Walking along on a street called Ke Nui in Hawaii, I found myself lost on this back road in a developed area on a small island where it’s almost impossible to get lost. But there I was. My cell would not work, and I was getting tired of walking around in shower shoes, things not meant for hiking long distances. I knew where the ocean was so I headed in that direction, down a short dead-end street, made out of more red dirt than asphalt. The grit flowing over the lips of my cheap beach wear wasn’t pleasant, and the appearance wasn’t going to be too good either. Before I could reach the beach and orient myself, though, I paused to watch a woman sitting in her car jerking away on her center-mounted transmission stalks. I tried to ignore her plight and slip on by, but one of my shower shoes slipped and rolled out from under me. I almost went down but righted myself by falling onto the front fender of the woman’s car. I looked up and our eyes locked. I saw the desperation in her eyes and she must have seen the “oh please, I don’t want any of your problems” in mine. She looked away in disappointment. I looked down in guilty shame, and moved a few feet away from the car.
Palais Royal Hotel Paris
My eyes caught upon the object that had forced me to come in contact with the car and thereby the woman inside it. The object that had tripped me up was a black pen. I picked it up. I’m a writer, so when I find a writing instrument laying on the sidewalk, or abandoned somewhere, I always look upon finding it as some sort of omen. The pen was black. Not high quality, but not a Bic either. I read the silver printing on the side. It read: “Grand Hotel du Palais Royal” and underneath, in smaller letters, it said “Paris.” I was struck. I looked up at the woman who was again looking back at me.
The Palais Royal was the only hotel in all of Paris, which has thousands of hotels, that I had ever stayed at when I was traveling abroad for Central Intelligence. It wasn’t a cheap place, but it wasn’t the Ritz or even the Intercontinental.
Its big attraction had been its central location, and the fact that it was one block across the street from the Louvre, my museum on the planet
I.m Pei Pyramid at the Louvre, Paris
It wasn’t the museum itself that was most remarkable to me, because all of its statues were covered in a half inch of dust because the French are not real industrious when it comes to museum cleanliness. No, it was because I could sit all day long, eating those addictive ham and butter sandwiches sold by street vendors, and stare at the I.M. Pei (The Louvre Pyramid) entrance. How could a pen, that pen, from that place, be found by me on a rather small island in the middle of the Pacific and at the end of a tiny nothing street? It just didn’t seem possible within the realm of any probability theory. I just knew coincidence could not account for the enormity of that kind of connection. As a former high caliber agent, retired from working in foreign intrigue, I concluded that the pen had a purpose in being placed on that rough roadway and that I had a purpose in being interdicted by it.
I looked up at the woman with a frown of concern and new consideration. I approached her open driver-side window.
“My transmission won’t shift out of park,” she said, as if I was some sort of itinerant auto mechanic waiting for a customer.
“Who are you?” I asked, going right to the heart of the matter.
“Henrietta Wilson,” she replied, before trying the shifter a few more times and then going on. “I’m a teacher at the elementary school, and I can’t get to work.”
“You want me to take a look?” I asked, skeptical but thinking that maybe the situation was exactly as it presented itself, and not some Russian plot to take over the world.
Henrietta stepped out of the car and I got in, the pen still in my left hand. I looked down at the shifter located between the front seats. I spotted the plastic tab next to the lever and pried it off with my fingernail. I took the pen and shoved the point down into the hole until I felt a click. I grabbed the shift lever with my other hand, pushed the button on top of it and shifted the car out of park into neutral. I got out of the car and showed Henrietta what I’d done. I told her that she might have to do it every time she drove the car until she got it to a mechanic. The problem was likely to be simple, but too ‘electrical’ for a regular person to fix.
Henrietta got into the car and started it, thanking me profusely. She took out her cell phone and asked for my number and address. I told her I was on vacation and lived in Wisconsin. She didn’t care, typing in my data as it was forced from me. She waved and drove off, telling me she might be late unless she hurried.
I watched her go before my mind started working properly again. I had the Paris pen, my dirty flip flops and I was still lost. I walked onto the sand and went down to soak my feet in the lapping surf. Then I sat down to consider.
