| John 4:21 – “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. |
Occasionally, my mind goes back to when I was just getting to know my father-in-law, John Thomas Thurmond. He told me (I am grateful, as he could have kept it to himself) the story of what happened to him on Okinawa during WWII. He enlisted at 17 years old after Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. He was a tank driver. His tank was equipped with a flame thrower, a weapon used to clear the caves where Japanese soldiers hid. He was driving the tank with his head up out of the hatch. He could see better than with his head down and the hatch closed. It was safer, but seeing through the mirrored periscope was difficult. So, any time he could have his head up outside the tank, he could see much better, but it carried risks.
This day, they were fired on by mortars. He ducked his head inside the tank, and pulled the hatch closed over him. It was not yet latched in a secure position, when a mortar hit in close proximity to it, blew the hatch open, and shrapnel fragments went through his neck and jaw, nearly ripping the latter from his face. The commander gave him the order to exit the battlefield, and when he didn’t respond, he rotated the turret to where he could see his driver sprawled out on the deck of the tank. They quickly pulled him into the tank and made the quick trip to the field hospital, which was close by. He spent a long time on a hospital ship and in hospitals with his face in a wire cage, with many skin grafts to reconstruct his jaw and teeth. One day it hit me, that if he had died, he would not have come back from the war, married Mary Lou Ledbetter, and had a daughter Mary Linda Thurmond, who would become my wife. I thank God for that.
A snow and ice storm brought me a wife. I thank God for that. Family is not of our choosing. The only choice I made in who my family would be is my wife. I received my mother and father by birth, totally beyond my control. My three brothers were all pot luck as well. My in laws were wonderful people, and I am so glad for them, but again, a blind draw. Our daughter-in-law, we had no vote in it. Two grand-children. Love them, but no vote. Our middle son is to be married next year. No vote there, but now a second daughter-in-law. We have come to know our married son’s in laws, and have learned to love them. How many children we have is even out of our hands. We can want children, but be unable to conceive for one reason or another. Who has arranged this great and wonderful deck of cards?
Yesterday, I went to visit my 95 year old mother in Fort Worth. We ate together and chatted about family news and events. God gave me her as my mother. Family is like a geodesic dome. As members of it, we are all connected in a frame that forms a place of protection and unity. Some members may be across on the other side of the dome, and we may not feel so connected to them. God started us off with a mother to teach us unconditional love (hopefully) and then we take it from there, learning to practice that love with all of the strangers that we had not one word of say in them being in our lives. Some share their past and it helps us to understand them. Some keep their past private and do not readily seek to be known or understood. My job is to love, regardless. I don’t have to choose my family to love them. I just am tasked with loving them. Like cards dealt from a shuffled deck. I love them, whether a 2 of hearts or a Jack of spades.
Father in heaven, thank You for these cards I hold, my family. These people in my life, Your doing. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
- Jeff Beall
