

Unfortunately I suck (Captain Obvious Statement of the Day, right there). Yep, by the time I got back to the shopping center the pan-handler was gone. I even did a full casing of the complex and couldn’t find him. I was very disappointed with myself and now I have to tell my daughter that her well-spoken father with lots of good ideas can’t follow through.

But even though I sucked at being like Jesus today I don’t have to suck tomorrow. That’s the awesome thing about grace is that Jesus still forgives me and even better he knows that tomorrow I’ll have another spiritual battle and I’ll lose. I’ll head over to Columbia Crossing and see if there is someone else in need. I’ll even bring some contact numbers for the outreach ministry from our church as well as the $20 and good ideas.  And now I’m asking you to do the same thing.

You know where they are. You know how to find the pan-handlers. Take some time out of your schedule and go meet one. Talk to them and find out their names, if they are married, if they have kids, what are their dreams, where they are from, all the stuff you would ask a new coworker or… someone new at church. Just treat them like a person because that is what Jesus would do. I would ask that you don’t go on a full-court Jesus press. Just let them talk and end by asking if there is anything with which you can help. If they ask you why you’re doing this a simple, “It’s what Jesus would do,” will most likely suffice. Try to avoid talking. I’ll do the same and let you know how this works out on my end. I have no idea how this will turn out but at the very least there will be at least one person a little less hot and thirsty with a little more cash in their pocket to use for their needs. And perhaps I’ll have a little more humanity the next time I look at a pan-handler and start imagining that they are there because of any other reason than terrible circumstances.

Matthew Chapter 25

The Woman at the Well

I've been reviewing my blog and I noticed that I referenced this post in my initial adoption post. I dug into the facebook archives and found it, re-read it and have decided to post it here. I originally wrote this back in 2010 right before we left for Korea and if I hadn't happened to have watched "Talladega Nights" and seen Sacha Baron Cohen last night I wouldn't feel compelled to put it up. But this article still makes me laugh - and think - when I read it and maybe it will do the same for you. The story of the woman at the well is one of my favorites and this article still makes me proud.

Of all the stories of Jesus’ life the story of the woman at the well has always struck a chord in my soul. Over the past few years it has grown in importance to me and only recently did I ask myself why. The first reason I came up with was that it revealed the transforming nature of Christ’s perfect love. A woman’s life is turned around 180 degrees after a few short yet poignant words from my Savior. The second reason became clearly evident to me while I was watching, of all movies, Borat and how Jesus reaches out to those to whom no one else dares reach(At this point any good Bible-believing Christian may want to go ahead and close out this message. In a paragraph coming to your screen soon I will use scenes from a film that celebrates drunkenness, ethnic hate, debauchery, homosexuality, prostitution, and numerous other decidedly non-Christian ideals in order to not only illustrate but to reinforce the principles of Christ’s love. For the bold and those firmly grounded in their faith feel free to continue but you have been warned.) The straw that broke the camel’s back and now has me writing this little note is that I’ve realized that in my life I’ve met a few women at the well and frankly my heart still breaks for them. I still shed tears while praying for them and I still regret my inability to be like Christ enough to love them enough (ahem… in the right ‘agape’ way) and change their lives for the better. So now I have a few hours during which I will spell out how these three reasons make the story of the woman at the well so important to me. 

I didn’t come up with this first point on my own. Sometime in the last 2 years I heard a sermon about the woman at the well and the crux of the sermon was the transforming nature of Christ’s love. It may have been that sermon that started me thinking about this subject so I’m putting this down as my first reason. Crack open your bibles to John Chapter 4 - or if you’re lacking a bible but you’re online find one of the many online bibles and do a search for either John Chapter 4 or “Woman at the Well” – and start there. In the story Jesus has just finished up a rather famous conversation with a guy named Nicodemus. Sometime during that conversation there was some talk about being born again and in the middle of chapter three Jesus laid out the gospel in a nutshell for Nicodemus. You may have seen a sample of this text in the end zone of a football game once or twice. But I digress. 

