"Retreat....I mean Charge!"

             I once read a story out of Justin Lookadoos’ book 97: Random thoughts about Life, Love & Relationships. The story was of one of his dad’s friends. “A friend of my dad’s received the National Medal of Honor for bravery in combat. He laughed when he told us what happened.” A summed up version of the story was that the friend was up on a hill. Several yards away from him there was a machine gun nest. The entire battle was uphill and he had found himself closest to the nest while the rest of his company was further on down the hill. According to the story the man found himself running low on ammo and taking “a lot of heat”. He decided to retreat down the hill to the rest of his company and see about restocking his ammo supply. He jumped up out of the hole he was hiding and proceeded to run down the hill. Once more according to the story the man was shocked to see the rest of the company charging at him. Instead of running to them he turned around and the entire company charged and took over the nest. Later on the man said that several of his buddies came up to him and congratulated him on leading the charge. To this day he has never told his buddies that he was actually retreating to them.

This story kind of reminded me of the posters that some teachers hang up; the one that pictures the fish swimming the opposite direction in a school of fish that are swimming in one direction. I used to see that poster all the time, and think that I was like that one fish swimming in the opposite direction of my peers. The more I thought about it though the more and more I began to think how I actually was more like one of the fishes in the school. I had never really done anything to turn around and go the opposite direction, but it might have been because I had no reason to. I enjoyed my status on the popularity scale, why would I want to give that up to go a different way?

The more and more I thought about this the more I realized that while during freshman year I was part of that large group something happened between freshman and sophomore year that changed me. Suddenly all the friends I thought I once had turned out not being friends at all. Everybody was being invited to all these cool parties while I was at home. What had changed? Then I remembered that between my freshman and sophomore was when my life took a new course. I had found Christianity, and my “friends” had found out about it so they didn’t want to impose their beliefs on me, they would just stop talking to me all together. Maybe it was the fear of me imposing my new beliefs on them; bringing them down to earth instead of having their heads all up in the clouds.

None the less though I had changed and they did not want anything to do with me. I was out on my own heading a different direction than all my “friends” were. They were swimming to parties while I was swimming to church, and related activities. I was shocked when I finally got out of the school to see just how many fish had broken away as well. Turns out I was not on my own; all I had to do was break away. This whole story, reflection thing got me wondering just how many times in my life have I been faced with the decision to “charge” but instead I simply retreated. Then I wondered how many times have I been faced with the option to retreat but instead I charged. I spent the rest of the day puzzling over these two statements.

How easy it is for me to look at a situation and think “I can’t do that”. Luckily for me I had the chance to experience several situations in which I looked at the big picture and thought “I can’t do that” yet I still had to do it because I did not have an option. That’s one of the achievements I got out of basic training, taking that I can’t do it spirit and forcing myself to overcome the obstacles in my way to achieve success.