Do you know what this is?" he asked one day, handing me a dead piece of wood no longer than my hand but twice the length of his, wide at one end and sharply, but evenly, tapered at the other.
"A stick?" I offered.
"No, Daddy, it's a gun – and this is the bullet," he corrected obviously, pointing next to a tiny speck of wood about the size and shape of a grain of instant rice.
"Can we cut a hole in the gun for the bullet to fit in, and then paint it to look like a real gun, Daddy?" he then asked, supplementing his inquiry with his trademark, inimitable gesturing.
"Of course we can," I laughed. [But we have not yet done so.]
My son is a sweet little boy. He is sensitive and kind. Even when he's bossing his sister, it is obvious that he loves her – because his love and his gentleness are never far from his disposition. He is the easiest person in the world to hurt, and the quickest person in the world to offer his unflinching, unreserved forgiveness and love. Although he is not unique (indeed, every boy will create a gun if he cannot have one), there is more to him. His mom says that he is just like his Daddy. His daddy is a warrior.
The warrior scene depicted in countless movies begins with wavering soldiers – perhaps just peasants – holding tentatively to the meager weapons that they have brought to the field. They are cajoled (perhaps inspired?) to charge to the awaiting enemy and engage in fierce, brutal, terrifying combat with armored strangers heaving vast, sharp (and also blunt) instruments of mutilation. No man who has ever watched a scene like this can do so and not ask the timeless questions of Crane's Youth, "What would I do in this situation? Could I actually make the charge? Would I be brave, or would I run?"
I no longer have to ask these timeless questions. I know what I would do, for I have been there (in the modern version of the scene, wherein the swords and axes and arrows have been replaced by bullets and grenades and hidden bombs). I am no hero under any possible interpretation of the word, but I take great pride in knowing the answer to these questions. But this pride and knowledge have become my identity, and thus have become the problem giving rise to my painful suicidal cliché. This identity is what I must, but do not want to, kill.
How do I kill my design? My nature, my creation, is and always has been to be a soldier. I have know this for as long as I have known anything – indeed from the time that I was fashioning my own pistols and rifles out of dead sticks and charging unnamed beaches and unknown hills. I read The Red Badge of Courage when he was seven, and again at eight, nine, ten, eleven . . . not because I had to, but because I wanted to. For as long as I can remember, I have imagined myself on a field like the one in the ubiquitous scene, or similar field in a later time and place, preparing for imminent battle. From my first visit to Gettysburg at age eight, and on every drive through any country landscape since, I have rarely seen the poetic beauty and majesty of rolling fields and prosperous farmlands. Rather, I see, and have always seen, advancing armies and tactical topography: things I know now by names such as "avenues of approach," "fields of fire," "cover and concealment," and "key terrain." It is, to me, a special brand of poetry. The times and places where I have felt most alive – where life has been most real – have either been in battle or in leading soldiers to prepare for battle. This is how my mind works – in any and every situation. I am wholly comfortable with this knowledge, in this skin, in this being – for I know that this is who I am. In this way, at my very core, I am just like my Daddy.
But Daddy is more than just a soldier. He is a King, and a rancher, and so much more; and Daddy says that no soldier ever gets involved in civilian affairs. My mind swims in the paradox that, in the course of being the soldier that I was designed to be, I have been deeply entangled in civilian affairs – however much they appear to be warlike. It seems that the "reality" of war that I know and cling to is nothing but a ruse de guerre from the Shadowlands, distracting me from the war that my Daddy really wants me to fight. I don't fully understand this – as Daddy's allegories for war still seem to me to just be allegories, but I trust Him, and I trust that His reality is greater than mine.
My devotion to my identity as a soldier has now become an obstacle to being the warrior that Daddy created. My pride and my identity are killing – or at least (but no less horribly) preventing the full life of – my marriage to my Savior, my marriage to my wife, my fathering of my children, and the caring of my Daddy's flock. I cannot serve two masters, nor can I fight the battles over my family, and for my church, and for the Kingdom whose citizenship I truly possess, while fighting the earthly battles of my temporal country. And thus, my reality is neatly turned on its head, and the paradoxical choice of identity suicide almost makes sense.
I fear the battle that lies ahead. What will I do? Can I actually make this charge? Will I be brave, or will I run? I guess it's time to find out, once more. It's time to go to war. It's time to stop being a wavering peasant in soldiers' clothing and fly with reckless abandon at the enemy. It's time to teach my son what it means to be a kind, loving, forgiving warrior. It's time to get out the knives and paint, like Daddy did for me.
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