Jesus’ disciples had been baptizing people as followers of Jesus and this had been irritating the religious leaders of the day. Apparently the leaders in the area of Judea were getting angry so Jesus decided to get out of town for awhile and was on his way to Galilee. I’m not a scholar nor do I have access to an atlas of 1st Century AD Israel so I have to take the author’s word that an area called Samaria lies between Judea and Galilee. The people of Samaria called Samaritans were not on really good terms with the Jews. You can do a Wikipedia search and find out the details (despite this being posted online I do not in fact have internet in my room. Normally I’d be happy to do the searching for you and give you some fantastic anthropologic data about the story but I cannot right now. Forgive me.) but the short summary is that the Jews and the Samaritans were not on speaking terms. Jesus’ disciples had gone on into town to buy food but the good teacher, “being as tired from the journey as he was,” stayed back at a well to rest. So it’s about 6 o’clock in the morning and a woman comes out to the well to get some water. (side note: this still goes on today in the middle east. Rural women still head out in the morning with their large buckets in order to draw water before it gets belligerently hot. Some are dressed in black Abayas and some, usually younger, are dressed up in bright-colored garb that contrasts brilliantly with the relatively barren landscape in which they walk.) Sitting at the well is a Jewish religious teacher who has the audacity to ask the woman to get him a drink. Now, the woman at the well is apparently quite assertive and maybe even a bit abrasive. I’m going to stop my narrative of the story and explain things as I see them. I could be wrong but John 4:9 has colored my entire reading of this story. Imagine for a minute that you’re in a downtown area sitting on a park bench and you drop your pen. Your pen rolls across the ground and lands between the feet of a younger woman sitting next to you. Thinking it improper to reach between a strange woman’s feet you politely ask her if she could pick up your pen for you. Instead of a simple, “no” you get read the riot act for daring to ask for assistance. What could have been covered in a one-syllable response or even mute refusal is instead turned into a 15 second tirade of vitriol and anger directed toward you. This is the Samaritan woman and, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan. How can you ask me for a drink?” was her reply. I have been there. I have asked a seemingly innocuous question only to be met with unwarranted anger. My typical response in that situation is to walk away muttering something about rude people under my breath. Clearly I am not Jesus.

But Jesus shrugged it off, saw it as an opportunity to touch a life, and decided to go toe to toe with this Samaritan woman. He sloughed off her rebuttal, ignored her question and did the unthinkable: He brought up religion. In the ensuing conversation Jesus equates himself with God, places himself above Jacob the patriarch, and continues to use the words of the woman only as a frame to make his point: Jesus has the keys to eternal life. And she bought it. In 3 short paragraphs the woman went from refusing to get Jesus water to nearly begging him to give her some of his water. But Jesus’ plan was not to win an argument it was to save a soul. This is where we see more of Jesus perfect love. Whereas I, a sinner with a huge ego, would have been stoked at turning the tables on this crabby tart and would have walked away smugly Jesus was looking into her heart and looking to do something spectacular. Somehow (probably something to do with the fact that He is God) Jesus was able to discern that this angry young woman was suffering from more than sore shoulders from carrying the water. Jesus knew that this woman suffered from a series of broken hearts and cut to the quick. He told her about her four ex-husbands and the guy she was shacking up with but he did so without angering her. Now, let’s go back to the park bench and the young lady. Imagine for a moment if you will, that you laid out all her dirty laundry for her right there on that bench. Imagine her response. So how did Jesus do the same thing without getting slapped. The answer is that he did it with the love of God.

Right here is the message of the gospel in one simple story. God loved this one woman so much that he offered her eternal life (John 4:13) with no preconditions. Jesus knew that this woman was by contemporary standards a slut, an adulterer, a skank, an impure woman, name your epithet – Jesus knew this. Yet he loved her so much that he looked past all of her sins and offered her eternal life. He even offered her eternal life BEFORE calling her out for her sins. The response was kind of stunning.

The young woman caught a clue sometime during Jesus’ talk about the coming kingdom. She put two and two together and hesitantly brought up the coming of the Messiah. Jesus confirmed her suspicions that this clairvoyant Jewish traveler was not a spy but the savior of the world. The woman who ten paragraphs earlier refused to draw a pitcher of water now dropped her pitcher, ran into the city and started telling her friends about the Messiah. Wow. Later in the chapter we find out that because of her witness many more in the town came to believe in Jesus. I prefer to think of it in terms such as, “because of Jesus’ perfect love for the woman at the well, many people came to believe in Him.” So this was the beginning of my fascination with this passage of scripture.

