About 7 months after joining the Air Force, I washed out of SERE Specialist training. My knees couldn’t cope with the physical rigors of the job, and I wasn’t allowed to continue to the next level of training. I’m not gonna lie, it was a rough time for me. It was probably the first real time in my life that I failed to achieve something I’d set out to do.
Fast forward through all the self pity, and I decided to stay in the Air Force but train to do something else. I decided on a role in intelligence. After the paperwork came through, I transferred from Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB) in Washington State to Goodfellow AFB, Texas.
It was a tough adjustment. Everything about the change was difficult. I went from an environment where I had been given a lot of freedom, trust, and responsibility to an environment where I was given virtually none of that. Most of the students at this base were fresh out of Basic Training, and needed a high degree of supervision, whereas I did not. The water in the area (and as a result, everything cooked in or prepared with the water) tasted gross. We were in the middle of two wars at the time, and in order to maintain sufficient student throughput the training programs involved multiple shifts of teaching each day. The base’s population seemed like it was maxed out. There weren’t enough dorms to put all the bodies, so they had to re-open old ones or put off shutting down dorms that were scheduled to be shuttered. Chow halls were open at midnight to accommodate those in class at night (or preparing for class to start). Students were sleeping, exercising, and attending classes at all hours of the day to try to maximize the facilities available.
I eventually adjusted, but it wasn’t a fun place to be. Goodfellow AFB is in a town called San Angelo. This place is about three hours from any big city. It’s a fantastic place to live if you’re raising a young family or enjoy a slower pace of life. Like, no kidding, people just pull out camp chairs and hang out in the Walmart parking lot on Friday nights (or at least they did when I was stationed there). The locals there love the military, and are truly wonderful folks. Most of the Airmen that came to Goodfellow, however, came there because the Air Force sent them there to learn a new job, and most of those people were young, single, and got bored easily. When young single people get bored, it usually leads to trouble. We had people get in trouble for underage drinking, breaking curfew, “inappropriate relations,” leaving base when they weren’t supposed to, and just about anything else you could imagine. One of my classmates even attempted suicide.
Between my time spent in college and the time I’d already chalked up elsewhere in the military, this was about year number five of dorm life for me, so you can imagine how it was getting old by this time. I figured out early in my stay at San Angelo that my sole purpose, the only reason in the world that Uncle Sam had sent me to this place, was to learn the core skills and knowledge I’d need for doing my job once I got to subsequent duty stations. As far as I was concerned, it was in my own best interest to hunker down, do well in class, and graduate on time. All else was secondary, and graduating was the fastest way to get out of there. I had already done a lot of the growing up that many of my fellow students still needed to do, so I saw things differently than many of them did.
Since the weeks were spent in an oppressive military environment, I spent a lot of time on weekends away from the base, at the nearest skydiving drop zone I could find. The drop zone was about an hour and a half away. Since there wasn’t much else to do except hang out with someone that would probably end up getting in trouble, the long trips weren’t such a bad thing. It would have been easy to just sneak away and not tell anybody what I was doing, but I had seen so many people get in trouble over stupid stuff that I decided it was better to just play by the rules. I went and got permission from our squadron commander to go skydiving. Every Friday before my weekend excursions I would go and get the same stupid safety brief from people that had no idea what kind of safety tips to brief me on when it came to skydiving. I got the dumb paperwork saying that I had received the brief and kept it on file. I did it right.
By the end of my time at Goodfellow, I had numerous classmates that had gotten themselves into some kind of trouble. One had some kind of security violation. Another one got administratively punished for violating something or other. One got pregnant and wasn’t sure for awhile who the father was. Because of my mindset that I was only going to be here for a short time and that the best course of action was to focus on my purpose for being there, I managed to avoid a lot of the headaches and hassles that a lot of other people got caught up in. I forfeited a lot of the “good times” that others took part in, but in hindsight, I really didn’t miss out on much. There was plenty of time for fun stuff after moving on from there.
A lot of Christians remind me of my former classmates in certain ways. They forget why they’re here and start focusing on things that don’t have lasting impact. Being a Christian isn’t just a Sunday morning proposition. After getting saved, we’ve really only got one objective in our lives: glorify God by taking part in the purpose He’s placed us here for and equipped us to do. I know that task often lacks clarity. It usually ends up being a question that takes patience to receive an answer to. That’s why many stop asking.
There are a lot of rules in the Bible (do this, don’t do that, strive for this, etc.), but they’re there for a reason. I’m not advocating for legalism, but if you live according to the way scripture says you should live, you usually lead a life that isn’t full of complications, which enables you to focus on your objective better. It would have been easier for me to just drive off base on Saturday mornings and go skydiving without having to jump through all those administrative hoops, and I probably would’ve gotten away with it most of the time. All it would’ve taken was one time getting caught, and it could have resulted in restriction to base or other privileges being revoked. Those hoops were a headache, but they weren’t hard. Doing the right thing was worth it, because it allowed me to pursue my goals while staying out of trouble.
This life is a flash in the pan. It’s over so fast. I’m not saying you should stay home in a corner praying or only wearing clothes made from camel hair your whole life. Quite the opposite, our joy in Christ is supposed to be evident to all. What I’m saying is that God arranged for your life to be powerful and meaningful in its ability to bring glory to His name, and that it’s up to you how much of that potential you want to fulfill. Use the gifts and talents God’s blessed you with. If you ditch the distractions, you can run your race well and “graduate on time” (hopefully, “with honors”). There will be time for lots of fun and celebration, but that comes after passing the tests and doing the hard work. Don’t be distracted from doing what you were put here to do.
God, it is absolutely unbelievable how You’ve interwoven our lives and how the faithful use of our gifts can impact each other and the world. I know that the vast majority of us won’t live up to our full potential for Christian obedience to Your call, please forgive us for that. Help us be sensitive to the opportunities we still have left to honor Your name, and give us the clarity, wisdom, and boldness to pursue what You’d have us do. I ask these things in Your name, Amen.