I decided that the Paris pen incident had nothing to do with me. It was all about Henrietta getting help when she needed it badly. She had to have prayed to God and God sent me. There was nothing in the exchange for me. It was all for her. I decided that was okay.
When I got home a week later (I had finally found my way back to the rental house on the beach), I went in to check out what was going on at my office. I get all my mail from a P. O. box on Broad Street so my secretary handing me a stack of envelopes was a surprise. My second surprise was in noting that all the envelopes were from Hawaii. I then recalled I’d given Henrietta my office address instead of my mailing address. I opened the envelopes one after another. They were thank-you letters from the kids in Henrietta’s third grade class. There were the cutest drawings of all kinds of Hawaiian things, and the kids also wrote the nicest things about me.
Sometimes God puts people in your way and proper attention should be made of His acts. Henrietta got her car going and off to class on time. I got to sit here at this table writing this Op/Ed about how great it is to get a whole raft of neat letters about me from some great kids I’ve never met.
I kept the Paris pen and it’s right here in my briefcase. The pen is out of ink. But then, God did not intend for the pen to be written with, anyway. Sometimes God puts people in our way, and sometimes He puts Himself in our way. Sometimes He does both.
Let me begin by being honest…How’s that for an opening line, Jim? There’s something at work in all of our lives, and having said that I’d point out further, the struggle we’re consistently engaged in and to which I allude should become clearer, with this very short story I offer from my life.
I’d been stationed at Seymour Johnson, AFB in North Carolina. Trained as a radiologic specialist, I worked in the imaging department taking x-rays. On those days when it was slow I’d usually pull duty as an ambulance driver. I’d transport patients needing services at one of the larger military bases nearby. On this day I was picking up a patient down at Camp LeJuene. I have to tell you, there’s a reason that the people are called “tarheels” in North Carolina. It’s because the roads in the state are really well maintained! The taxpayers take pride in the way the routes are established, the road is kept, as well as the sineage that’s posted along the way! It’s hard to get lost on the roads of NC… but as I’d learn, it’s sometimes rather easy to lose your life!
The trip down to Le Juene was along a beautiful winding black asphalt highway. I say highway because the number was “even”. I was driving a dark blue station wagon and between the vehicle and the highway, let me tell you it was more than safe to say the trip was as smooth as I’ve ever had before or since, in any vehicle I’d drive! Perhaps, a little too smooth! I recall driving along, listening to the radio playing low in the backround and just marvelling at the moss that hung like tinsel from the huge beautiful old growth trees which lined the highway in both directions. Traffic was nearly non-existent! On this day, it was just me and the road.
I never saw it coming.
Apparently however, and despite my youth… I just got real “tarred” after my starchy military breakfast that morning!” Yet on this day, the ‘tarred’ I speak of would only give me a warning it was all over me, upon waking! One moment I was cruising along and the next I’d been jolted awake just in time to find myself on the right shoulder of the road and heading towards the edge of a vast tobacco field! I recovered, stopped the car and got out to spend the next three to seven minutes cussing, stirring up the gravel, and essentially kicking my own ass for being so dumb as to have fallen asleep at the wheel! What was I thinking?! What if I had a patient? What if I hadn’t woke up at all? I paced back and forth on the shoulder, even jogging in place before finally feeling “refreshed” and ready to get back in the wagon and complete my mission. With the driver’s door open I just happened to look up only to see, for the first time, the sign I’d pulled to a stop under! I kid you not, it was this enormous bright yellow diamond shaped sign with Huge Bold Black Lettering arranged as one word. At first glance, I thought a “Yield” sign. Only as I looked a little closer I’d see that’s not the word that was on this sign! The single word on this sign read, THIMK !
“Ok, ok I got the message!”, I thought to myself and got in, kind of shaking my head as it were, over the irony. Now back on the road and settled in I calculated I had no more than 20 minutes left before I’d get to Le Juene. I resumed my looking about and listening to the radio. I knew the highway would soon turn into an interstate a few miles ahead and I was happy I made it when out of nowhere my entire windshield exploded into a mushroom cloud of feathers, tan and white! The instant they cleared I realized I was doing 80 mph… on the opposite side of the road!! I yelled. Holy sh*t!!
