Rainy Day Push and a Message to Lincoln

A good friend challenged the view of time and destiny that I described in some of my earlier posts. She said that God didn't have a "secret plan" for people because that would attack our free will and free will is one of the basic tenets of human existence.

I don't consider myself to be much of a philosopher so there's no way I'm going to argue against one of the basic tenets of human existence; but I don't think that our situation is always determined by our actions and the chaos of the world either. To use a pinball metaphor, sometimes the Divine tilts the table.


This was one of those times...


October of 2008

I was agitated. I paced around my small office in NAMI Montana's two-room headquarters. The clock on the wall had passed three o'clock. I had a lot to do, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. A cold rain poured down outside and our old building's heater were running double duty to keep up. That turned the interior offices, like ours, into steam baths.

I tried to work, refocused, then tried to work again. My mind was barely plodding along. It was hopeless. Eventually, I gave up and walked across the street to Starbucks for a coffee. I was hopeful that a dose of caffeine and some rain on my face would help salvage the remains of the day. I placed my order and then heard someone call my name.

It was Andrew Person, Senator Max Baucus Veterans' Liaison in D.C. We'd met that summer when Andrew had had a listening session for some of the local veterans advocates.

Andrew said that he saw the article about how I'd meet with Barrack Obama while he'd made a campaign stop in Billings.  During the meeting, then-candidate Obama had promised to expand the face-to-face mental health screening program developed in Montana after my step-brother's death across the fighting force. Obama explained that we'd still need to find a way to get Congress to fund the program.

"That's awesome," Andrew said. He's a combat veteran with first-hand knowledge of the need for face-to-face screenings to help men and women in uniform get the help that that they need.

The barista put our coffees on the counter during the conversation. Before going our separate ways, Andrew said, "We should find a way to do some legislation together."

February of 2009

I walked out the doors of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. Frigid air greeted me. I was still in awe, but some how managed to put on my gloves and hat.

I took a right towards the National Mall. My feet carried me onward past the towering Washington Monument and the frozen reflecting pool. Only a few minutes before, I'd heard Andrew Person say that he thought we had enough for a bill draft. He'd turn it into the Senate staff and let me finalize it.

I walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and tried to envision where Reverend Martin Luther King had told the world about his dream. I looked up at the statue of President Lincoln. Warm tears ran down my cold cheeks. I didn't know why I was there.

Words came to my lips. "It still works. The country that you died for still works. It's not perfect, but we can still work together to right wrongs."

It had been less than two year's since my stepbrother's death from a PTSD suicide. The grief and anger were still raw, but Congress had begun the process to make sure that the lessons learned from his death would go on to help save the lives of his comrades in arms across the United States military.

I stood there and cried at the base of the monument. I've never in my life felt like such a bit player in a larger plan. None of this would have happened if I hadn't been driven from my office that afternoon by an overworking furnace at the exact time that Andrew was walking into the coffee place across the street.

I know that others will be able to find another explanation for that chain of events, but for me it was a pretty obvious divine shove.

"I will instruct you and show you the way you should walk, give you counsel and watch over you." Psalms 32:8


Note: I had a song going through my head on the way to the Lincoln Memorial. It was "Walk on the Moon" by Great Big Sea. It's a nice boost of encouragement for when the Divine puts you up against a seemingly overwhelming task. Here's a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXoalnqD7z4

Free Delivery: Being Part of Someone Else's Plan

Note:  This is a story about the Divine using one person to affect the trajectory of another's life. Please don't confuse my role as being anything more than a dumb pawn in a larger game.


Late February - Early March 2001

I opened up my door on Sunday morning to go to church.  A newspaper lay upon my step.  I hadn't had a newspaper since West Point.  I looked to my right and left, as if someone would be there to explain to me whose paper it was.

I felt a little guilty, but took it into my house anyway.  I pulled off the rubber band and unrolled the paper.  An announcement fell to the ground stating that I'd been given a free month subscription to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 

After Mass, I came home and read the newspaper from the first page to the last.  At West Point, newspapers had been both a source of stress and relaxation to me.  The freshmen (plebes) are required to read and memorize the front page and sports page of The New York Times before leaving their room in the morning.  I spent every morning trying to absorb all that information and hoping that it would stick with me for when I'd be called to report on the  articles later that day.

While I cursed The New York Times for its involvement in those grilling sessions, I couldn't thank it enough for the Sunday "Travel" section.  Each Sunday during the academic year, I'd sit on my bed in the barracks and read about far away places.  I told myself that someday I'd graduate and I'd find my way to somewhere with sand, sun, cold beer, beautiful women and not a single copy of The New York Times. 

The newspaper in my hand brought all those memories back.  I sipped on coffee that was grown one island away and I felt happy to know that at least some parts of that adolescent dream had been fulfilled.  Military life hadn't turned out like I'd thought.  I was recovering from an ankle surgery in Hawaii instead of being a platoon leader in Korea, but I had a feeling that young plebe would be okay with that.

The paper was interesting and well-written.  Politics is politics and sports is sports regardless of the latitude and longitude.  One article popped out at me.  It was about a shortage of Special Ed teachers in Hawaii and their efforts to recruit teachers from the mainland.  

While my stint here hadn't been exactly paradise, it was hard to imagine Hawaii having a recruitment problem in any profession.

A few weeks later, my friend Jimmy and I went down to Waikiki to our favorite bar, "The Irish Rose."  It was tucked in a mid-range hotel and was the kind of place that most people, including us, only found by accident.  The "Irish Rose" had a mellow feel and a nice anonymous mix of people.  There was live music on the weekends, but the band never played to an audience of more than a couple of handfuls.

Tonight was different.  Waikiki was overrun with Spring Breakers and they'd spilled over into "The Irish Rose."  Jimmy and I were lucky to find a table.  We worked our way through a couple of rounds, talked about work, and watched the tourists take shots.

The bar continued to fill up.  I noticed a pretty blonde and brunette with drinks in their hands looking for a place to sit.  Jimmy and I weren't exactly Lotharios, but I figured it was worth checking to see if they wanted to share our table.

The blonde's name was Wendy and her friend was Nikki.  The girls were from Wisconsin, like Jimmy.  The conversation came easy and a few hours slipped by.  They were midway through college.  Wendy was studying Special Ed.  She said that she'd always thought about living in Hawaii and would love to teach here, but didn't know if she could find a job.

I remembered the article about Islands' need for Special Ed teachers in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that had appeared on my doorstep.  I told Wendy what I remembered and got her email at the end of the night to send her the article.


The following December, Wendy graduated from college.  A few days after graduation, her father passed away from a heart attack.  That February, Wendy fled the tragedy for the warm sun and crashing surf of Maui.  Over the course of the years, Hawaii transformed from her refuge into her home.  Wendy fell in love, got married, and is raising a family.  To this day, she still credits the information that I gave her about Hawaii's teacher recruitment program as key to realizing her dream to move to Hawaii.

I never would have known about that program if a newspaper miraculously shown up on my doorstep a few weeks earlier.  I'm not going to say that Wendy wouldn't have made the same choices without that information, but there's enough evidence for me to believe that the Divine was giving her a little push.

p.s. You can read more about Wendy's journey to recover from the loss of her father in her novel, Seasons in the Sun.  She's a powerful writer with an honest analysis of her own feelings of loss and anger.