Sometimes I see the forest for the trees...

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.” --Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (1943-1945)

Most of you who know me know that I would not be a full-time seminary student right now if it were not for the Russian language. It's a long story, too many details to blow through even the Reader's Digest version (again) in one post. (However, if you're curious you can get that version in a trilogy of posts at the end of the summer entitled How I got to this place....) And I wouldn't have met and been simonized by Russian, had it not been for the United States Navy, which not only issued me a second language, but my wife (of 30 years, 11 months, and 15 days), as well. And I would not have entered the Navy were it not for that thief in the night, alcoholism.

I bring this up because in the 35 years I've been a part of this world as an adult, I've been drawn into vocations that have not only allowed, but encouraged, me to serve others. In a 20-year Navy career, followed by 15 years as a public high school teacher, and in 20+ years of church work, I've had an incalculable number of opportunities to interact with others of my species. I hope that in my itinerancy I have been able to positively touch in some way the life of a young sailor, high school kid, or that person who wants so desperately to believe (in something). I'm not so vain to think that I'm the answer to anyone's life issues (I'm sure I may have even caused a few), and I'm surely not trying to keep score-- but there have been many days in a Navy uniform or sitting alone at my desk in the classroom or while waiting for God to answer in the dark of night that I just wanted to quit. Sometimes its nice to get even just a passing thank you, even from God. But as with many professions, especially in teaching and church service, any results are intangible...

Just when I start to second-guess myself, something or someone from my past catches up with me.

One such someone took me totally by surprise at the end of the last school year, as we were planning to bug out for Indiana. A former student of mine who went through four years of Russian went off to the University of Texas after graduation. At the end of May I received an email from him in Russian, explaining that he had majored in the language (and minored in Astronomy-- and I thought my degree was odd). Just the fact that I was reading an email in Russian that wasn't composed of three-word incomplete thoughts with poor spelling and grammar...well, it made my day! But wait, there's more... I also heard from his Navy recruiter, who wanted a recommendation for his OCS application. Holy cow! (You could have knocked me over with a feather!)

Truthfully, there have been occasional other such glimmers of hope and gratitude along the way, but this one TO DATE was the cherry on the sundae...

That's right, to date... I heard again from this student a week or so ago. He finished OCS and is now an Ensign headed to pilot training. Russian AND the Navy! (It's eerily Frankenstein-ish, isn't it? I almost asked him if he was going to a Lutheran church, but my heart might have exploded if he'd said yes...) He sent me a very nice letter, thanking me for inspiring him. I was truly moved nearly to tears. He included a few pictures and his class key ("great for opening a beer"), pictured-- how cool is that?

I wrote him back, of course, to thank him for thinking of me. But he'll never really know how far such a small gesture can go in assuaging those pimples of regret that pop up on the soul from time to time-- that maybe what we do does matter. I told him in my reply that I sincerely wish a similar occurrence upon him (more than one, really).

Anyway. Just wanted to share.

(And don't think that I don't know that God is behind this...)

С Богом, ya'll!