Yes…I don’t have any idea why I survived. Yet I was about to find out how! How had this happened yet again? Even as I was certain I’d been alert and “thimking”! Somehow… I’d suffered another blackout for who knows how long! I was beyond wondering now, I was scared! The only reason I hadn’t had a head on in that moment was, as I’d come to know upon going back up the road a bit, to investigate. I found what had actually hit my windshield and scared the sh*t out of me was still there on the road. There laid the remains of two morning doves, surrounded by all their feathers, now moving in swirls as the days heat rose from the road. I found myself feeling sad and almost guilty for killing those birds! Even more I suppose because I’d remember as I stared, doves mate for life. That’s when it occurred to me that I was probably the luckiest guy on the face of the earth in that moment! Because, this was no mere coincidence…I knew these two birds had their lives sacrificed for my mine and whoever it would’ve been I’d creamed on a NC winding black-top road lined with moss covered trees in a head-on collision, at eighty miles an hour!
I’m not gonna tell you, “it was my guardian angel”. Or God, lookin out for me, yet I can tell you I took that event seriously enough to result in my learning I was almost always in a state of hypoglycemia with a tendency to actually become hyperglycemic after a big meal from which I would literally crash by way of sugar induced black outs!
The only thing clear to me now at this point some 38 years later, was that while here I think it’s important to acknowledge that our lives actually have a purpose.
Some may chalk it up to God’s plan. Some not. Yet I think if there is “God”, if he exists at all in the universe, then he’d have to exist as only, within our being.
As I’d come to understand later, there’s a fine line between religion and our true spiritual nature. It’s a balance between our brain and our heart really, as to what we might accomplish here, in our short lives, on earth.
There’s nothing mystical going on here!
Only the purpose we sense, and hopefully meet one day within ourselves that may drive us down our road to some destination! In that sense, I’m comfortable in the knowledge that I do share a relationship with the divine. I just know without knowing, we are all God-Men and God-Women with incredible capacities, most still unknown.
Knowing this has been more than adequate to nuture this god-man’s soul, and as far as whatever it may be I might leave as my mark offered to the world, at least I can be certain that whatever it is will have occured… simply for having lived!
My literary friend Dennis. Hmmm.
That took twenty minutes to assimilate after another ten to read it.
Now I am taking time to ruminate.
You were inaccurate, possibly deliberately so, in stating way down there near the end that
‘there’s nothing mystical going on here.’ Did you mean 38 years back or now?
Did you mean in general or as it pertains to the short story describing the sleep apnea that overcame you following large meals?
Did that same effect come over you when you were not behind the wheel?
Driving has a hypnotic quality to it when you are out on the open road.
It’s been a long time since I’ve driven in that state but like your description of how they keep the roads.
Personal pride. I wonder if I could live in NC with my liberal bent. Not sure. Maybe if I was quieter.
Maybe if I ate a lot of meals and then passed out.
Thanks for the lengthy but worth it soliloquy. Much enjoyed and am still enjoying…
Semper fi,
Jim
James, Thanks for sharing your story, “In God’s Way” and for the picture of the pen. I appreciate your style of writing and my attention was captured from the start.
I can see that I could learn a lot from your writings and I know that it would increase my authenticity as an author. My writings have been simple but informative. Yet, After reading your unique style, I had to opportunity to despise my small beginnings and instead look up and see what I can be.
I have already begun to increase my vocabulary and reading your article made me hungrier to learn. I would appreciate any advice to help develop my writings. I see that reading will have a big part in my development.
I will list my website below if you would be willing to look and critique it. I am not a person easily offended and would appreciate your expertise. If you are not willing that is OK to.
I am glad to have come across your site. I will visit regularly… thanks again 🙂
Two suggestions, right off the bat. Put your best photo up there right dead center.
Secondly, change and add to the site daily and then slave it into your Facebook site so you can
link back to the website and get more traffic.
