NaNoWriMo

This month is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Which means thousands of dreaming novelists will be trying to write 50,000 words during this month. Including me. It's a small novel - 50,000 words, but it's a beginning. So, for this month, every weekday from 5am to 7am I'm trying to pound out 3,500 words.

Here is something I wrote this week... hope you enjoy it.

I Heard the Bells
I was raised around two grandfathers who both served in the military, my grandpa Charles served in the navy while my grandpa Wayne served in the air force. It was never central to the family, I mean we never really focused on it, but it was always there – pictures, stories and the pride of serving your country. And it’s become almost cliché or foreign sounding now, but I love my country. I am incredibly proud to be an American. Plus, I still remember a pretty serious talk my dad had with me when I was still in high school about college. He told me that if I was going to go to college, and he thought I should, that I would have to pay for it on my own. The family couldn’t afford to send me to college. If I was to go to college I would have to figure out a way on my own. All of these things sort of combined I guess and I don’t really remember all the details of how it all came about; not sure how I even made the decision, but sometime during my senior year I decided to join the navy reserve.

Joining the military was a good decision and one that I’m still proud of today. There were times when Tambee and I seriously considered doing it full time. I loved the structure, the camaraderie and the confidence I felt as part of the military. The navy changed who I was and how I view the world. It gave me invaluable training and confidence in myself, my abilities and the decisions I make. It gave me the ability to really see myself, my actions and my decisions and then be able to explain them, under pressure to a superior. Invaluable.

So I flew away in November of 1988 – six months after I graduated from American Fork High School. I was the oldest kid in our family and I had a really strong bond with my parents. I can’t really express how tough it was to go. Maybe it was best that I did it so fast, I broke the apron strings rather than cut them. And I flew away to San Diego. I cried on the plane. It felt like part of me had been ripped away. I had always enjoyed the closeness of my family, it really was like a comforter to me, and being away from all that had left me with a serious empty feeling. The first letter that I wrote said something about living every day like it was your last and keeping your Heavenly Father close. Truer words were never spoken.

I was in boot camp for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Eve without my family. During that time I wrote a couple dozen letters to my family. It was ridiculous how homesick I was. I remember standing on the parade ground one day, it may have been Thanksgiving Day, not long after arriving at boot camp. The trainers had been yelling at us, I had no one to talk to, no members of the church that I knew of, and I was alone. We were standing on the parade ground, being yelled at, and it was raining. I remember it was raining hard enough that it ran down my face like tears, and I was glad, because there were actual tears running down my face as well. And I was glad that no one would know I was crying.

I felt an ache during boot camp that I can’t really describe because I was actually alone in a crowd. Many of these guys were nothing like me. They did not have the same values I had – I was soft while they were all hard. There was no one there who really knew me or cared about me. Many of these boys had been without families before or had no real ties at home so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Plus, let’s me honest, I was a momma’s boy. I had been held, and loved and protected my entire life by my parents who probably never considered that their boy would leave them for the military. So this really came as a shock to all of us. And boy did I feel alone.

Christmastime was the worse of course. I mean, Thanksgiving had been hard, but Christmas, well it was awful. The ache of being alone was nearly unbearable. Being able to go to church really made a huge difference and it was my only real lifeline back to home. It was so nice to be able to slip away on a Sunday, away form the barracks, away from the language and the hardness and slip into the warmth and love of the church. Being with the members there really made a real difference. Christmas that year came on a Saturday and I went to church that next day. I had been feeling increcibly homesick and sad. I felt like I was in the middle of whatever the opposite of home was – coldness, uncaring, worldly. There were times I wondered if God was even listening to me.

There was someone there who did listen to me – his name was King. I don’t really remember anyone’s name from boot camp except for his. That’s all I remember. He was a big Black guy from some big city somewhere, but I’m not really sure where. Boot camp was new for me in another way because I was from downtown Utah, Whitesville for sure, at the time. And I had never really seen or talked to people of color. It was a new and exciting experience for me. I don’t really remember color even being an issue for anyone. I don’t remember talk of Mexican, or Hispanic, or African American or anything like that. It may have gone on and I was just clueless, but I don’t remember it. I think maybe King liked me for my innocence, or maybe he just knew I needed to be looked after and so he put himself in the way of stuff. I don’t really know.

I remember King saying that he had been a drug dealer in the city where he came from. I remember him saying that he made a lot of money but didn’t want to grow up like that. I remember him saying he wanted a different life and he hoped the Navy would give it to him. And I remember him helping me to run.

I was a lousy runner. I’ve always been on the chubby side and running has never been easy for me. I have these strange, double-jointed knees that bend backwards at odd and uncomfortable angles. Turns out it makes running especially hard for an unatheletic chubby kid. And those big long runs you take in boot camp, well, they are the worst. Sometimes I talk about helping King in school during boot camp, but the fact is I’m not sure I really did. I know there were times though that because of him, I finished a run. He would yell at me and get me to pick up the pace a bit. I hated running. Still do. But it was because of him that I was able to finish many of those runs.

But it was this particular Christmas that I really remember because I did feel so alone. Not just alone because my family wasn’t there, my friends weren’t there and my house and neighborhood was far away, but because I didn’t really connect with anyone on a personal level. And so going to church was a real balm for me. It was an island of peace amongst all the other stuff. And I remember going to church that day and listening to the speakers and hymns. But most of all one particular hymn – I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. That hymn struck such a cord in me that day. Never had a hymn struck me with such truth and meaning. The final lines were:
“And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

By this point in the song tears were running down my cheeks. My Heavenly Father was gently reprimanding me. He was reminding me that evil has its place in the world, and just because I am confronted with things I don’t like or am not comfortable with does not mean he doesn’t exist or that he has forgotten me. How selfish I had been to think such a thing. Through this hymn I was reminded that dark times are how we are able to appreciate the light and that my Heavenly Father watches over all his children and blesses them with what they need. My Heavenly King had sent an earthly King to watch over me and protect me – and I had missed it. I missed it even then. Wherever you are King – thank you. I pray my Heavenly Father watches out for you every day the way you did for me so many years ago.

I guess the important thing about boot camp, at least for me, is that I made it. I made it. I graduated, I made the runs, I got in shape and I made it. Boot camp was a huge turning point for me because I learned that physically I was capable of so much more than I had thought. I learned that the only guys I really didn’t like, from a racial standpoint, were the white supremacists. And I learned that with the help of my Heavenly Father, and the folks he sent to watch out for me, I was capable of standing on my own and conquering anything I put my mind to.