The Median Sib

Beth at Blue Star Chronicles wrote about her soldier son in this post.

I don’t know where my Soldier Son is. The last time I got a message from him he said his unit was pushing to another area. He was vague about where that would be, but I know it’s an area where there is a lot of fighting right now. . . .

It really hit me when I got his orders in the mail. He sent them to me for safe keeping and ‘just in case’. Just in case. That’s what really got me. The ‘just in case’. I tried to read the orders, but they looked like they had been xeroxed way too many times and were barely legible. The part I could read was his name, rank and the statement that he’s deployed in the Global War on Terror. That got me too. . . .

When I hear that the al-islamofascists have put out yet another tape of their disgusting medieval abuses and tortures of U.S. military Soldiers or civilians from anywhere I feel my anger towards them building. When I hear their fascist hate-filled rhetoric I just want to scream. . . .

When I hear the hate-filled ignorant rhetoric of our enemies within who just don’t GET IT, I want to scream even more. These are the worst. They are speaking against their own people, their own country. . . .

The main stream media is the worst. I listen to them put out propaganda AGAINST our own country and it is infuriating. It puts our troops in a much more dangerous position. Appeasement does nothing but prolong suffering and conflict. You can avoid conflict, but it only leads to unavoidable conflict. How they can do that and sleep at night is beyond my understanding.

All the “progressive” rhetoric against the war and against George Bush is killing our soldiers. It is empowering the enemy. Seeing the self-interest, stupidity and political posturing masquerading as patriotism and scholarly intellect turns my stomach.

It was reported recently that a study had been done that determined that the war in Iraq has made terrorism a bigger threat. If the idiot leftwingers could have been non-partisan and truly patriotic long enough to support our country through the hard times rather than turning tail and running when the going got tough, the war would be completely different.

Beth’s soldier son is my soldier nephew. I pray God will watch over each and every soldier and save them from our enemies from without and within.

I wrote before HERE and HERE about RT’s and my wedding on September 5th at McHugh Park outside of Anchorage, Alaska. We woke up that Tuesday morning and realized we had just a few hours before our flight home from Alaska. Our Plan A for our wedding hadn’t worked out, but we still had our Alaskan marriage license, and we didn’t want it to go to waste. We could have waited until we got home to get married, but we had planned on being married in Alaska, and we didn’t want to give up that idea. The resulting Plan B was much better than Plan A ever could have been.

RT got the Anchorage phone book and started making phone calls around 9:00 that morning. He found a minister who could do the ceremony that day, we made a mad dash to Wal-Mart and REI for clothes, and met the minister at 1:00, drove to the park, and the wedding occurred around 1:45. By 8:00 that evening, we were on the plane back to Nashville. It was a whirlwind, but it was truly perfect.

The minister who performed the ceremony was Dr. Michael Mitchell. I don’t recall everything that Michael said during the “sermon” part of the ceremony. However, one thing did stand out. He used 1 Corinthians 13 as the text, and as he quoted each characteristic of love, he gave examples.

When he came to the part, “Love does not take offense,” he said, “Resolve today not to let your mate offend you. Only you can control whether or not you feel offended.” Then he went on to say that whenever we start to feel offended or annoyed by our mates, we should immediately make ourselves think of the things we love about them.

I realize I’ve been married less than three weeks - so it’s still the honeymoon phase for me - even though RT and I were married for 28 years previously. However, that is good advice, and it’s the one thing from Michael’s sermon that has really stuck with me.