Thursday, November 11, 2010

Happy Veteran's Day

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."
John 15:13



I know that Veteran's Day is a celebration of those who bravely fought, and returned.  (Pardon me I've already started tearing up.) I still use this Scripture to describe them, because it's still true.  All of our military families are laying down their lives for us.  Gather round kids, it's story time.

This is a true story of someone I knew on the Internet.  For privacy and practical purposes, I'll call her MilitaryMamaWanna.  She had problems getting pregnant and was on a long term course of fertility drugs that they had saved up a couple years to be able to afford.  They were about 3/4 of the way through the treatment when her husband was called up.  She, seemingly without much complaint, gave up those months of injections and raging hormones because well, contrary to popular opinion, you do actually need a man to make a baby.  This was something they should be doing together.   A little while after he was shipped out, he got to come home on leave.  After he returned to duty, his wife e-mailed him some amazing news.  During that short visit, they created the baby they had been trying so hard for.  Now this man is overseas receiving this by e-mail, unable to hold his wife and cry tears of joy with her.   He was not there to help her prepare for the baby, take her to the doctor, hear the heartbeat.  For whatever reason, he was not able to receive calls or e-mails for a couple weeks.  When he got back, he found the two e-mails from his wife- one dated a week or so before the other.  The first one bore that horrible news that the baby they had hoped for would not be, she had miscarried.  I can't imagine the grief, and yes guilt, the poor man felt.  It was followed by a second e-mail that the woman had gone to her usual Sunday church service, seeking comfort and solace.  She had forgotten it was Mother's Day.  At the door there were kids handing out flowers to all the ladies who were mothers.  She accepted it with tears in her eyes and sat down, thanking the Lord for recognizing what was going on.  As she sat there, another woman (ok soul-sucking bitch) came up to her and had the nerve to ask for the flower back because she "wasn't a mother yet."  (And yes, the woman knew about the recent miscarriage.)  Subsequently, she sank into a deep depression.

What would your husband do?  I know what FarmerGeek would have done.  Let's just say that lady would be taken to task and the pastor spoken to.  FarmerGeek would have demanded something to be done and at the very least an apology issued.  He would have gone to battle for me.  The problem was, her husband couldn't do that.

Because he was already going to battle for the rest of us.

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