Maybe I'm Stupid

There will be plenty of military movies and tv shows this year. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is an ongoing news event ensuring that we will see and hear from soldiers on a daily basis. This constant reminder that some of our citizens wear a uniform and carry a gun for a living forces the producers of tv, movies and even video games to address the military. Not that movies and shows about soldiers have ever gone out of style... but there will be some updated, more relevant portrayals in the near future.

I think for most people that is as close as they want to get. They want to look at the soldiers and wonder at the life of a warrior. They want to experience the drama of life and death struggle for those hours in a movie theater and then be able to reconvene their normal life in the parking lot and the drive home.

I see the pictures of the Marines in Afghanistan and I want to go. I saw the story of the Marines who died when their helicopter crashed and I want to get in line to fill the places they've left open. I don't imagine for a minute that war is a glorious experience. I don't imagine that I would be the best soldier or that I would walk through the bullets and the bombs and come out unscathed. I do not imagine that I would be unafraid. I do not believe that I wouldn't long for the day that I could come home and hold my wife again and kiss the faces of my children. I would be scared, sad and lonely. All of that reality and I still feel a strong desire to go take the place of the fallen soldiers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Maybe it's stupid. Maybe it's a mental disorder. Maybe it's an unfulfilled hero inside of me. Maybe it's that my father served in Vietnam my grandfathers served in World War II. Maybe I'm crazy. I don't know exactly what makes me feel like this.

God, help me be a hero here. Show me the opportunities for heroic action here. Show me how to be the father that my sons are proud of. Show me how to be the husband that my wife cannot live without. Show me how to uphold the ideals of honor, valor and heroism that I hold inside.