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When a Chance Encounter Doesn’t Happen by Chance

As a teenager, I worked as a lifeguard four summers. Thankfully I can count on one hand the number of times I had to take action to save anyone. There were a couple of times kids jumped into water a little deeper than they expected, and I was able to extend a rescue tube to them, but those were easy. I only had to go in after someone one time.

At the place I worked, we had two outdoor pools. One of them had both a shallow end and a deep end (three to nine feet deep), and the other one was deep all around, where the shallowest part was nine feet deep and it went to 12 and a half feet deep. It was my turn to keep an eye on the deep pool, where we had two diving boards. This pool was easier to watch because there were usually only a few people in the water at a time.

This one kid, probably somewhere in the 10-13 age range, got on a diving board and walked to the edge, then unceremoniously jumped in. It took him a bit to come back up, but he broke the surface eventually. It’s a difficult thing to watch someone who’s drowning. If they’re still fighting to keep their head above water, kicking is the first thing to stop. It’s a reflex; you kind of get tunnel vision and if you can’t see your feet, you don’t think about them. The person just stays vertical in the water and kinda slaps the water with their hands without kicking. This is what the kid was doing when I jumped in.

I totally blew off procedure. I forgot to blow my whistle to alert the guard at the other pool and I didn’t tell others near the diving boards not to jump into the pool; I just jumped in and started swimming toward the kid. Since I had a pretty good size advantage on him, I also totally skipped the technique I’d practiced countless times in training. Instead of swimming around behind him to scoop him up by his armpits onto the rescue tube, I made a beeline for the ladder nearest him and on my way past I grabbed him around the waist with one arm, holding his head above water even though it meant keeping mine under. The emphasis was on speed, trying to prevent an active drowning victim from turning into a passive drowning victim.

The whole thing was over in a few seconds. I got him to the ladder, where he was able to catch his breath. I asked if he was okay, and he gave a panting “yeah.” He climbed out of the pool and walked away, and at that point I just got severely irritated with him. I didn’t ream him out or anything, but I got instantly enraged. I didn’t say anything else, but how could he jump into such deep water if he didn’t know how to swim? If nobody was around, you would have died, dude!

For less than a minute more than 25 years ago, our two lives intersected. If I saw him today, I’d have no idea it was him. I’m clueless about what he went on to do with his life and whether he’s closer to the “dirtbag” or the “saint” side of the spectrum. He may not even remember that day so long ago, but whatever else was going on in his life at the time, it’s pretty obvious to me God wasn’t done with him yet. I’m confident anyone on our lifeguarding staff would have been able to bail him out of the trouble he got himself into, but I was the one sitting in the chair that day. The Lord allowed me to be the one to play a role in a small, but decisive part of his life.

Every now and then I think about that kid and wonder what he went on to do in his life. Think about the people you come in contact with on a daily basis. There are people you know and see on a recurring basis, but there are also plenty of people you’ll probably never see again in your life. For brief periods of time, your life will intersect with theirs. It could have been someone else, but it ended up being you. Not all those occasions will be so definitive or dramatic as pulling someone out of danger, but some of them might very well be (literally or figuratively).

Embrace those little encounters, whatever they end up looking like. You may have been put there to make a much-needed difference. Don’t squander the opportunity. Maybe one day you’ll look back and find yourself wondering whatever happened to that person. Better yet, that other person may look back and be thankful for the time they ran into you.

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Quick Hit: Why is Eden Guarded?

After expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, God posted angels with flaming swords near its perimeter to ensure they didn’t come back in. Ever wonder why?

The most obvious answer is as a consequence of their disobedience. God warned them what not to do; since they disobeyed, He had to impose consequences.

But an often-overlooked reason relates to what could still happen if humans got back in. The only limitation God put on the original pair was to avoid eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They obviously missed the mark there, but the Garden still had a very special tree whose fruit would catastrophically affect fallen humans: the Tree of Life.

“And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” – Genesis 3:22

Genesis isn’t terribly clear on whether they ate from the Tree of Life before they sinned, but it’s probably safe to assume they did at some point (how could you not try everything the Garden has to offer?). I can’t honestly say I understand what happens when sinless humans eat that tree’s fruit, but it would be a pretty big deal if an imperfect, sinful human ate from it. The verse above makes it pretty clear they’d be preserved in a sinful state forever. Christ still died for them/us, but without death, how can we ever be restored to true life?

