I just spent almost two hours online with my son, Jason, who is currently deployed to Afghanistan. This was the longest we have been able to talk since he left. He has been gone away from home since he graduated high school. He is married and has a little girl of his own now. But it seems to me that today, as if for the first time, I truly saw the man that he has become. A man that has machine guns leaning in the corner less than 2 feet away, ready to grab up at a moment’s notice. A man that is exhausted from getting less than 4 hours sleep a night for several months now. A man that talks nonchalantly about not being able to trust any of the “locals” because at any time they could be forced into bringing in a bomb or opening fire on the troops that are stationed there, if the terrorists were to somehow get their hands on these men’s families. Who has to be ready at a moment’s notice to run to the firing line, no matter what he is doing or where he is, load the gun and be firing…. all within 4 minutes. A man who is in the middle of a war zone.
How did this happen? How did my little boy, who was always so compassionate to everyone and everything, become a soldier? The same little boy who used to bring injured animals home almost every day, who never met a person he wasn’t instantly friends with, who never met a stranger? Who now talks about having to escort injured children to the medical clinic under armed guard?
But yet, I still see glimpses of him every now and then. When he tells me how these same small, frightened, injured children were so needy and so poor. How his heart hurt so much for the littlest one who had been burned so badly. Of how he found a jacket for the smallest one, and gave them his own socks for their feet. How he gave them coloring books and candy, backpacks and shoes. How they let him take their picture with him, and how they are all smiling. I still see the little boy in the smile that he wears in every picture, and how his eyes still shine with the compassion that he has always felt. I still see him in the hope that he expresses, that by his service and sacrifice others will have a better life.
And I realize that under the cloak that he wears on the outside… the persona of a soldier… that he is still the same loving, caring, and compassionate person. Only now, he is a loving, compassionate man. Oh, Lord, may he ever be so!
