Think About it -- Celebrate Veterans Day.

As Veterans Day approaches, I have been considering heroes who emerged from wartime experiences. I am especially drawn to those from WWII and Vietnam, as both affected me personally.

There are so many Veterans to write about, but I chose two you will never read about anywhere but here — my Dad and my Brother.

There are no stories of either of them enduring a withering hail of gunfire to save fellow service members. Neither of them came home with medals or Purple Hearts.

They brought home something more precious. They came home and modeled lives of healthy honor, duty, and perspective that sprouted strong families. I learned from them that life will bring with it death. That there will be abundant joy and astonishing sorrow. That horrible things happen to good people.

They taught me, through the lens of their experiences, that the choice to move on after trauma is ours. That to experience staggering sorrow for moments (or seasons of life) is OK, but it doesn’t have to define you. And that there is no final sting in death. It hurts those who survive, more than the believer who died by that violent act or dreadful disease.

Most importantly, they modeled that acceptance of Christ and a firm grasp of scriptural values is the bottom line of an extraordinary life.

They also taught me that it’s OK to talk about it. Thankfully, I could never say, “Dad (or my Brother) never talked about it.” They both talked about it. They cried at specific parts of their stories. But their stories were never about their own heroics or told in a way that drew attention to themselves. They were told as experiences of horror, sorrow, and death, but shared in a way that offered historical memory, honor for others, and perspectives for growth.

Think About it

In the 2^nd chapter of Judges, we read that Joshua died, and then people stopped talking about what they had experienced in the desert. I see from that passage that, “After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.” [i]

We thank all the Veterans this week for your service. Please tell your story. Someone —maybe a little boy like my brothers and I, when we first heard Dad — should know it.

Celebrate Veterans Day.