You go girl…
Jim
Sometimes things are so unlikely that you know that there has to be intelligent design behind them. Once I was very near death. I had two options, both bad. The better option seemed to be to cross a wide ditch several feet deep and then wade a swamp probably only 12-18″ deep hoping to find a spot of high ground. Treacherous footing under the muddy water and no doubt plenty of downed wood to trip me if I wasn’t careful and lucky. I was already deep into shock and hypothermia. My hair and beard were long and bushy and I was wearing a bulky lined denim jacket. My appearance was more than a little intimidating and I meant for it to be. I was injured and at the best of times I was no match for a twelve year old. I was walking with power and impulsion but they were as much a lie as my appearance. My last step would be just the same. I knew that I couldn’t reach a sign to lean and rest against that was maybe 200 feet away. If I left my feet to rest I couldn’t get back on them either.
An old man stopped. He was bent almost double at the waist. The gauze patch at his throat indicated his voice box had been cut out. He was black, I was white, no small consideration when we were alone in that time and place. He couldn’t talk, I couldn’t either. It was easy to see the fear, near terror, in his eyes and I had no way to ease it. It would be long minutes in the warmth of his car before I was able to speak.
More to the story but that is for another time. The reason for writing this is every time I stop when I really don’t want to, sometimes even in that same stretch of lonely road, I am paying forward the heroic actions of that old decrepit giant of a man. I sometimes seriously wonder if it was a man or an angel since the odds of things happening just as they did are off the charts.
Well, Hu, I would love to know more of this back story. How did you come to be in the situation? How did you manage to communicate and be accepted enough to be given help?
Where the hell were you? This is a terribly wonderful story filled with pathos…coming from a man who seems at time not to want to lend himself to expressing pathos of any kind.
So, what happened? It is now ‘another time’ in our parlance on here, this open vets site where men and women can say just about anything and have it considered and accepted.
Semper fi, and I too would and do have your back.
Jim
James, I lost my power grid and don’t remember. Did I reply to this? I wrote the reply but might not have submitted while multi-tasking. No particular reason for it to be in this thread, just wondering if you read it yourself. Short on sleep too after having to bug out so I’m a bit confused at the moment.
Now I can see my errant post I couldn’t see before. Please clean up the extraneous chatter off the thread.
Jim,
I was in a very bad area of the Louisiana wetlands not too far from New Orleans. Stolen cars were routinely dumped and burned there, several a week, maybe more. 12 miles or so from help one way, 20 or so the other way. A recent back injury limited me to a tiny fraction of that, plus the muscle spasm caused by the cold made the back issue worse. Windy and enough mist that my head was soon wet. No cell phone in those days and no option but to try walking when the distributer rotor failed on my truck as it turned out. Didn’t matter how mild the problem was, I had no tools or parts anyway.
The joker in the deck was that I had just received two checks I had been waiting on and I had well over eight thousand dollars on me. With the tendency to torch anything parked on the side the road I couldn’t leave it in the truck. The class of many of the people of all races traveling that area, even if they stopped with good intentions they would be hard pressed to walk away from that kind of cash coming right to them if they found it on me. Some wouldn’t hesitate to slide a knife in me to cover their tracks, why I had decided the swamp was probably the better option than passing out near the road. I put the money in my usual bank those days, semi-round toed roach stompers, some plain looking cowboy boots. It would have survived the swamp and of course wading hadn’t been part of my plan when I left the truck.
To answer your question, no way to ease the man’s fears, he had stopped in spite of them and overcame them to help me. His desire to help was greater than his unrelenting fear. His car was falling apart partially due to salt water I suspect but for whatever reason the passenger door was tied shut with baling wire so I had to get in through the driver’s door of a roughly twenty year old Chevelle, about a ’74. Daylight showing through the floor boards, around the door, and other places and he was still terrified, more terrified since I didn’t talk, he couldn’t know that I was too deep in shock to talk. I suspect my eyes had the thousand yard stare too.
We went flying down the interstate literally pedal to the metal, the old car rattling and clanking too loud to talk over at best and me fearing something under the front end would fail at any moment and send us flying into the swamp or a tree. His fear had us going close to a hundred miles an hour in a car that wasn’t safe at fifty. Many fatalities along this stretch of road although it was mostly straight as a string.
