A couple years back my nephew/godson was telling me why he likes the military, and he talked about how apolitical it is. His dad was a navy officer/pilot for quite a while so my sister had talked to me about the politics involved, and I had also just done quite a bit of research into the Able Danger thing, so I couldn’t help but think that my nephew was going to have a rude awakening.
It’s sort of like the rude awakening I had with the church also. I grew up #9 of 12 kids in a small dual-parish church made mostly of farmers like my family. We learned to get along because we had to and were just glad if we had a pastor at all. We never thought of the pastor as being different from anybody else. So it was a shock when I became engaged to a seminarian and he wanted me to read a book about divorce in the parsonage, concentrating on problems unique to pastors’ families largely because of the politics that go on in the church. I thought, “Geez, some people sure have a messiah complex. Why do pastors think they’re so different from everybody else?”
Suffice it to say that the book knew whereof it spoke. The congregation we’re at right now has been political to the point that it’s basically just the grace of God that I’m still alive and our family is intact.
Our first parish was a dual congregation, small-town, and it was literally like a family to us. Within one week I had gone to the hospital at 42 weeks to induce labor, our daughter had died during monitoring, I had given birth, we had buried our daughter, we had moved to another state, and my husband began the ministry. Those people embraced us with open arms and carried us through. I think they ministered more to us than we to them, but we gave them everything we had. They loved us through the birth of our first 3 living children, a miscarriage, and the beginning of a pregnancy the doctor initially told me was hopeless (she is now my snuggly 10-year-old). There was some politics there but it was small compared to the good-hearted people who really cared for each other - good, salt of the earth Minnesotans. Uff-dah. lol
Then we moved back to Nebraska, the good life. (And Nebraska is a great place to live, so don’t get me wrong.) Wow, what a change. There are some wonderful people here but politics like I had never had to deal with before. My world was literally thrown upside-down. There was just no place for me at all. I spent more and more time on the computer just because there was room for me there, and I could talk about things that mattered to me - the God stuff and the assault on the Constitution. But it really took a toll on the family so I got away from it and poured myself into home improvement. But I wondered what I was even still on earth for, if trying to impact my world was forbidden to me.
At one of the lowest points a friend - a military guy - said something that enabled me to communicate to my husband where I was at and what I needed. This military guy talked about the different levels of alertness in law enforcement and military. He said white is just normal. Yellow is where your suspicions are aroused, like if you’re patrolling or there’s something fishy going on. Red is full-out battle, where it’s either you and everything you love survives or the enemy survives. And black is when you’re at peace.
The Bible study we were doing was actually about peace so I asked him if the goal, then, was black because then you were at peace. He said, “Nellie, if you go black you’re dead. Black is to give up and accept the loss of everything you love.”
It was like he had looked into my soul and read me like an open book. I went home and explained to my husband what Dave had said and explained that I was tottering between red and black, from one moment to the next, and that even though he hates that I’m a fighter, at this point the only option instead of red is black. If I’m fighting at least I’m alive.
He had seen me go through some pretty serious panic attacks so he knew I wasn’t just bluffing, and he knew I had spent a couple hours at the doctor’s office because the doctor was deciding whether to let me go home. He decided I’d be better off red than dead. lol. Where red is MILITARY red - actually fighting communism and the decay of our freedom.
I struggle to find balance between the immediate family needs and the bigger, long-term picture (both earthly and eternal). And we go around about whether the potential gain is worth the risk in what I’ve been doing. Struggle over whether anything we the people do will actually make any real difference in the long run. The same kinds of stuff people process here a lot - and especially as we see the Obama regime attacking so much infrastructure.
As long as I can fight without jeopardizing his ministry he understands that it’s what I have to do. I would love to go back to building shelves and making quilts, but if I do it while the battle is still so thick it will be because I’ve gone black, not because the threat was conquered and the alertness subsides back to yellow and then white. I hope we can get back to the yellow zone someday, but as long as we’re in the red zone I have to fight. Only God knows who wins this particular earthly battle, whether freedom or oppression. But as long as I’m alive and the battle rages I have to fight for what I love even while taking time to also love what I love.
And speaking of that, my 10-year-old who was sick in the night really wants a little snuggle time. So I’d better go do that.
What do you mean by “picket ship tactics”? In your experience with the navy, did they talk about communism and Islamism at all, and how those enemies plan to defeat us by acting as domestic enemies within the command structure, government, and/or critical American infrastructure? Do they really try to know the enemy, and be aware of our vulnerabilities?
I look at Nidal Hasan and think that somebody really screwed up there - as if they had no clue of the tactics of the enemy or the danger of the PC garbage. I look at Able Danger and see the same thing. And now the DADT stuff, disarmament, Lakin, etc... it’s just scary to me because I don’t know if what Dave told me about the military having contingency plans to cover everything is really true. Seems like they’re ignoring this PC/domestic enemy elephant in the room even while it makes hay out of our security.
Sorry this is so long.
Thanks for an awesome return post - it’s a keeper. This actually describes well some of the things that I went through in the service and have gone through since in civilian life.
The islamic issue was just starting and communism was “in full collapse” when I got out, but the PC build up was in full swing. We didn’t talk ‘politics’, but we did talk about freedom, protecting home/what we believed in, and what to watch for - there were a lot of ‘spy’ issues early in my time that were still fresh. Your nephew is definitely in for a rude awakening. I agree someone really messed up with Hasan on every level the warning signs were apparently present.
As to picket ships - when out on ops with a battle group one of the ships is typically stationed either way out away - sort of a point man. Usually completely at the mercy of whatever the BG commander wants done and normally not as involved in the more involved activities of the group. We also often referred to this when placed in a safety roll behind refueling ships or carriers conducting recovery ops. Again at the mercy of following along without the ability to do anything else while in that role. I think this ties in exactly with what you were saying about black and red. I was red most of my time in the service, until I went black and had to get out. I’d have loved to stay, but you can’t be a career Lieutenant in the Navy and I didn’t have the political bent for much more than that. Looking back I likely would have been CM’d myself for insubordination if I’d stayed in because for me there were only 2 things that mattered: the Mission and my sailors/marines.
Times change - but I’ve found I’m still in the red/black with my civilian job - must be the scott/irish/german mix in the ol’gene pool. Now the only thing that ‘matters’ to me are my wife & girls and family back home. Sadly I have felt the need to be prepared in certain matters with the way things are going and should the need arise I’ll stand up. Things took a step in the right direction earlier this month - but we still have a way to go.
Stay safe, fair winds/following seas, and keep up the good fight.