"I'm getting too old for this," I thought as if I was Danny Glover rather than a man simply in his mid-thirties. Around me, dozens of kids in their twenties galloped through the dark as if such a routine was normal and natural. I felt my creaking joints slowly hum to life like an old computer.
The past month was not kind to me. Between moving my family cross-country, selling a house, buying a house, and a thousand goodbyes, I was left with no time for exercise or adequate sleep. Just lots of fast food and mentally-demanding, physically-debilitating planning.
I woke up at 0400 to make the drive from my in-laws to join in mandatory PT with other newcomers to JBLM at 0515. No shower. No coffee. Only podcasts and hymns on Pandora to fuel my early morning foray into the active duty side of the Army.
As I ran in that mass formation of young soldiers through the dark, I began to hear a cadence being called by the NCO running to our left. No soldier fell behind. We sped up at times and almost fell on each other at other points, but we ran together. Amidst the flurry of limbs and the sound of my creaking joints, I remember that I love this world.
This is a world where sinners and sufferers gather together to be sinners and sufferers together. Some are penitent. Some are healing from past wounds. Most are willing to talk.
My family took a winding path to reach this point. We traveled through prairies and over mountains, alongside friends and revisiting the wounds of war.
The Lord has brought us here--to the majestic mountains and soaring seas of the Northwest, to the morning formations and earnest cadences of young soldiers ready to face war. As my wife soaks our two pint-size sponges in the culture of the Northwest and the gravity of a life lived before God, I will work with those who face conflicts much deeper than those fought by armies.
Please pray for me, that the Lord would open doors and that words may be given me to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel (Eph. 6:19; Col. 4:3).