In His infiniteness, God could doubtless still make a way to redeem them, but He chose, in His mercy, to prevent anyone from reaching the tree in the first place.

Still can’t get over the loss of that tree? Don’t worry, we’ll have access to it in the future: Revelation 22:1-3a notes “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed.” Don’t worry; you’ll get your shot at that tree (and its 12 different kinds of fruit) someday!

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The Good Ol’ Red, White, and Blue

Have you ever met someone that stayed positive and upbeat almost all the time?

Before I get into my story, I have to explain something to the non-military types reading this. When you’re in the military, there’s a lot of misery and generally terrible conditions you have to be prepared to endure. (After all, you don’t normally fight wars in the nice parts of the world.) As part of the coping mechanism, military branches and units try to buck up their troops with camaraderie and esprit de corps. There’s mixed success with this tactic, but it truly does help to know that when you’re trudging through the mud or up a mountain, your fellow troops are right there alongside you, and you’re not miserable alone.

Also, everything in the military is an acronym. Sometimes there are acronyms inside acronyms. It gets a little crazy. Don’t quote me on the history of this next part, but I think it was the Army that came up with the acronym “HUA.” It stands for “heard, understood, acknowledged.” It’s the military version of saying “got it.” It started getting applied in all kinds of situations. “Soldier, I need you to get rounds on that target NOW, do you understand me?!” “HUA!” Or maybe “we’re gonna grab some Chinese, then meet at the theater at 9, hua?” Over time it morphed into having different meanings; it became kind of a greeting, a rallying cry, or just something to say when you don’t have anything else to say. (I know a dude, long since retired from the Army, who couldn’t go more than two sentences without saying it somehow. “Hooah! Beautiful morning!” “Hooah, enjoy your day!”)

Different branches of the military are funny; a lot of times they want to do the same sort of thing but they don’t want to copy anyone, so they modify things a little. “Hoorah!” “Huh!” “Hooah!” “Oorah!” Where I spent time in the Air Force, it was “Hooyah.”

Anyway, all that’s prelude. When I tried out to be a survival specialist, we had to deal with a lot of uncomfortable, miserable, and/or physically arduous tasks. While we were waiting around for class to start, we spent the weeks doing different things like go on ruck marches in the mountains or in state parks with heavy packs, go on mini field trainings for three or four nights (think camping, but not quite as comfortable), and do a ton of physical training.

There was this one guy, Carl, who was relentlessly optimistic. Whenever he walked into the room or area where a bunch of us were, he’d greet us with a “hooyah, team!” He was so upbeat he came across as kinda goofy sometimes (this guy’s not really like this, is he?). If we’re on a ruck march, he’s bouncing back and forth to different groups of us, lifting our spirits. If we’re getting smoked during PT, he’s the one asking for more and encouraging the rest of us along the way. On one mini field training, when we’d already been out in the woods for a few days without any shower and we smelled like smoke, were tired and irritable from poor sleep and non-stop mosquito bites, and were generally over-tasked with things to do, Carl’s the guy looking for opportunities to goof off in a way that brings a smile to somebody’s face. This picture was one such moment. The other guy was hamming it up a little for the picture, but Carl saw him looking closely at the ground for a piece of gear or something and Carl seized the opportunity for a morale-boosting photo op.

One of Carl’s trademark moves was when we were all assembled at the start of the day. As the American flag was raised each morning to the sound of a bugle call, our formation snapped to attention and saluted for the duration of the music. As soon as the NCO in charge of us gave the call to “order arms” and go to parade rest (stop saluting and return to a more relaxed state), Carl would pipe up with a lone voice and shout “Hooyah, America!” Our instructors liked the sound of it so much that before long, we were all doing it in unison, every duty day.

Today’s our nation’s 248th birthday. That’s a long time for a nation to use a single constitution. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs as a country. Today it seems like the nation is trying to tear itself apart while adversaries band together. I came across the following statement and felt like it resonated with our current times. It applies to both men and women, but I wanted to present the original quote:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

We’ve been through some tough times as a nation, and it feels like we’re in one of them now. We can get through this one, but it will require strong people standing up for truth and justice. Hang in there, speak truth to power, and help out a neighbor or someone you see who needs a hand.

