My son, Andrew

Andrew my oldest son, was interested in military stuff ever since high school at least when he took ROTC. He scored in the 99th percentile across the board when he took the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) revealing that he was highly suited for practically any job he wanted in the entire Armed Services. However, neither his father nor I was thrilled about him enlisting so we discouraged him from joining when he turned 18. He was very intelligent, in the gifted program in school, expressing an interest in journalism and we tried to steer him towards more intellectual pursuits.

Over the next few years, he did several things, mudjacking and welding, along with a couple of years in college, but he always wanted to join the Marines. So finally he joined in the fall of 2006, at 24. I attended his graduation from Boot Camp in February 2007. It was at this time Bush was escalating the war and a recruiter came up to me and Nathan, his brother, (as if one of my sons wasn't enough) and told us due to extreme demand, any position a person wanted was available.

That was encouraging as I naively thought maybe my son would be interested in one of the technical jobs or even special ops or intelligence. So I asked Andrew what the job he was interested in and my heart fell when he told me infantry.

I started crying right there and we had this conversation:
"Infantry? Why not intelligence or special ops or any of the technical jobs that are open?"
"This is what I feel I am supposed to do."
'Kill people?' You feel you are supposed to kill people?"
"Mom, they have attacked us and are trying to kill us and someone needs to defend our country."
"Yes son, but taking a life. a life is a sacred thing . . ."
"Mom that is God's problem, not mine. You just have to believe that God gets to them before I do."

So my son had more faith than I did at that point, that God was working in his life. It seemed he has made peace with his decision, but I had a ways to go to find mine. that night back at the hotel room I was again crying on my bed. Even before birth I had given my children to Yahweh and this did not seem like a example of a life dedicated to God.

Even lying there crying in my bed I had a small picture come into my head. It was a picture of my son on the battle field leaning over wounded soldiers and leading them to Christ. Just a flash image but there nonetheless. Though I could not rest in it, a sliver of hope crept in.

Yet a couple of weeks later, I have this tiny dream:
A girl watches from the window of a house, two brothers. As one comes in, the other one dies.

My youngest son has entered a Christian discipleship program and clearly I think he is coming into the house of God but my oldest son still seems to be dying to me.