No one ever appreciates the things I do for them! Mark 3:30; How to keep your ego from hitching a ride with your foolish pride
Finally, after a few months of being separated from modern day technolodgy, my latest (mis)adventure; or as one Mark Dirkes put it, my Army flavored Bible stories.
There I was, it was the weekend of my baptism with TJN and it just so happened to be one of our training weekends at Camp Ripley. I knew it was going to be a busy weekend for me even before it started as I was extremely short-handed on critical people I needed to run our tank range. I knew that I would be cutting close the time I had to move from Ripley up to Brainerd and over to the park. I also knew that I would be extremely exhausted from schedule I would have but prayed that I would have the energy to make it thru. So here's how it happened...
The whole week leading up the that weekend was spend prepping the range and gathering every tool and resource I needed to make this thing happen. It was long days and even longer nights. I don't think I even had a chance to go home that week as I was actually doing three other peoples jobs. Not only was I the Battalion Master Gunner for the range but was also doing the jobs of my Operations NCO and my Operations Sergeant Major ensuring everything was set up and ready once Soldiers arrived. To top it all off I was short handed on range staff I need to run the range which meant that I would be pulling double shifts...the entire weekend. It was Wednesday night and I was just crawling into bed at about midnight and set my alarm for 0400. I had to get out to the range early and have everything prepped and ready that day as Friday morning is when our training started.
I woke up at 0400, grabbed a quick shower, put on my uniform, ate chow quick, went over to the operations center and slugged down a quick cup of coffee. I filled up my cup once more and headed out to the range and got right to work. I started lugging all of my boxes and files, binders and supplies I needed up to the top of the tower (77 steps to the lower level, another 12 more to the top) - this is the part that really sucks, especially when you've got to do it yourself. Over the next twelve hours I worked on the set up of both levels of the tower, double checking all of my scenarios, setting up crew binders, getting video tapes labelled, creating a sand table and getting our gunnery simulations trailer up and running. I headed back in for evening chow but still had a lot of work to get done before I was even ready for the weekend. So, I picked up a few things to snack on for the evening and headed back out to the range. At about 0330 I knew that I would be getting no sleep this night but luckily one of the crucial pieces of inventory for the tower was a coffee pot and an old butter container full of grounds. I brewed a pot and continued my work. Just after day-break I heard the first of 22 tanks pull up on the range. This is the most wonderful sound my ears could have heard at that time of day and is something that only other tankers can appreciate. I quickly felt a boost in energy, enough to muscle me thru that really low part in my sleep cycle where I would normally get the hardest sleep of the night. As we got to work, a good chunk of my support plan quickly fell apart as people I had been counting on to pull some of the critical duties on the range failed to show up. It was at this point that I knew I was in for a long weekend. For the rest of that day I ran the range from the upper tower, making sure tanks were lined up and ready to go, pushing tanks down range to conduct their gunnery table and then getting them out to the gunnery trainer once they completed there After Action Review (I know it's a lot of Army talk but you don't really need to know what all of it is to understand that it all busy, all the time...and it doesn't stop until it over). The rest of the weekend went like this, I pulled twelve hours in the upper tower running the range and twelve hours in the lower tower evaluating tank crews. When a tank would break down and need help, I ran out to see if I could fix it or if I had to send it to the motor pool for more work. This cycle didn't stop until 0800 Sunday morning. For those keeping track so far I'm up to 76 hours without sleep. With my baptism only 5 hours away, I quickly got the range cleared and turned back in, packed up all of my tower equipment and supplies and headed back in - 1100. I finished up all of may paper work to close out the event and packed up my personal gear - 1200. I jumped in my vehicle and drove up to Brainerd, got home, jumped in the shower and made my way over to the church - 1255; just in time to head over. At this point I was so exhausted that when it came to giving my faith story my mind drew a blank. I couldn't string three words together without long pauses and putting all of my effort to making my brain and body function. When this was over we headed home and I went straight to bed. The time - 3 o'clock. I had been up for 83 hours running on nothing more than bad Army chow, caffeine and nicotein. I slept for the next 15 hours. I got up the next morning not really sure of where I was or what I was doing. I think my bodies muscle memory of the morning routine took over and I floated into the office on auto pilot. As I entered the building, most of us were just getting to work and we were headed into our first meeting of the day. As we went over the weekend and what happened not one person noted the fact that I had just spent the entire weekend killing myself to make the main goal of our battalion a success - not even the smallest of footnotes. What I did get was a backlash of all the things that went wrong over the weekend and how jacked up things looked from our commander's perspective. WHAT! ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Why on earth had I just busted my hump, killing myself, doing everything I could with the struggles and short comings I was handed and making, what I thought to be, lemonade out of a whole crate of rotten lemons. I couldn't believe it, not only was everything about that whole weekend just destroyed in front of my eyes, but I was the target of their complaints as I was the one in charge of the whole mess. I was crushed. Those ungrateful urchins had nothing better to do than Monday morning quaterback everything thing that went wrong and then tried to tell me that all of those things were my fault. If I had only done this, or I should have done that. Mind you, none of these people ever lifted a finger during the whole planning phase and had absolutely no idea of how hard I worked to get everything set up. All of the pieces that had to fall into place at just the right times, all of the tanks that needed to be requested and prepped before the Soldiers even arrived, all of the time I spent putting together all of the resources I needed so everyone had everything they needed when they needed it. All of the people that I had coordinated the whole weekend with just to make this one event happen. I felt like giving up on the whole thing. I thought, "you know, what would these people do if I hadn't put as much effort into this weekend as I had and then invested my whole being into making sure that it happened?" I felt so unappreciated, I had done so much to help everyone out and they just turned their back on me.
Funny, this is just how Jesus felt when the Pharisees and Jewish leaders turned on Him. Now, I'm not comparing the scope of what I had done over that weekend to the enormous sacrifice Jesus Christ made and the suffering he was put thru. But I can surely relate on a much smaller scale. Obviously my sacrifice wasn't nearly what His was but at the same time, our very nature of who we are as sinful, imperfect creatures can be looked at in both situations.
Jesus worked exclusively for the welfare of other people but often times Pharisees as well as many others, judged his actions and questioned his motives. Even with the most pure of intentions, his words and deeds were twisted by people who didn't see what he saw and were mislead by their own perception based on judgement from others in leadership positions. This is such a huge flaw in all of us. What is it hat makes people see evil in things that are meant for good? None of the things I did for those Soldier that weekend were ever noticed nor was the amount of work I put into it ever recognized. What did get noticed were all of the things that failed and how I was to blame for that failure. Jesus was under the same human microscope. The one glaring difference (besides the many lesser ones - you know, I'm not perfect nor was my plan) I wasn't saving mankind from itself. But what can I take away from this? Well, a few things.
1. I (nor anyone else for that matter) will never be fairly judged
2. Universal appreciation doesn't follow leadership
3. Fairness cannot be expected in a world of sin
At this point I need to stop, look myself in the mirror and ask myself a few questions.
How do I ensure people see my motives to reassure them tht I have the best intentions and am trying to uphold the highest values? I mean, if people couldn't see the perfectness in Jesus' plan, what chance do I stand?
Since I am a man full of sin, how do I view other's motives when I am not the leader but simply a follower?
How do I determine what is good and what is not when I am leading and when I'm following?
Lastly, how do I handle the issue of not being appreciated for what I've done or what I have to do?
Two things about this lesson that I need to understand more about myself before I will ever be able to live a more God focused and selfless life:
1. My Ego
2. My foolish pride
Any suggestions?