Borat. The time has come to either be BBQ’d as a sacrilegious heretic or lauded as a guy who can find the incredible love of Christ displayed in the most unlikely of places. Your call. For those unfamiliar with Borat here’s a brief synopsis. Sacha Baron Cohen cooked up an epic prank in the form of a movie. He pretended to be a native of Kazakhstan making a documentary of American culture and made his way across the country in this guise while keeping a video journal. However, his goal was to catch Americans in the act of exhibiting their natural prejudices and use it as a really ribald form of social commentary. It is crude, it is disgusting, it displays all that is amoral and wrong with the world and it is hilarious. It also is a bit sobering because it shows the decidedly un-Christlike nature of a few Christians. So what does it have to do with the woman at the well? Simple. She is in the movie.

Borat went to a tutor on manners with the culminating exercise with the tutor being a formal dinner. During the dinner Borat made every attempt to crack the genteel nature of the other attendees which include a pastor and his wife. During the dinner all of the attendees made slightly bigoted comments under the guise of social propriety but at the end Borat invited in the woman at the well to be his dinner guest. When she arrived the dinner was abruptly cut short on account of her arrival. In limited defense of the pastor and his wife I will say the woman at the well was in the guise of an extravagantly dressed prostitute. However I didn’t see any attempt by anyone at the table, all of whom called themselves Christians, try to exert any Christ-like love toward her. I don’t see Jesus walking away from that situation. In fact in a similar situation when Jesus was questioned about his choice of companions and their lifestyles he responded, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners.” (Matthew 9:12). The Jesus of the Bible that I read poured out love on the unlovable. The tax collectors, widows, the poor, the unclean, the lepers, the ‘sinners’, the… Samaritans. When presented with someone that was beyond the pale – someone so low on the social ladder that the religious would feel the need to leave the room when they entered – Jesus stepped up and offered forgiveness and love. In the movie the only person that treated the woman at the well as a human being was Borat. It’s a sad state of affairs that the man that inadvertently (in my mind) playing the role of Jesus is portrayed as one of the most amoral of all while the religious folks, the church leaders, the good Christians in the film slunk away from what could have been one of their most dynamic and Christian of their lives. Jesus passed no judgment on the woman at the well. He showed her love and offered her eternal life. He did not fear her because she was a woman or because she was a Samaritan, rather he entered the situation with his purpose set firmly in his mind: Win her with love. Love the unlovable.

The last reason I am writing this little note is very personal. In my life I have met quite a few women at the well and I have only done marginally well at being like Christ. After thoroughly roasting the Christians in the movie Borat for their lack of Christ-like love I cannot in good conscience continue without admitting my own failings in the same subject. I try to love the unlovable but my problem is that many times I fell in love with them. Rarely did I simply walk away but too often I found myself too close and in many cases my love of Christ turned into the love of the flesh. But once again I digress.

I’ve had a little more free time lately and in my devotions and prayers I continue to return to thoughts of the women at the well in my life. These are women with whom I have worked, attended school, and met in various organizations. Facebook has brought a few of them back into my life and reminded me of others that are long lost. It is for you, the women at the well in my life, that this letter is ultimately written. I will not put your names here. I will not tag you in this note. You know who you are. You are the confident ones; the smart ones; the pretty ones; the ones who know how to get what you want; the ones that have your whole life planned out and are moving forward towards those goals but… you are also the ones with the broken hearts. Somewhere along the way someone or someones have broken your heart and hardened you to others that love you. For many of you it’s a vicious cycle that repeats itself all too often and your hope for the future is dimmed by the fear of more heartbreak. You are the modern-day women at the well and I am telling you that Jesus is there, waiting for you.

So the last reason I’m writing this letter is to bring an arms-length offer of hope and the love of Christ to the women at the well in my life. Pick up the Bible. Read John chapter four – and John chapter three, also. Take a look at the offer that Jesus makes in those chapters and try to put aside your fears and accept it. Jesus knows your hurts; your histories; the stupid things you’ve done; the poor decisions you’ve made; the times your heart got broken; the times you gave your heart away only to not get it back; the times you’ve been used; the times you’ve been abused. He knows it all but if you look carefully at John chapter four you’ll see that he doesn’t care about those things. He cares about you. Let down your guard a bit. When he asks you to draw some water from the well feel free to question him and when he starts prying into your soul and peeling back the layers of hurt, let him. He is the great physician. He loves you and if you let him he can change your life. For God so loved the woman at the well…

To everyone that reads this note: Please do me a favor and pass this on to the women at the well in your life. If you are uncomfortable passing it directly to a woman at the well, then post it in the notes section of your facebook account. Maybe you will get a response or maybe you’ll touch a life without knowing it. 