I was able to talk by the time we got to the next exit, a mile and a half from where my brother lived but only a hundred yards or so from a convenience store/truck stop I could regroup at. I couldn’t readily access the large lump of cash so I grabbed a twenty from my front pocket and offered it to him. He was shaking his head no when I saw his eyes focus on that twenty. It was obvious that twenty dollars was huge to him at the moment. He still wasn’t going to take it until I made eye contact and said to him in the most sincere voice I could muster, “Take it my friend, money isn’t my problem right now.” I was talking more with my eyes than words. I still was struggling a bit to talk and he couldn’t so I didn’t get any contact information. He motioned he would take me wherever I needed to go, I told him I was fine and away he went, never to be encountered again. I realized with hindsight after I recovered that I could have helped him far more but though I always watched for him I had no luck.
I walked to the convenience store, drank a coke and ate a large candy bar and was ready to give the next mile plus walk a shot, never mind that I had just failed to walk that much distance when the truck first broke down. I made it a couple hundred yards and was already debating if this was the smartest move I had ever made. The neighborhood my brother lived in was not fancy but solid middle class. However only another mile or a bit more down the same access road was a neighborhood far less nice in this fairly small community of fifteen thousand or so. My brother’s next door neighbor saw me walking as he was headed to a driveway literally less than twenty feet from my brother’s and I had a key to my brother’s door. The life threatening part of my day was over. With a few hours to think about it before my brother got home a rotor was pretty high on my list of issues and was one of the first things I checked that evening. Not the first or last time I did things with that degree of risk so just another day in the life once it was over.
One of these days I am going to write this story start to finish and polish it a bit. Amazing that the person who was most at risk stopping to help me overcame a very large fear to do it. He had once been a giant of a man but was little more than a shell now with mangled hands and his head only maybe a foot above his belt although he looked to have once been both tall and wide. His skeletal structure was huge. His fear never really abated until right before we parted company so his actions in helping me were tremendous. While I have helped many people over the years, when I was in poor shape I was also usually armed when I did.
You’ve got to write it my friend. Great story.
More please.
Semper fi and Merry Christmas…
Jim
You have to share more of your story! And write that book. I want to hear more.
thanks Jennifer, as I write away!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
James. I’ve wanted to drop you a note for sometime but have found it difficult to actually do. I’ve been following “30 days” for about 60 days now. I marvel at the clarity and great recollection you have. The thoughts you’ve expressed and your inner, long ago feelings mind boggle me. You impressed the hell out me that you respond to every comment. I’m not sure I could lay out my raw feelings like that. Something I should work on although I have on a few occasions over the years but mainly just to other vets and my wife. I’ve always thought if you weren’t there you couldn’t understand. I was in the Navy on an old WW II tin can in 65 and 66 in Vietnam. Did many long stretches of close in fire support in the lower Mekong and Saigon river delta’s and off the coast. Plus stints in the DaNang area and numerous other coastal areas long forgotten. Thankfully, I never had my nose in the dirt like you. What I do recall is the faces, some names, weariness, head numbing sounds, gun concussion, shell casings all over the decks, etc. There were times when my head would be ringing for hours afterwards. There was one time we discovered either shrapnel or bullet hits in the aft crews head. Scared the shit out of me. Towards the end of our deployment we would discover many more hits so it became somewhat routine. My hat’s off to you, brother. Keep up the good work. Buddy
PS Email me a good address for you and I’ll send you a book my wife and I wrote about a 12 year true adventure of us circumnavigating the globe on our 48′ sailboat.
Well Buddy, that was a pretty well written paragraph. You must have written that book.
My email is antaresproductions@charter.net and I would most appreciate your adventures
on the high seas. I’ve sailed the oceans and seas of the world but always on powered craft.
I always wondered where you sailors got the patience. I’m trying to learn that patience in my old age by taking up fishing.
Thanks for your story and your comments, which are new and original.
Again, coming in from an area of the war most of us knew nothing about
and yet feeling the same feelings and bringing home the same burdens.
Thanks and I’ll most definitely comment on your book when it comes.
Semper fi,
Jim
James,
You are an inspiration to me. Your life has not been quiet and uncomplicated, yet tou still bend down to pick up pens. God does indeed work in strange ways. Keep writing as it serves many more than you.
