Saturday, December 05 3:30
I have now been at my first command for three weeks. When I asked a junior officer who came up through the enlisted ranks what he found most challenging about being an officer, he replied, "You hit the ground running and never slow down." It is true, you do hit the ground running. In the first three week I have already had 9 counseling sessions in addition to my normal collateral duties. The types of problems that are brought to the chaplain are quite diverse. So far they include suicidal thoughts, marrital difficulties, drug abuse, pre-marital counseling, concerns of our upcoming deployment to a combat zone, as well as a few others. I personally find this work very fulfilling, though I can see that I must become serious about getting adequate rest, and as Steven Covey teaches, "sharpening the saw." That is, working smarter, not just harder. The troops I work with, both above and below in rank, at this point, seem to be very high quality people. For this I am very grateful.
Tuesdeay, September 15th 7:00 p.m.
My first true encounter with the military was Officer Development School in Newport, RI. It was about what I expected with the exception that you never get enough sleep. Most days start around 3:30-3:45, and do not end until around 8:00 or 9:00. That is assuming you do not need to clean your rooms, iron your uniforms, study, do laundry or any other thing that really must get done. All in all, your lucky if you get four hours of sleep a night.
In addition, we received regular exercise with moderate doses of yelling, unless of course someone in your company fails to salute a captain, in which case, the whole company experiences the joy of physical exercise in the sand pit. Imagine 58 sweaty individuals, grabbing fistfulls of sand, and doing sixty jumping jacks. By the end, the sand that was once in your hands is now on the eyes, hair, and face of the person next to you.
I must not forget the eight hours of classes each day, which, to put it mildly, made me wonder at times if we were really in POW training. Thankfully, we did have one teacher who took not putting us to sleep seriously, a gifted communicator named LT Putney.
Perhaps my favorite memory at ODS was when an attractive female chief was teaching a class on sensitivity training, and to make the point of what kind of behavior was completely unacceptable, asked one of the males, "Pretend I am your superior, and I tell you that if you want to be promoted you will have to have sex with me at 7:30 every morning in my office. How would you respond?" The male responds with silence, and begins talking to the person next to him. Finally the chief interrupts and says, "what are you doing?" He responds, "getting counsel from my chaplain!" Yes, there were alot of chaplains in our class. Hopefully the counsel was good.
Thursday, May 7th 1:00 p.m.
I will be leaving Stockton Chinese Baptist Church soon to enter boot camp. This is our first transition of this sort. I can already feel myself being pulled in two directions. I am sad to leave the church because we have made good friends there, with whom we have shared many good memories. At the same time I am very excited to move forward with what I understand God's call to be, a call to minister within a military context. The entry process was long, with setbacks at every turn, a first class emotional rollocoster. But in the end, all doors were opened and all the obstacles removed.
But even now, there are still struggles. For example, I feel sick to my stomach when I think about missing my second daughters birth, as well as large chunks of my first daughter's childhood. She is growing up so fast, and I know she will change much in the time that I am gone. And of course, I have never been seperated from my wife for extended periods of time over these first nine years of marriage, and I know that seperation will be difficult.
Yet, despite all this, I am excited about the possibility of bringing the care of Christ to military personel wherever they may be found, whether that be Aphganistan, a ship in the middle of the sea or here in the US. I have a feeling that my largely academic understanding of what it means to trust God is about to give way to new understandings of what it means to trust him. No doubt it will be good for me.
For those of you who believe in prayer, I humbly request that you pray for my family as God brings them to mind. Especially for my wife, who will be tested as she wrestles with raising two young children without my help for extending periods of time. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I thank you in advance for your prayers.