Reasons not to Adopt - Thievery and Bullying

This may be the first installment of a series. Those looking for levity and humor should probably look elsewhere. While I may throw in some sort of sarcastic backhanded and self-deprecating humor this particular series is (at least this first one) written in the rawest of moments. In today’s case I just finished off explaining to my daughter Lena how daddy has given and given and given so that she might have lots of nice things and experiences. Daddy has given to the point that he cannot afford even the $5 to have one of his church shirts pressed and that he’s even gone so far as to cut down on the amount of lunch he eats. Why did I give this little lecture? Because my oldest daughter regularly bullies and connives her brother and sisters into giving up their most treasured toys. Call it what you will but I call that theft and it crushes my heart. It crushes my heart so much that I was a sobbing wreck of a man when it was time to go to church. I told Jenn to head to church without me. So if there is a distinct lack of mirth in this little article just remember that I wrote this after picking myself up off the couch, drying my tears, and sitting down in front of the computer to type out how I *really* feel.

October 26^th 2012 we brought Lena and Sujin home for the last time. That was our “Gotcha” day (as it’s called in adoption circles) and it was full of rejoicing. For those that aren’t familiar with our long journey into adoption it all started in early 2011 and there’s a post on that somewhere in this blog. Lena was 10 and Sujin was 7 at the time we brought them home. Both Jenn and I thought we knew what we were getting into but of course we were both completely wrong. Within a few days we were both completely overwhelmed. I was “lucky” because I was working as a commander at the time and was saved from turmoil in the house because I was working insane hours. Jenn took the full brunt of the post-adoption blues. I saw a lot of the same symptoms in her that doctors ascribe to post-partum depression. We worked through those first few months but our take-away lessons were these: Sujin has attachment issues and Lena has territorial issues. This particular post is about Lena’s territorial issues.

Back in the orphanage Lena was one of the only non-Korean kids. She was a blond Caucasian girl growing up in an almost-exclusively Korean orphanage. At a minimum most of the other kids were at least half-Korean. Additionally their orphanage was located in the Korea-equivalent of the flyover states (aka Redneck country). Like most homogenous cultures Koreans are prone to a little bit of xenophobia (the Collegian inside me calls this “identifying the ‘barbarian other’”). Now factor in location (redneck country) and society (orphanage aka Lord of the Flies) and you might correctly think that Lena was the target of quite a bit of bullying. Now, academically I know that she’s got a history of being the target of bullying. I also know that it is very much human nature to use those same bullying tactics when one comes to power. On an intellectual level it is completely understandable that Lena resorted to bullying and stealing once she came into our house. If only I could live in an intellectual and academic world. Too bad I live in the real world where I have a bully who is psychologically and physically terrorizing and stealing from the other three children in the house. Forgive me if I become a little emotional over these things.

I’ve spoken to Lena about these issues before. I’ve counseled her, corrected her, shown her object lessons, shown her love, poured out an unending flow of love, gifts, and concern. I’ve also yelled, threatened, confiscated, cried, and lost my temper on a number of occasions. As a result she has slowly started to give up her evil ways. However Jenn discovered last night that Lena is still collecting tribute from her brother and sisters. She’s just doing it a little more quietly and with more discretion – using the silent treatment, threats, and intimidation to keep the other kids quiet. It has gotten to the point that the other kids have started sneaking in to Lena’s room to gather back their things. Think of Lena’s room as a mythical dragon hoard. Lena is the dragon. She’s not spending her hoard, nor is she really doing anything with it but she JEALOUSLY guards it. My kids are literally making Bilbo Baggins-esque runs into the lair of Smaug in order to retrieve their own personal Arkenstones.

So when I heard about this last night I went in to Lena’s room and as calmly as I could (I showed some remarkable restraint. No yelling, even) let her know that the gig was up. I then spent 3 hours in bed tossing, turning, and desperately trying to come up with a way to fix the problem. At about 11:30 after 2 hours in bed I decided upon “The Nuclear Option.” I prayed for a bit, asked God to give me discernment while I slept and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, convinced that the metaphorical destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was in order I wrote the following terms to Jenn for her approval.

