Not long after the Gulf War, an Air Force chaplain planted this mental picture in my head I've never forgotten. He told me what he considered to be the ultimate example of loneliness. The chaplain said, "To me, lonely is a fighter pilot in his F-16, on a night mission over enemy territory. The only light is this eerie glow from his instrument panel - and his instruments indicate that his plane has just been "painted" as a target for an Iraqi SAM missile. The only sound he hears in that ultimately lonely moment is this song playing in his headset - God Bless the USA.
A while back, some of my ministry friends decided they would accept what some might call a challenge to your manhood. They signed up for a rigorous, two-week stress camping program that is called, euphemistically, Character Building. It is - if you make it. They usually just refer to this program in descriptive shorthand - the wilderness. For two weeks, my friend Jim climbed mountains, navigated some serious whitewater, hiked for hours at a time with a heavy backpack, ate off the land, and even endured the final exam of a solo in the wilderness where you are totally on your own for a couple of days. Well, Jim's outlook on life was different after that experience. Whenever some major stress or intimidating problem would come up, he would just smile and say the words that were on one of his favorite shirts, "I can handle it. I've been to the wilderness."
Years ago God laid the desperate need of young Native young people on our hearts, and ever since we have been involved with some very special Indian friends. And our summers on the reservation with our "On Eagles Wings" team have given us some moments of unforgettable joy - and some moments of pain and sorrow, too. One of the toughest of those moments was the summer when we heard about Johnny's sudden and tragic death. Johnny was a Lakota young man who we had worked with and had really come to love. In the providence of God, our team was headed for Johnny's reservation in South Dakota when we heard about his death. His parents actually delayed the funeral a couple of days so the "On Eagles Wings" team could be there. His Mom said that some of the best days of his life had been with our team.
What a deal I got on a masterpiece! I was in Paris, touring what is probably the world's most famous art museum - the Louvre, as they say. All day long I had been seeing these works by great artists like Michelangelo, and Rembrandt, and you know all the biggies! And then I rounded this one corner and I was in this room jammed with people. It was lit with special lighting, it was guarded by security guards. And when I finally got into that room, there she was, the one painting you've heard of if you've only heard of one painting. That's right, the Mona Lisa! There she was smiling at me in a painting that took up an entire wall. At the bottom was this signature - Leonardo da Vinci, the artist. Now, you can't buy the Mona Lisa, she's literally priceless. But I bought the Mona Lisa for .25 that day! Oh, yes I did. It's in a drawer at home. I could show it to you. Well, actually, it's a postcard of the Mona Lisa. What's the difference? Well, the postcard is a copy. It's cheap! The one in the museum is an original, signed by the artist - she's priceless.
Graduation day was a suspenseful day for our younger son. He wasn't totally sure what was going to be inside that diploma that the college President handed him. See, he had been informed several days before graduation that no one would know for sure that they were actually going to receive their diploma until they returned to their seat and looked inside the cover. The seniors didn't know their final grades, and if there were any unpaid fees they weren't going to know that either, until they opened their diploma cover and found a bill instead of a diploma.
In the fall I really got exercise in our yard. We had lots of trees in that yard, and lots of leaves. Our sons were gone, and I got to do just about all the raking. There was this one corner of the yard that was kinda nice to rake because it smelled nice. I'd be raking away and suddenly I'd smell the strong aroma of spearmint. Now, I don't chew gum and I don't wear spearmint scented deodorant usually. So, it had to be coming from what I was raking - and it was! That was my wife's herb garden, and when some of the spearmint plants got bruised by my rake the spearmint scent started to fill the air. My wife told me that that's the way it is with lots of herbs, like with lemon balm, for example. If you take a little piece of that plant and you crush it between your fingers, the air will suddenly be sweetened by this scent of lemon. Crushing a plant releases its scent.
One of our sons announced an interesting system of weight control some years ago. He said he would eat what he wanted for a while, and then suddenly declare a day or two where he reversed all engines and he ate nothing. He announced, "Today is a Slim Fast day." Just those diet milkshakes, three times a day. When you like to eat, drinking all three meals is not very satisfying. I was out running errands one of those times, and he went with me. We stopped at this bagel store, and I came back to the car with the aroma of fresh bagels coming out of this bag. Has to be one of the most tempting smells I know. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I did this on this day!" He said, "Oh, Dad, I can handle it. It's only one day."
We knew some folks who owned a convenience store, and they were people who worked some very long hours to make a living, but we enjoyed teasing them about the prices in their store. We'd kid about $5.00 for a half-gallon of milk, $10.00 for a box of cookies, $2.00 candy bars. Now it wasn't quite that bad, but you usually do pay noticeably more for things in a convenience store. See, that is the profit factor in being open at times and on days when other stores are closed. Our storeowner friends were quick to defend those prices. They reminded us of a simple fact of life - convenience costs more. They're right.
Larry Walters was just tired of sitting in his backyard, watching the same old folks in the same old neighborhood do the same old thing. He was ready for a change. So he decided to do something different. He went out and bought 45 six-foot helium balloons and attached them to his lawn chair, which was tethered to a car to keep it from taking off. Then, he donned a parachute, packed a bottle of soda pop, a CB radio, and a BB gun to shoot out balloons so he could come down. He thought he'd get a great view of his neighborhood. He got a little more than that. When his friends cut his lawn chair loose, he shot a thousand feet into the air in a minute. Before long, Larry and his flying lawn chair were 16,000 feet over the Los Angeles area. That's like three miles up, man! A TWA pilot radioed the tower and said, "We've spotted a man in a lawn chair at 16,000 feet." I can't even guess what the tower must have said back to the pilot. Meanwhile, Larry is yelling into his CB radio, "Mayday! Mayday!" He eventually managed to shoot out enough balloons to come down, where he landed in some wires and caused a power outage in Long Beach, California. He got down OK, he got some TV appearances, and an FAA fine. Not bad for an ordinary guy in a lawn chair.
Kaitlin just lost her long battle for life. She was born with a defective valve in her heart, and that weakness in her heart pursued her through her all-too-short life. Although she had multiple surgeries and times of physical limitation, she had a positive spirit and, often, a pretty normal life. And then, after seventeen years, that heart just gave out. They said her only hope was a heart transplant before that, and she eventually got one, but it just didn't work out for her. In her last weeks, she sometimes battled just to breathe, but she never stopped fighting. And in Kaitlin's dying, her aunt - a relatively young woman herself - learned a powerful lesson about life.