Thanks Bill. It’s the small things that become the big things. The big things right off have to be paid attention to, yes.
But when those things overwhelm you then the ‘you’ becomes lost in the whole thing and you can spend all of your time and years
on someone else’s escalator without even knowing where it goes…so I pick up every pen and then quite a few lost souls that seem
to be down there with them….
Semper fi,
Jim
James,
Sometimes we trip and fall simply so we are forced to look at the world from a different perspective. I always wonder when something out of the ordinary happens if there is a purpose beyond my immediate understanding. It lends anticipation to life, waiting to see if something special will come of it. I also wonder when an opportunity to act presents itself if I shall be the benefactor or the beneficiary. God seldom wastes opportunities for us to be of use or to receive, even if what we receive is only a lesson in humility or gratefulness. I like many others am grateful to have made it home but wonder if I have fulfilled the obligation of being one of the lucky ones.
My wife has been a Special Education teacher for 43 years; I thank you personally for helping that teacher in her time of need.
roy
Very interesting and in-depth analysis of the meaning of life itself Roy!
I wonder just like you. Is there really order in the universe and if there is then
what is organizing that order? Thanks for making me and some others scratch their heads and actually think.
Semper fi,
Jim
And that day the lady may have been an angel sent to u and the pen is a reminder. Ylu never know…Good luck, I can feel the tension of the moments, the smells, the rain, always being wet. It’s a young man’s game.
You read Thirty Days and then the story. Interesting mix of a comment.
Yes, I always wonder. Was I the assigned angel, like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life,
or was she performing some interior operation on my existence. I don’t get to know.
Did God save me in the Nam? Did I save others because of being an extension of his
will…and if that is true, then what about the lives I took?
You have me thinking…
Semper fi, and thank you.
Jim
Thank you Mr. Srtrauss for all your stories. I have been following your 30 days, but have not commented. I was U.S. Air Force 1962 to 1966, and served TDY on Okinawa, Guam, and Thailand first taking F-100’s over in Sept. 64′ and then with Young Tiger refueling tankers in summer of 65′. So I was mostly out of harms way and I thank God for that. Thank you for your service and sacrifice, and welcome home. I do believe God has his hands on you, and this story is a short snippet of the things he has had planned for you.
Thank you for that prediction. As with the Thirty Days Story,
there is no predicting what sometimes lurks right around the corner in our life.
I always answer the phone, always great strangers at my door and always talk to people who come up
to me at the coffee shop. You see, as it with what you say….
I never know what new direction I am going to be either marginally or wholly plunged into.
Thanks for the thoughts and for the positive spin that you give them.
And thanks for commenting at all. Many people read but few actually take ‘pen in hand’ and say something.
Semper fi,
Jim
I believe that we all find our “pens” whatever they may be. It may be as simple as a well timed hello or holding a door. In time a student that replied to your act of kindness will again pass it on with their own “pen”
Thank you sir.
Interesting, more ethereal and philosophical conclusion with respect to finding pens.
Yes, there are this moments in our lives where physics and all the good sense we’ve come to accumulate about
our very existence are called into question by some simple event not truly explainable by all that.
I have had a few and they have, like “In God’s Way” disturbed the wrinkles of my rather comfortable belief
system about human beings, God and my own role in all of this. Thanks for the simple seeming but deep thinking here commented upon.
Semper fi,
Jim
I too have found many pens. I watch and wait for each new part of 30 days. It will be a long summer and the drums are still beating in my head.
I used to own a house on Puget Sound. I wandered the shore every day with my cat Harvey.
We both found things. I used to pick stuff up that had floated in on the tide
and from the movement of the water from the giant passing ferries.
I would always try to match up the object with what God might have sent me as a message.
It was quite entertaining. My daughter walked with us one Christmas Eve.
We talked of her feelings about atheism and not believing in God.
After awhile she stopped and picked up a wooden object that had floated in.
It was a crucifix but not manufactured by the hands of any man. It was naturally formed from the branches of
a tree and perfectly grown and trimmed to size. There was no question about what it was.