Happy Independence Day, and Hooyah, America!

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A Little Taste of That Next Level

It’s probably been almost 20 years since I last jumped out of an airplane, but there are still some fun memories of those days. Most of the skydiving you see in pictures or videos is called “belly flying,” where the skydiver is laying down horizontally. It’s a lot of fun, I did a lot of neat stuff that way. You fall about 120 mph, and you can flip, roll, do formations, all kinds of neat stuff.

But there was a brief time in this chapter of my life I wanted to try something a little more edgy. Rather than belly flying, it’s possible to do something called “sit flying” or “head-down flying,” where you position yourself vertically instead of horizontally. It’s trickier to do and takes some additional practice. You can do it right-side up (so you look like you’re standing in the air) or upside-down. Since you’re positioned vertically rather than horizontally, there’s less drag and you have a faster terminal velocity. Instead of 120 mph, you’re falling closer to 150 or 180 mph. Unfortunately it means the freefall is over sooner, but the tradeoff is faster speeds allow you to have more precise control once you become proficient at it.

I only tried this for a handful of jumps. I jumped with a coach, who stayed belly-flying until I managed to get into a vertical orientation. It was tough to do, I had a lot of stutter-starts, and it was a totally different animal than the skydiving I was used to. For a bit, I got the balance right and I started accelerating toward the ground, away from my coach. She was very experienced, so she caught up to me once I got away from her. The thing that felt really weird was when I managed to hold the right position for awhile, I started going so fast my goggles began wobbling from the wind. I was on the cusp of starting to get this totally new thing figured out when I, for whatever reason, couldn’t hold the position any longer, and I tumbled out of the vertical orientation and my body acted like an air brake and slowed me down by 30+ mph (can you imagine?). I got a little taste of that “next level” feeling, and I couldn’t hang on.

We’ll come back to this in a minute, but first I’d like to talk for just a bit about the different aspects of various ministries that excite us.

God created all of us with various interests. Even unbelievers have different hobbies they enjoy. Why? Why does someone get into stamp collecting while someone else crochets or enjoys woodworking, gardening, or painting? (Or skydiving?) None of it’s right or wrong; it’s just how God wired us as individuals. For those of us who become Christians, there’s a similar phenomenon at play. Upon being saved, many develop a desire to serve the body of Christ in some capacity, but there’s no cookie-cutter approach to how to go about doing it. We’re drawn to one or more of myriad possibilities.

Think about the different volunteer opportunities available in church. A few which come to mind are greeters, playing instruments, being an usher, singing, being a Sunday school teacher or working on the audio/visual team. That’s just in your local body of believers; beyond those walls you can volunteer in soup kitchens, hospitals, meal delivery organizations, do things like yard work for folks who can’t do that sort of thing anymore, etc. In broader terms, there are those attracted to ministry roles which care for the hurting, which help give rest to the weary, or which train Christians for something grander. There are others, limited only by God’s imagination. What type of ministry sparks your interest? If you had to donate personal time and effort to helping others in some capacity, what would you choose to allocate it toward?

For me, my particular ministry area of interest is seeing the sparks fly when people step out of their status quo lives and into the unknown, knowing only that they’ve been called to move out in faith in a particular direction. I love seeing when people recognize and then step into the role they were made for, when they start down the road of becoming who they were meant to be. It’s that moment when faith overflows into action, like Noah gathering his family around and saying “we’re building a boat.” It’s a shepherd boy saying “I’ll fight him.” It’s those “goosebump” moments in the Christian walk.

Sadly, many readers of the Bible seem to think the God of the Old Testament no longer empowers His followers today. This world is full of Christians living lives far below their potential, and I want to be a part of a ministry that encourages them to step into the role God has waiting for them. That’s why I write. If they just took that next step into whatever it is they know they’re called toward, they just might have a sit-flying experience, where their goggles start shimmying, their eyes go wide, and it takes their breath away to get a taste of the world that awaits them.

At some time or another, at least one person from all but a handful of the world’s nations has stopped in to visit this blog. Some had to circumvent firewalls to do it, others stumbled across it despite it being one blog among thousands. Of the believers among all those visitors, imagine all the backgrounds, cultures, and scenarios that exist. All of them are called to live lives honoring the Lord, and the way they do that is different for each person. What would the world look like if they all pursued God’s calling for their lives, even if they didn’t fully understand what it looked like?