1. Lena is evicted. She gets her clothes – that is it.
2. Everything in Lena’s room will be redistributed to the other kids
3. Lena will NOT be allowed upstairs to play in the other kids’ rooms
4. Lena will sleep on an air mattress in the living room. She will put up and take down her “room” every night and morning.
5. Lena will not be allowed to play with the other kids while unsupervised. Homework is the alternative
6. This will last 1-2 months. 3 weeks is the BARE minimum

For those who attended Basic Training in the late 90’s and had a thief in their company you might remember that private going through something similar to this. I’m not going to lie and tell you that basic training wasn’t my inspiration for “The Nuclear Option”. This, of course, precipitated into a talk between me and Jenn. For anyone who has ever witnessed a “talk” between my wife and I you know that things can get loud, quickly, if one of us happens to be emotionally charged. See the first paragraph one more time real quick and you’ll see that I was the very definition of “emotionally charged”.

My wonderful wife reminded me that this is a long process – that Lena has almost 11 years of bad habits to work through and that the nuclear option was NOT an option. I reminded my wonderful wife that we had three other children to worry about and that while one child worked through her issues the other three were living in fear and that continuing along the path that we had been was NOT an option. Now, quickly I want you to replace the word “reminded” from the last two sentences with the words “screamed” “hollered” “loudly exclaimed” “raised my voice while pounding on the bathroom counter” or another more emotionally charged phrase, crank your argument volume-meter to the Spinal Tap setting on your internal amp and read it again. Welcome to the Galstad’s. We aren’t too good to not have a knock-down drag-out before church.

So after going downstairs and expressing my extreme frustration to Lena – I’m also not too great of a dad to not cry in front of my kids – I retreated to the basement and now I’m sitting in front of the computer, typing this out while trying to come up with a way to teach my daughter what I learned from Jesus.

You see the whole Genesis behind the adoption was Jesus. Anyone who has asked me what caused me to adopt has gotten the quiet explanation of “It’s a Jesus thing. He adopted me so I figured I’d do the same thing.” So now I somehow need to show my daughter that just as I have accepted Jesus’ love and shower that love on her that she can do the same thing. She can now take my kindness and be kind. She can now take my love and love others. She can now take all the help that I give her and help others. She can now take all the wisdom (or attempted wisdom) I give her and try to answer the hard questions of others. There is no more need for her to steal from her brother and sisters because all she has to do is ask for it from me and I’ll GLADLY give it to her. And so I sit here and wrestle with the best way to teach those things and unless I’m trying to teach the justice of Old Testament God (which I’m not) then “The Nuclear Option” is not an option.

So this is where I am right now. Still in the basement, still trying to come up with the best way to raise my children and correct a problem. It will take enormous amounts of patience and love – patience and love that I DO NOT possess. And this is why this post is entitled “Reasons not to Adopt.” You do not currently have the patience and love to do it. You don’t have the boundless reserves of grace, self-control, peace, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit to do it. Sure, you might think you do. You might think like I did that “God will provide what I need because I’m doing His will.” I am here to tell you that God just might not – even if it is His will that you adopt. Jesus loves me, this I know, but He very well might give me a hard row to hoe. So right now I am daily falling on my knees and asking for more wisdom, more grace, more humility, more love, more patience and more joy. Because right now I am completely overwhelmed and completely dependent upon the mercy of a loving God. So unless you want to suddenly find yourself out of your depth and on your face begging for mercy from God then I suggest you don’t adopt. It’s not the message you usually get from adoptive parents. 

Moving the 1 Percent

So we are moving. This has been a long time in the making (3 years) and quite a bit of effort has been expended to make it happen. When we got here to Korea just under 3 years ago I had a pre-schooler, a 1^st grader, a wife, as well as a cat. Well, the cat came 8 months later (thanks again Mom and Dad for taking care of the poop-meister) but we really tried hard to all get here together and for the most part we did. Now it is 3 years later and I have two first graders, a 3^rd grader, and a 4^th grader. I still have the same cat and the same (awesome) wife. We are all excited to varying degrees about moving and there is a great veil of anticipation that is waiting to be torn.