My daughter has that crucifix on her wall and we have never forgotten
how life isn’t as we understand it in so many ways, or the universe…
or God…
Semper fi,
Jim
James, thanks for sharing the beach walk. This has caused a curiosity emotion to think back over my life for those times of God reaching out to me in the little things.
You are most welcome Jennifer and I am so warmed by the fact that you enjoyed the story and it reached inside you.
Semper fi,
Jim
nice story James, a wonderful break from the government infighting you read in every paper, and, have it shoved down your throat all too often.. Sometimes life is good, and you just have to take that to heart thanks again
Thanks Donnie. You can’t ignore leadership as it is always there in one form or another but
yes, there are those moments when it is good to reflect on life and the meaning of seemingly fleeting and small events upon it…
Semper fi,
Jim
The same Creator that could smash us like a bug, yet will slip one to you like a sleeping baby’s sigh and you don’t get it, sometimes for months or years. Fabulous.
Thanks for that real neat comment Neil.
Semper fi,
Jim
I’ve been reading your story about your experience in the A Shau valley. I found it somewhere about day nine and have been entranced with your story telling since. I have wanted to write and tell you thank you for being willing to share your memories, and for your service in Vietnam. But not able to find anything meaningful to add the discussion since I was never able to serve seems almost trite. Again though thank you for your service.
Now to your present article. What an unexpectedly pleasant gem. It shouldn’t surprise me to find God in all manner of places, but it always does. Thanks for another experience with a loving Almighty God.
Thanks Patrick. Sometimes things just happen for no seeming reason at all until you really think about it.
This was one of those moments. Thanks for saying what you said here and reading the Vietnam odyssey too..
Semper fi,
Jim
James, I am now reading the comments after reading your story. My husband is also a Vietnam Veteran. I will be sure to share with him your story. Thanks.
Jennifer. I don’t get many comments from women so it is good to see that you wrote on here. I am always interested in female perspectives of this sort of stuff. No females went out to the field on our
side back in those days and the females on their side fought like hell. Thanks for sharing this with your husband too.
Semper fi,
Jim
As I near 70 years of age I’ve started appreciating more the things God has made possible in my life and I’ve stopped dwelling on things like why I made it back and young men so close to me didn’t. I’m still discovering things that catch my interest and make me appreciate a gifted author. I’m glad you survived those 30 days and I look forward to more of your great work. Semper Fi Brother.
Thanks for liking the small story that took place in Hawaii.
I wasn’t sure whether I should put it on here as the guys who
leave comments are a pretty tough lot. Thanks for helping me decide I made
the right move…
Semper fi,
Jim
Looking back, you will find several times where God has intervened in your life. I know while I was in VN attached to the 101 as a TACP member, I’m sure God kept me.
Three and half years in Hawaii attached 25th Div we got to see parts of Hawaii most people will never see. Loved it.
The 25th at Schofield. Taught to students there when I was teaching at Chaminade.
Great outfit and had some fantastic anthropology courses there…
Semper fi,
Jim
That in the middle of your problem you recognized the nudge of the Holy Spirit is great testament to your walk with the Lord. That you were not looking for your blessing at that moment also shows an understanding of God many do not have. Finally that you took the time to enjoy all the letters showed your understanding of living in the molment, enjoying what that moment has to offer.
Enjoy the pen and the memories it provides!!!!!
Butch
Thanks Butch, coming from such a tough guy as you!
It was a neat experience all the way around. Surprised that it’s a bit popular on here too…
Semper fi,
Jim
Nice short story James. It’s funny how things happen.
Thanks Daniel, it is pretty funny how some things just swoop in and capture us…
Semper fi,
Jim
God definitely has ways of solving our problems, my grand mother being a devout catholic gave me a blessed soldier’s medal to protect me, one night our team came into heavy contact with a larger force and decided un-assing that site was a better idea, we left in a run and gun situation, I remember praying please get me home Lord, later being in the Huey on the way back in, I realized that I had lost my medal, I just thought thank you and figured He had taken the medal as a token for that ride
Not a bad way to think at all Felix. Sure glad you got out.
Semper fi,
Jim
Wholehearted agreement. It’s beyond our understanding why our lives take the unexpected twists and turns they do.
