My 7th Grade Thanks To The Soldiers

I was not even school-age when they came to the church I grew up in---the new pastor, his wife, pretty daughter, and mischievous son. Years later they would tease me about being so shy that I would hide my little toddler self under the kitchen table when they came to my house to visit. They pastored our small church for at least twelve years, long enough to become family to the church members of the quiet town, long enough to watch me grow from a toddler to a teenager.

When their son was 21, he was deployed to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm, which struck at the beginning of my seventh-grade year---a personally turbulent time for me. I had lost my aunt right before beginning 5th grade, then lost my grandma the summer before 6th grade. Now I was beginning middle school, the emotional hormonal roller coaster of puberty; my grandfather was having serious health issues that he would discover to be cancer, and our pastor's son--the teasing "big brother" to all the younger kids in the church--was being sent across the globe to fight a war we could sit and witness on our TV screens.

Our church members prayed for him constantly. And worried. And prayed. And worried. We wrote him letters, sent him cards, and he sent many back to us, individually, even to the kids and middle-schoolers. His letters to my little cousin Linsey often included drawings of Hulk Hogan, since wrestling was her elementary school obsession.

With this past Monday being Veterans' Day, he was posting many photos on-line of his days spent back in that desert, when he was barely out of the teen years himself. I was surprised to open my email and see this message from him:

"Hey Misty! Was going through some old Desert Storm pics and found a poem you wrote. Thought you might want to read it again. I've found a bunch of pics and letters I had no idea I had!"

When I first read it, I was embarrassed by my amateur writing skills and my round, messy, middle school penmanship, and the fact that I had so unself-consciously mailed a poem across the ocean as a gift to our pastor's son---without the fear of transparency that I often experience now. Yet then I appreciated that he had taken the time and effort to scan it and send it to me--a memento of a specific time period that so many of us from my home church clearly remember. Further memories came to mind, as I recalled being asked by my middle school staff to read that poem at a special weeknight assembly honoring the soldiers, and I had comfortably stepped up to the microphone and read my poem without any feelings of awkwardness.

At thirteen years old, I was still being myself, not much different than I currently am--creatively seeking an outlet for every thought and emotion--but before having learned the guarded feelings of discomfort I frequently experience now when I let too much of myself out for the world to see.

Veterans and soldiers of every kind, 
to you and your families, 
my middle school poem is not an adequate expression 
of the sacrifices you made and continue to make. 

Thank you.