However, as excited as we all are there is a lot of negative energy flowing about. Lena flat out told the neighbors today that she is NOT happy about moving to the United States and I don’t blame her. Her and Sujin were yanked out of their only known way of life back in October. They have only now started, only started, to kind of adapt to our family, American schools, and being forced to do things like homework, housework, and get along with their siblings without bloodshed. Of course in my Colonial-istic mindset I firmly believe that I am doing “the right thing” but at the same time I cannot blame her or Sujin for not being as ecstatic about ANOTHER move as we would like her to be. I firmly believe that we are doing “the right thing” in bringing her out of the orphanage, into our family, providing her with a good education, a strong and loving family, educational opportunities that were never ever available to her, a support network that she never could have dreamed of, and future possibilities that she cannot imagine. However I can’t help but to think back to being a child and having those same words thrown at me, failing to capitalize, and being told, “You’re not applying yourself,” or “you’re throwing away all your talents,” and not having the slightest of clues as to WHAT THESE ADULTS ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Meanwhile I’m pretty sure those outside of the military community, namely my beloved parents, sisters, and relatives, all believe me to be bat-shit insane for continuing in my current course of employment. On the opposite side of the coin I am regularly reminded by military members and families that I am part of the new “Greatest Generation” or “1%” and that I am most definitely doing “the right thing” and that I’m a hero for doing so. Since I have a habit of being contrarian I am going to head on out to my far-flung spindly little… it’s not even a limb, it’s more of a twig and tell both loving and dedicated camps that they are wrong. I am neither crazy (at least in this) nor special. I’m just a dude that happened onto a line of work that may or may not result in my dying a horrible death but also one that allows me to do cool things like travel the world, lead people in a way that most jobs don’t allow, and adopt kids.

For those that don’t know about the “1%” allow me to explain. Some people with too much time on their hands and a bit too much love for all things military figured out that today’s combat deployed Soldiers encompass less than 1% of the American populace. And since we get shot at, blown up, killed, maimed, and spend a LOT of time away from our families that we should be put upon some REALLY high pedestal and be worshipped like gods. And it kind of makes sense in a flag-waving support-our-military kind of way, especially when coupled with powerful images of amputees or flag-draped coffins or Soldiers in the midst of deprivation. Mirror those tear-jerking images with some of fat-cat Wall Street types in their expensive cars and add in some captions about bail-outs and troop deaths and you get yourself some internet-meme gold. Too bad it’s mostly bullshit.

I volunteered to do this. I’m going to write that again to drive the point home. I volunteered to do this. I was a college dropout that had the option of working a slightly-above minimum wage job or returning home to live with my parents when I got a call from the US Army offering me an alternative. I jumped at it and joined the Army, re-enlisted twice, took some night classes and got my degree, became an Officer (Enlisted = blue collar; Officer = White Collar in the most layman’s of terms) and volunteered to go fight on tanks WHILE THERE WAS A WAR GOING ON. I was not drafted. I was not offered the choice of incarceration or going to war. I raised my right hand and joined a fighting force with full knowledge that I might get killed, maimed, emotionally scarred, physically scarred, spiritually scarred, or mentally scarred. I did it because in my limited mind the reward for the risks was worth it. In that time I found the most excellent of wives who not only agreed with me but also supported me and pushed me to excel, had two kids, adopted two more, and volunteered to go to war twice. I am only the 1% because I lack the common sense to focus on the whole “violent death” aspect – just ask my mother who literally slaps me upside the head every time I see her.

As for the separation from the family? I’m not special. Any person who is in sales, international business, or any job that requires travel does the same thing. No one is singing psalms of praise for them in internet memes. In fact most of them are lumped into the “fat cat” category and burned at the digital stake. I am not special. I am a special kind of idiot.

The only way I am special is that I am now dragging not one, not two, but five other people along on my merry journey, and two of those people are getting the full fire hose enema of military life 6 months after they were dragged into it against their will. Two more of them (Sora and Deuce) have just now started to settle into their groove here in Seoul after we moved 9 months ago. None of those four children had any choice in the matter. Sure Jenn and I have spent a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of where to live and how to best serve our children, but in the end those kids will move, like it or not. I am not part of the new “greatest generation” I am part of the greatest jerk-squad.

I get myself to sleep every night focusing on the positives. My kids will all speak at least two languages. They will have a world-view that I never even thought possible until I was 19 years old. I’ve “saved” two girls from the orphanage. I have more friends and more experience than I ever thought possible and I think I’ve turned into an alright dude. I have the greatest wife that God ever created. All of this is thanks to being a special kind of idiot.