Sometimes we can rationalize a reason, most times not.
Yet, life, as long or short as it may be, is good.
Sometimes things are just poking along and bam! Something happens that stops us
cold…and then it comes down to how you react to it. I had a good moments, I think…
Semper fi,
Jim
In life we often find ourselves where are suppose to be. There are no coincidences, God places there for a reason, either to help or to learn. Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure to share that little story. Just a moment in time and a pretty good one the more I thought about it.
Thanks for your comment about it.
Semper fi,
Jim
Very well written and very true. God will help us with a lot of things in our life,as long as we take ourself out of the picture.
Thanks for the comment Sam, and you are most accurately correct!
Semper fi,
Jim
Amen!!
Thanks for the comment Rick and may God bless you!
Semper fi,
Jim
Nice story, funny how good things happen to us, and we wonder why😀 Semper Fi!
Thanks Tom. Sometimes good things happen and we don’t even know they are good until
we stop and think about them for a bit…
Semper fi,
Jim
No good deed goes unpunished, good job man!😇
Well, I don’t think I really got punished all that much there…
just some little bit of time…and it was so worth it…
Semper fi,
Jim
Wonder how many of us are afraid to read the message? Sounds like a lot of kids really appreciated a guy they’d never meet helping a teacher they really loved. No big deal, except to the people involved.
Well, that’s for sure Walt. I’m sure Henrietta portrayed me as a bit more than
I was but I’ll take it!
Semper fi,
Jim
Great story Jim I love the last two sentences. So True!!!
Thanks for the comment Mike and I thought about those for some time before I wrote them.
Semper fi,
Jim
A very enjoyable read, James. At 73, I’ve learned to accept that many things happen for a reason. Example: A bit over 10 years ago, I had a pace maker installed. Up until my 72nd birthday, I was of the opinion I did not need the pace maker.
On my 72nd birthday, I was on a gurney in the ER with blood gushing (not dripping) from my body. The Blood pressure dropped to very low numbers, but the pace maker kept my pulse steady. The ER Doc was amazed the pulse stayed up to 60 beats per minute and had concerns of a heart attack. I feel the pace maker actually saved my life that day. So yes, I feel many things happen for a reason, and are not just happenstance.
Why you had to find the pen? No telling what you avoided by the delay, but a positive outcome was the letters you received from the 3rd graders. Now that cannot be all bad, can it?
It was great, in retrospect. Helping people invariably helps us too although it it
not always evident that that is going to be the result. Thanks for the comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
And sometimes when we feel twice removed from God and never thinking he had any idea we existed.
It may have all been just to let you know He knows you and to remind you that you have Purpose is this Life.
Sometimes what you comment people say is deeper than what I wrote and thought at the time.
But you get me thinking, as this comment has…thank you…
Semper fi,
Jim
Very nice and very true.Refreshing, given the deluge of political rants so prevalent right now.
Yes, the news is always so bad lately. I wanted to reflect on some good things that were happening, at least to me.
Thanks for commenting on here and giving us your thoughts.
Semper fi,
Jim
James, an interesting story with a nice outcome. You write well and I enjoyed. As a USAF pilot I have flown through Hawaii many times. My wife flew to Hawaii to be with me for my R&R from Vietnam, five days in paradise. Thanks
Chuck
Hawaii is something, at least to visit. Tough to live there if you are a Haole.
But I can never stop going and running into situations like this one, well, some of it is
the locale, I am certain. Thanks for writing…
Semper fi,
Jim
Amen. Something like this has happened to me. God is Great.
Thank you Dean. I hope something like this happens to a lot of people. Write and tell us all about what happened to you.
Thanks for the comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Ilove those spiritual experiences.
Thanks Frank. It took a bit to figure out it was a spiritual experience!
But I finally did. Thanks for pointing that out here…
Sempre fi,
Jim
all I can say is hmmmmmmm…….hmmmmmmm……..Ya Think ? I KNOW THIS IS TRUE !!!
Kay Romprey, the world’s second biggest skeptic…I wonder who the world’s first is….
Thanks for the comment Kay and the care….and more…
Semper fi,
Jim