Is there something tugging at your mind or heart, something God’s burdened you with, that you can’t shake? It might just be Him saying “come on, I’ve got a job for you.” Take a deep breath, pray for clarity, strength, courage, and commitment, and move out on what you know to be God’s will for your life.

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Warning: Audacity in Progress

In the past I’ve shared about how God laid on my heart the task of writing a series of fictional Christian books.

To give you some context about how audacious that is for me, consider this. Far and away, the largest writing endeavor I’ve ever undertaken is this blog. None of its entries are very long. This entry is a little over 1,000 words. The longest document I’ve ever written was for a college course, with a requirement of 10,000 words, I think. What makes me believe, despite having no writing classes other than basic English courses in college, I can write a series of 10 books, each with 50,000-80,000 words, totaling over 600,000? With “Piece of Cake” at one end of the spectrum and “Impossible” at the other end, I’m a lot closer to “Impossible” than “Cake.”

It’s very important to remember: those God calls, He equips.

Well that’s a wonderful little platitude, but how are things going, really? The idea for this project first took root during COVID lockdowns. It’s been four years. Where are we on this?

To be honest with you, it’s tough. I’ve never written a book before, let alone ten of them. I laid out a plan for what the different books would cover, then started at the beginning with the first book in the series. When I got bored with that story I’d jump to a different one, then another. What I found was this method diluted my efforts too much; I made headway, but it didn’t feel like it was getting traction. With my hectic schedule, I don’t have big chunks of time to work on stuff like this, so I only get maybe an hour and a half or two hours to work on it, sometimes once a week. Although I’m trying to surpass a half million words, this method’s not going to allow me to make big leaps forward.

I started focusing my efforts on a group of three specific books, rather than dabbling in ten books. Over time I started adding 1,000 words, 1,250, sometimes even 1,500 words at a shot. I’d mess around with the table of contents, re-sequence parts of the story to make it flow better and make more sense. A new idea would hit at inopportune times, and I’d write it down on my hand or email myself from work. The goal is still to get over 600,000 words, and I still have hundreds of thousands of words to write, but you know what I’ve learned so far?

This insurmountable goal is looking more achievable.

The progress isn’t as fast as I’d like, since I do have other responsibilities (a family, a full time job, a blog, my daily/weekly routines, a house, yard, and vehicles to take care of, etc.). In fact, the majority of my writing happens during my kids’ extracurricular activities. I drive them somewhere, and rather than come home after dropping them off, I stay there and write until it’s time to pick them up. Considering the sporadic chunks of time I have to work on this project, I’m pleased I haven’t given up on it. Persistence in small bites translates into small chunks of progress, but those chunks have begun banding together to result in some solid headway on that group of three books. With a combined target of 200,000 words for the three, I’ve written almost 125,000 words. That’s over 60% of the goal.

I’ve written another 50,000 words across the other seven books in the series. That totals almost 175,000 words. There’s still tons of work to be done, don’t get me wrong, but 175,000 out of a projected goal of 630,000 words is pretty encouraging. Don’t look now, but by remaining determined to follow through, I’ve gone more than a quarter of the way toward this unreachable goal.

Yes, of course, there will be an obscene amount of work to be done besides the writing. Finding plot holes, missing chunks of story, editing for clarity or typos, finding a professional editor and going through all the associated back-and-forth, finding an illustrator, a publisher, maybe being involved in marketing, these are all things demanding lots of attention. At the early stages of this effort, though, everything hinges on having a story to work with. The other steps can’t happen until the stories come together on paper. For someone whose longest writing was 10,000 prior to this, 175,000 is downright phenomenal.

I share this with you not because I want to wow you or try to make you think I’m cool for trying something new, but to show you, as I’m walking through this right now, that when God challenges you with a massive undertaking or insurmountable goal, the sooner you get started, the sooner your efforts will add up to something He can use. The Lord’s commissioning of this project assures its eventual success, provided I actually follow through and complete it. If I don’t, He’ll achieve His aims some other way, but this is the invitation God extended to me, offering to let me play a part in His grander story. Whatever success comes of it should be credited to the Lord, not me.