To Lena, Sora, Sujin, and Deuce: I love you dearly, I have your best interests at heart, and I feel your pain. Moving sucks and I hate it. If you are like me you will never get fully comfortable with uprooting every 18 months. There are some silver linings to be had but it takes a LOT of work to convince yourself that you’re doing the right thing. If you don’t like it I highly recommend not becoming a Soldier or marrying one. I can’t even offer to “make it up to you someday,” because right now the plan is to keep doing this for quite a while. Once you’re a little older come talk to me about this if it bothers you. I’ll listen.

Change of Command Speech

This was my change of command speech. I would have loved to ramble on and on but that would not have been cool. This was the best I could do with limited time.

     Greetings COL Chung, LTC Sears, LTC Walsh, LTC Taylor, CSM Torres, CSM
Downs, CSM Carrion, other distinguished guests; leaders, Soldiers,
civilians, and family members. Thank you for attending today's change of
command.
     Bravo Company was initially formed one year ago. In that time the
Soldiers have overcome obstacles such as 4,000 square kilometers of
battlespace, 8 geographically separated work locations, horrible traffic
between those locations, 15 hour days, changing shift schedules, the ever
constant threats from North Korea, sequestration, a political and military
shift to the Asia-Pacific Region, and 24 hour operations. The Soldiers
overcame these obstacles and more in order to perform their multiple
critical intelligence missions.
     The results speak for themselves: over 10,000 reports written, 60,000
miles driven, 20 critical intelligence systems maintained all so that the
Combined Republic of Korea and United States military forces are prepared
with the most accurate and up-to-date intelligence should we have to go to
war.
     The Soldiers did all that. I did not. I was simply the rudder that
guided a large and well run ship.
     As a commander I was ultimately responsible for mission accomplishment
- or failure, and for the care of all the Soldiers in my command - or lack
thereof.
     The mission was accomplished and accomplished with distinction. My NCOs
and leaders gave me the best guidance possible so that I could plan training
and provide the best support for mission accomplishment. They did all the
work.
     As far as care of the Soldier - the best guidance I found for that was
in the words of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in Matthew Chapter 25, which
is all about taking care of "the least of these." As a commander I was able
to directly impact the lives of my Soldiers and I used every opportunity I
had to teach coach and mentor my subordinate leaders to take care of their
Soldiers. The leaders of my unit followed my example and because of that the
Soldiers of Bravo Company, received superb care and support.
     I owe a debt of gratitude and responsibility to many people. First to
my subordinate leaders - the NCOs and officers of Bravo Company - for your
outstanding performance and for leading by example. Next, to my leadership
for your endless support - COL Chung, CSM Torres, LTC Fiol, CSM Sanders, LTC
Walsh, and CSM Downs - your guidance and support made my job easier and you
always allowed me to be the commander in both name and deed. The Battalion
and Brigade staff, the leaders of SUSLAK, and all of those who supported the
mission and Soldiers of Bravo Company who are too many to name individually,
but your support was instrumental in our success. Thank you.
     I would not be where I am today if a long line of leaders in the past
had not taken care of me. I was the least of these and yet you counseled me,
gave the hard truths I needed to hear, taught me the skills I needed to
succeed, and assisted me in every endeavor. I thank you. I also want to take
this opportunity to thank my mentor and the man who taught me the art and
science of taking care of Soldiers. Joe Cox, a Colonel in the Army who
happened to be my Brigade Commander. He taught me how to balance my
responsibility to the Army with my responsibility to my conscience. There
are no words to express how grateful I am.
     The last two people I have to thank are my 1SGs, John Rivera and Adam
Riddle. You were the 1SGs I needed and you both already lived my credo of
taking care of Soldiers. Both of you made the hardest job in the Army look
easy.
     Finally for the most important person: Jenn, my wife, my love, my best
friend. You daily take care of the house and family while working full time
as a CPA, English teacher, and most importantly as a mom. You took the idea
of "taking care of the least of these" to new levels by doing everything in
your power to bring Lena and Sujin into our home. I would be lost without
you. As I tell everyone regularly and loudly, "I married way up." I love
you. I love you. I love you.
     Pat, take care of my Company. You are the best man for the job. Call me
if you need me. Watcher 6, out.