I was thinking about PTSD. I was thinking how it can alter a brains’ very chemistry structure and create – it’s own. I was thinking how PTSD offers the divine and beautiful hope in God. I was thinking – you couldn’t get much closer on this earth than all the military soldiers who have fought for us to the complete and utter sacrifice of themselves.
How complete. Most of us could never imagine! Amazing!!
Me, I’m an artiste. I think in realms. But there are these pragmatic mindsets that are so completely devotionally giving that their life is a part of the contract. We accept them – as our security – our military. And I believe 99% of them have the most golden of hearts God would never reject them. But, as in all things, it is the few. It is the few that inject into our society a new norm, a new agenda, a new morality. And each time we cave. How can we be so strong… and yet so weak?
The same reason we get up after we fall, brush ourselves off, and vow to try a bit better – next time.
I try to imagine the PTSD after WWII where my father fought as a Colonel of a tank battalion. He never outwardly showed any PTSD aggravation, but I can’t imagine he didn’t harvest it internally. The Glass’s were – are a very proud genealogy. We do not like to show weakness, and would therefore prefer to suffer in isolation. Weird, but it is who we are.
While my father must have experienced great pain during his tenure in WWII, he never really alluded to this weakness in our presence. And I think some of my brother’s therefore had no concept of who he was so much a who he was expected to be for them. A doomed expectation. They could never see him, they could only concentrate on what they were denied. A pivotal spiral that has no win. But I had One.
Still, somehow, he rose above. He climbed past the grotesque images, and the horrific memories, and he was a great father to me. In fact, I think he was so good, he could have been an incredible inspiration to the masses of young people. Because he embodied the precept ‘I am here’. And he was. Amazing. I imagine my strength in diversity certainly comes from him. My ability to persevere, as my son says, definitely comes from him.
So, to you the men of honor and integrity and value – to you the men who sacrifice and live the memories, to you the men who have been our shield, our sword, our honor, our life, thank you!!! Sometimes we take for granted that which is most precious. And I don’t want my appreciation to be shallow.