I don’t know what God’s going to do with these books once they’re done, but I have to maintain the attitude He’s going to use them either in revival or in causing unsaved readers to start asking important questions. Getting where God’s leading sometimes takes small, persistent actions over a long period of time. It’s sometimes frustratingly slow, and sometimes victory means you haven’t yet thrown in the towel, but the following Bible verse helps spur me on:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9

Is there something in your life God’s called you to do, and you need to be reminded not to give up? Hang in there. Don’t quit. If God called you to do it, it’s entirely possible someone down the road will either join or return to God’s Kingdom because of something you had a hand in.

Don’t give up. Someone’s counting on you.

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An Early Summer View of the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election

It’s time to take another look at the political landscape and how the 2024 election is shaping up.

Let’s not mince words. Despite Donald Trump’s recent conviction, Joe Biden is the one playing catch up. He recently tied the lowest approval rating of his presidency. His numbers went underwater with the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and they never looked back. The economy is this election’s number one issue, and far more voters trust Trump than Biden there. The only thing Biden really has going for him is the fact that he’s not Donald Trump. He doesn’t inspire much optimism and he doesn’t get people jazzed to head to the polls to vote for his vision of higher taxes, continued illegal immigration, boys competing in girls’ sports, letting violent criminals go unprosecuted, and switching gasoline engines to electric motors using a power grid ill-equipped to support them. If you’re a Democratic strategist taking a sober look at an administration who’s pushed too far left too quickly, your greatest hope, frankly, is for Trump’s recent conviction to sour enough people on him that it lifts Biden in the polls.

I think I’ve predicted in the past Biden would take just enough action to make it look like he was trying to get something done to secure the border. Well, now he has, with an Executive Order cutting back the level of illegal immigration from “inexcusable” to merely “overwhelming.” This is a bad political move for Biden. It’s far too late for his weak executive actions to have much effect at the border, but it’s strong enough to anger many “dissolve the border” enthusiasts planning to vote for him. There’s no real upside. He’s not actually interested in stemming the flow of illegal migration into the country; if he were, he would have taken much stronger executive action, and he would have done it years ago. He’s merely doing this to make it look like he’s tired of waiting for Congress to take action, and like he’s exhibiting strong leadership. (Strangely, the last president managed to take plenty of executive action to secure the southern border.)

I’m going to predict things will play out something like the following manner. Trump’s recent conviction won’t move the polling needle nearly as much as democratic strategists hoped. There will be an initial drop where Biden regains some advantage, but over time that advantage will fade in the polls and the “justice impacted” Trump will obtain an obvious advantage in the polls. As it becomes clear the conviction failed to derail Trump’s candidacy, Democrats will panic. The Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic nominee is officially crowned, isn’t held until August. Even though Americans tend to pay less attention to politics during the summer, it will become harder and harder to hide Biden’s physical and cognitive decline between now and then (in the past month, he’s departed both a college graduation and D-Day commemoration earlier than planned, looking very confused and frail in the process). The preference, obviously, would be for President Biden to withdraw from the race gracefully, of his own volition, citing health challenges and the frenetic pace of campaign season. Nobody can fault him for it; most Americans, if given a choice, would want to retire early, not have one of the most stressful jobs in the world until they’re 86. If his polling numbers don’t show any signs of improvement and he still doesn’t want to call it a career, the king-makers in the Democratic Party are going to have to get creative in coming up with a way to get enough public support to switch him out for some other candidate. If people get excited about change (in this case, Trump over Biden), it’s better to roll the dice and take a chance than it is to bet on a horse almost certain to lose. At this point I don’t know how they would do that, but two possibilities that come to mind are the President’s obvious health challenges and his son’s recent conviction. If the President’s health takes a turn for the worse or he pardons/commutes his son’s sentence even though he said he wouldn’t, the Democratic National Committee may suddenly use that event to say “we need a more energetic candidate to take on Trump” or “we can’t make a big deal of Trump’s legal woes if our candidate has questionable legal baggage of his own.” Success in swapping out candidates that late in the game would either depend on widespread name recognition (think someone like Michelle Obama) or a great resume (maybe a Democratic governor who capitalizes on some well-timed success with national visibility).

Regardless, it’s tough to imagine Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping restraining their military or other activities out of respect for Biden’s charisma, savvy, and strong leadership. Look for actions from both of those dictators to intensify before the elections take place, because they’d rather deal with Biden than Trump and they want to get away with stuff before the possibility of a new sheriff arriving in town. If you want an interesting perspective on President Biden’s physical and mental abilities, listen to what people in their 80s have to say about it. Spoiler alert: they’re usually alarmed that someone with his symptoms is the one everyone looks to in a crisis, because they often know someone with similar conditions, and those folks don’t perform well in high-pressure, rapidly changing situations.

It’s also interesting to see the misinformation from our own American news sources. For example, news networks have often spouted something about Trump being a threat to democracy, but they don’t call attention to the threats Democrats pose. Yes, Trump gave a speech that agitated people right before they rioted at the Capitol, but who has actually tried to bar a candidate from ballots in some locations, or entangle him in oddly timed court cases so he can’t be out on the campaign trail? These are legitimate threats to democracy; this is like, Soviet stuff. If this is what preserving democracy looks like, they’re sacrificing democracy to save democracy. This mischaracterization tactic isn’t just being used in the United States. In Europe, elections earlier this week shifted the power balance toward the political right, and people unhappy with the outcome are crying that this, too, is a threat to democracy. No, this is what’s known as the fulfillment of democracy, respecting the electorate’s choice. What’s being threatened is the power of the party losing seats. Those are two very different things.

Finally, what are we, as a nation, likely to face in the 2025-2028 presidential term? As I list these things, think about the kind of person you want sitting in the Oval Office, and the fortitude, clarity of thinking, and capacity for decision making each of the two major candidates possess.

Putin and Belarus may resume nuclear testing to increase alarm and try to fracture the NATO alliance or gain an advantage in Ukraine (maybe by inciting Ukraine to use up all its remaining air defense missiles because it doesn’t know whether or not incoming strikes include conventional explosives or nuclear explosives).

China has claimed this is the timeframe it will take Taiwan by force. Anticipate Chinese forces blockading, invading, and seizing Taiwan, which will likely lead to the most intense U.S. military action in the Pacific in decades, along with a potential direct military confrontation with a hostile superpower.

There’s a high potential for an economic downturn in the U.S. as a prolonged period of elevated interest rates finally catches up with and affects the nation’s economy.

Those are some of the biggies. There are other things which will affect everyday Americans on a less certain timeline, but are nonetheless noteworthy:

The convergence of advancements in block chain, Artificial Intelligence, medical technology, materials processing (3D printing), and robotics will develop quickly and could rapidly impose major changes on our daily lives. We need to balance responsibility with the ability to innovate, so we can be competitive without our less ethical or less regulated competitors leaving us in the dust.

NASA will physically return astronauts to the moon for the first time in over 50 years at a time when lunar missions from various nations and other “space race” activities intensify.

The Kansas City Chiefs will finally fail to make it to the Super Bowl again (hopefully).

There’s a lot to think about. Pray for our leaders (and potential leaders), even if you don’t vote for them. Our leaders make decisions and take actions that affect us all, so pray God gives them wisdom and clarity in knowing what to do.

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Thankful for the Day of Days: Operation Overlord

Think back to the time in your life when you were in the 18-25 year-old age group. It’s the prime of life. Graduating high school and getting a job, maybe going to college. A lot of folks meet that special someone and start a family during that time.

Today is a very special day in the history not only of our nation, but in the history of the western world. Today, June 6th, 2024, is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the storming ashore of thousands of men trying to gain a foothold on the Nazi-controlled European continent to liberate it from Hitler’s regime. Over 125,000 American, British, and Canadian troops, most of them aged 18-25, took part in amphibious assaults on the beaches near Normandy, France, while another 23,000 got air-dropped behind enemy lines the night before.

They faced withering hails of machine gun and small arms fire, mortars, unimaginable sights of carnage and gore littering the beach, and surf that turned red with blood. This was a challenge that could only be overcome by throwing wave after wave of men at the enemy, and almost 9,000 Allied troops perished that day. In the end, the effort was enough for Allied forces to establish a logistics hub on the beach where they could unload tanks, troops, and equipment to move inland and ultimately defeat Hitler and his war machine, freeing Western Europe.

Today very few of these men are left. Many of the ones still around are over 100 years old. If any of those who were at Normandy on D-Day are reading this, we owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you for enduring a series of nightmares for the sake of complete strangers.

Even though it may not have happened on the same day, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also offer a word of thanks to those who took part in the Pacific fight. To the Marines out there who endured unspeakable horrors, were forced to do things no human should ever have to do, and then try to readjust to “normal” life back home when it was all over, hats off to you. The European Theater of WWII gets most of the attention, but you witnessed unspeakable things on a regular basis. Your fight only just started once the war ended. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to cover it, but it’s all I have to give.

By now a lot of movies, shows, or other productions have recreated some of these world-changing events. While I can’t claim to know how closely they compare to the real thing, here are a few ideas if you’d like to get better acquainted with D-Day or the war in the Pacific. For the amphibious landings at Normandy, check out the scene near the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. For the paratroopers dropped in and around Normandy on D-Day, watch the second episode of Band of Brothers. To see war bring out some of the worst of humanity in the Pacific theater of World War II (on both sides), take a look at the miniseries The Pacific.

These depictions are not for the faint of heart, and they are not happy events, but remembering horrible sets of events hopefully helps us avoid future versions of the same thing. We owe much to the men (and a few women) who showed up 80 years ago for the biggest battles to put down the Axis powers. If you know someone who was there, please thank them in a way that’s meaningful to them.

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Quick Hit: Time for a Heart Checkup

Did you know you can tell what’s in a person’s heart by what comes out of their mouth?

The contents of your heart are important; they overflow your heart and come out of your mouth, acting like a window for others to see the type of things your heart contains.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.  Luke 6:45

Think of this as an opportunity for a self-check. What kind of things are coming out of your mouth? Are there any changes you need to make?

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Some People Have Skeletons in Their Closet; Mine’s Packed With Gear

Adventure-wise, I’ve done a lot of weird stuff in my life. I have logbooks, journals, and other things that helped chronicle adventures now long gone. I’ve invested thousands of dollars into equipment most people don’t normally get a chance to use. Here’s a partial list of gear I’ve either owned in the past or still own today:

Cross-country skis, poles, and boots

Skydiving container, parachute, reserve parachute, jumpsuit, wrist altimeter, goggles

Semi-dry suit, wetsuit, buoyancy control device, dive computer, regulators, extra weights, booties, fins, gloves, mask, snorkel, various accessories

Multiple climbing harnesses, four different climbing ropes, 15+ carabiners, rigging plate, pulleys, 100+ feet of webbing, figure 8s, ATCs, ascenders, block & tackle, assorted cordage

Paintball gun, paintball mask, CO2 cylinders, thousands of paintball rounds

Cold-weather gear, rain gear, boots

GPS receiver, two-way radios, headlamps, lanterns, flashlights, spotlight, flares, glow sticks, binoculars, glacier glasses, gear bags, backpacks, various knives, fire-starting metal match, 550 cord, tarps

(I don’t think I’ve ever put together a list like this, and looking at it now, I have to express how fortunate I am to not be maimed, seriously injured, or dead as a result of eccentric hobbies. I have no idea how many waivers I’ve signed in my life. Lord, thank you and please pass along my thanks to my guardian angel(s) for me! But that’s not the point I set out to make.)

It’s fun to still have a lot of these relics from long ago. Many of these items are intended for very specific uses, while others can be used in a variety of situations. When I look at some of this gear now, it’s beat up or well worn due to heavy use. Other pieces are almost brand new, even years later, because they either haven’t been used or I only used them lightly. Some of my most well-worn gear includes my cross-country skis and the climbing harnesses and ropes (considering the condition of the climbing gear, those guardian angels deserve another shout-out!). Other stuff that was pretty much a waste of money includes the semi-dry suit (I used it one weekend and still have it, almost 20 years later) and the wetsuit (I’ve had it the same amount of time, but never even got it wet).

At one time or another I owned all of that gear, so it was up to me how often and in what fashion I used it. Users know every piece of gear must one day be pulled from service because it doesn’t last forever. I sometimes had to make the conscious decision to say “you’re starting to wear out, I’m going to sideline you on this smaller adventure so I can save your remaining utility for something bigger,” or “no, I’m not going to bring you along with me this time because based on what I intend to do, I won’t need you this time.”

If, at any point, any of that gear had said to me “I don’t think I’m up for this,” or started repeatedly protesting the manner in which I intended to use it, I likely would have altered my plans for using it. I probably would have started viewing it as unreliable or not worth the hassle. If you look back at the list of gear I wrote down, most of it is used for activities where you can’t accept the use of questionable equipment. If I have unreliable gear but still have my mind set on taking part in the activity, what am I to do? I can either replace it with a piece of more reliable gear, or figure out another way to do what I’m trying to do using the rest of the stuff I have on hand.

Some of the more worn pieces of equipment I have are the ones that have been most reliable, and I have specific memories of how they’ve come through for me when I asked a lot from them. When you consider that we, as Christians, are tools wielded by the Lord to be used for His purposes (purposes we don’t understand or get a say in), it should be our goal to be up for the challenge whenever the Master opens the doors to his gear racks and looks through what He’s got to work with. If that’s the attitude we maintain, by the end of our lives, we’re going to have a very well-worn quality due to heavy use. That’s a good thing.

Make it your goal to, by the end of your life, lose the shine that accompanies lack of use. We shouldn’t be hung up in the closet, still bright and colorful; we should have frayed seams, some chips and dings, and be a little faded. For those of you who have lived your life serving the Lord, or who have temporarily parted ways with loved ones after their years of faithful service to Him, take comfort in the fact that He has fond and specific memories of the ways you and yours have come through for Him.

One day that shine and color will be renewed, even brighter than the original.

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There’s a Fine Line Between Hooligans and Criminals

Here’s a story that hopefully gives you a chuckle.

Early in my time in the Air Force, I tried out to be a survival instructor. The class only started twice a year at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington. While waiting around for the next class to start, we did lots of exercising and other physical training to prepare our bodies for the rigors of the upcoming course.

One of the things we did on a weekly basis was load up our ruck sacks and go on long hikes in a state park or some weird trail or on public land out in the boonies. The idea was to keep our bodies accustomed to bearing heavy loads for a long time as we moved over miles of terrain, and along the way practice some land navigation. We were fortunate enough to have some pretty relaxed superiors while waiting around for training to start, and since we’re talking the Air Force (not the Army or Marines), they told us “hey, as long as they’re decent, you can wear civilian clothes during this ruck; the only guidelines are that you wear the issued boots you intend to wear during the course and you must bring a loaded ruck.”

Now, when you go for long hikes once a week, it doesn’t take long before you start repeating trails. One of the sergeants in charge of us had an idea to help break up the monotony. He had family an hour or two away from the base; his parents lived in Idaho somewhere, I think. He worked out a plan to have us go for a hike near their location, then we could spend the night at his parents’ house, and we’d come back to base the next morning. As far as training goes, this was very casual and actually a really generous thing for his parents to do. (Would you be willing to host 20-30 very fit and very hungry males with an extra dose of testosterone at your home? I wouldn’t.)

When we went on our hikes, we physically took up a lot of room. There were a lot of us, and we each had a large ruck sack, so we normally took a big bus that was pretty much a navy blue school bus with a very “for official use only” look to it. We piled in, drove off to whatever trail we were going to hit that day, and did our hike.

I don’t remember the details, but for some reason, when we finished our hike and got back to the bus, we needed to kill some time before we could go to the house. We ended up driving into town where a high school baseball game was going on. I think maybe the sergeant wanted to say hi to the coach, who was an old friend or something. We didn’t really know, our attitude was “hey man, I get on the bus when they tell me, I go where it takes me, and I get off the bus when it stops.” Well, they told us to leave our rucks on the bus and come outside to watch the game.

As we spread out on the grass, dozing in the sunshine, shooting the breeze, or watching the game, we looked around and started noticing some of the locals looked uneasy. None of us could figure out why. We hung out for maybe 20 minutes to half an hour, then got back on the bus and rolled out to wherever we were going next. We later found out they thought we were from a nearby prison and were out on a work detail whose very limited supervision was chatting up the baseball team’s coach and not paying much attention to the bunch of rough-looking guys, wearing the same boots, with similar haircuts and no facial hair, all piling off the government-issue bus.

I guess if I had to pick a moral to the story, I’d say even though it might not be your fault, sometimes people are going to make assumptions about you based on how you look or the vibe you give off. Before you get mad at them, don’t be afraid to step back from the situation and maybe even laugh at yourself a little. Cut them some slack. You might’ve jumped to the same conclusion if you were in their shoes. Or boots.