Mother’s Day Message

Cawson St. Church of Christ

Hopewell, VA 23860

Mural Worthey

We have the names of five soldiers who are related to or friends of some of our families at Cawson Street. In addition, we have others who are serving in the military stationed at Fort Lee. One of things that parents have in common is their concern for the safety of their children. This concern is based upon the natural, God-given love of parents for their children.

I have been given a copy of a photo from the US Marine Corps archives with an attached story. The photo was taken in Fallujah, Iraq, April 24, 2004. Corporal Andrew Keith Parker is in the picture. The story tells about the damage to their humvee from combat. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured but the windshield had to be replaced twice and a wheel due to an anti-tank mine blast.

Brother Berry Bishop gave me a copy of a letter from Iraq, dated April 2004, from Sargent Michael R. Melugin. I believe that hearing this letter will increase our appreciation for what our soldiers are experiencing and cause us to correspond with them more often by mail. (Read the letter addressed to Gloria Story from Michael Melugin.)

I am writing to thank you for your package. Often here it is easy to feel disconnected from home. It is difficult to put into context how much of a difference receiving mail can make. I will try to give you some idea though.

A few weeks ago, we were tasked to take a small Iraqi military compound. We started movement very early that day. There were other objectives for us along the way. We were wearing the minimum of gear, about 65 pounds for most of us.

By the time we reached the compound, I had already sweat through everything including my boots and the inside of my armor. We had completed our other objectives and taken the compound without making contact. Even so, we were drained. Here, every building you clear, every corner you pass, every smiling face and every vehicle that comes near, could be dangerous. Almost always there is nothing around the corner and the smiling face is just what it appears. But we are constantly getting keyed up and it wears us down.

The compound was cleared and security in place. We’d been inside our gear for eleven and half hours now and had not eaten in close to thirteen hours.

I thought to myself, "At least it doesn’t smell so bad here." Everywhere we’ve been so far, dumpsters lie empty while trash fills the streets. Raw sewage runs out of the houses and flows through the neighborhoods. We are constantly in and surrounded by human filth. Of course, when the area you’re in isn’t so bad, you begin to notice yourself. I’d imagine that a normal person, doing limited physical activity, in a relatively clean environment would smell fairly bad after three weeks of no bathing. We smell far, far worse. Our hair is a greasy mat. Our feet could clear a room. Our hands are permanently brown and it is not from the sun. Every time I breathe in, the air between my uniform and body armor is forced out. Sometimes I want to gag at my own stench.

"You won’t find this in the movies," runs through my head and I laugh to myself. Of course, you’ll only see one percent of what an infantryman experiences in movies and in the news. The other ninety nine percent is not exciting, sensational or newsworthy. The movies and the news clips however are all that most people have to know us by. So how could I impart to them how lifting the experience of just receiving mail is? Most of the soldiers in the army’s 211 other jobs would not understand. I know some do but, invariably, they are the ones who have to live with us. There are some differences between us and others, though.

There is a difference between sleeping on a cot and on the ground. There is a difference between drinking bottled water of purified water (tastes like pool water with pencil shavings). There is a difference between getting hot chow or only MREs (meals ready to eat) . . . . between showering every three or four days and three or four weeks. Finally, there is a big difference between not carrying all of your gear and having to put all your armor and its attachments on. Strapping everything else, including extra ammo, mortar rounds, and anti-tank weapons to you. Then having two and sometimes three others help you to your feet because 200 pounds of equipment is too much for you to stand up under on your own. Then moving from point A to point B. Our bodies fight to cope, but sometimes they fail. We have hernias, pulled and torn muscles, we pass-out from overheating, we blow out our knees . . . and the list goes on.

I do not want you to misunderstand me though. I believe that all soldiers and their families are making sacrifices everyday. I once heard someone say that when a person gives you his time, he has given you a part of his life. We are all giving a part of our lives to our country. We and our families can never get that time back. It is gone.

What I am trying to get across though is that as important as the feel of home that mail brings to everyone. Those of us with less comforts in our day to day lives, cherish it even more.

So there we were nearing the end of another long day. We were hot, tired, hungry, thirsty and our bodies ached. We’d been all we could be. We were spent. We sat down in the courtyard that was the center of the small compound. We began to use what little energy we had left to eat yet another MRE. Then shots begin going overhead.

No one got excited; no one began yelling. No one really moved; most of us didn’t even look up from our food. We just kept eating. Before long a round impacted within a foot or so of one of our guy’s heads. I heard an audible voice hollering for everyone to get against the wall. So we all cursed, stood up, gathered our meals and walked to the wall. We then sat down against the wall and continued eating.

This kind of behavior might seem a bit odd to others, but then many of the things we do probably would too. In the end, getting shot at that day was just one more thing we had to deal with. There are times out here when we are so worn down that we care little about anything. That day in the compound was one of these.

Even in these times though, there is one things can bring our heads up—MAIL! The change is little short of miraculous. I can only compare it to waking up Christmas morning as a child. I look around and I see anticipation and excitement. In some though I see fear and reservations. They prepare themselves to be disappointed again. Often I see more emotion at mail time than the rest of the day combined.

Whenever we receive a letter from home, for a suspended moment in time, we are reconnected. We can see their faces, hear their voices, and feel their love. For that moment, we are with them. We are home.

If you know a soldier or if you care about how we are doing, but haven’t found the time to say it, write it down, buy some stamps, put together a package. Find the time. For some of us the mail you send may be the only comfort we receive that day.

To Gloria and those like her, thank you. Thank you for caring about us.

Sargent Michael R. Melugin, US Army

This letter reveals much about the thoughts and emotions of our soldiers serving overseas. I believe that we miss the point if we think that the letter from the Sargent is just about receiving mail and not being left out. Did you notice that the letters served to connect them to their homes and families? It is home that made the letters important. The mail was their connection to home.

Life becomes miserable and difficult to bear when the home is destroyed. Recently, I drove down to New Bern, North Carolina, to visit Warren and Dorothy Jones. I stopped at a mini-mart to buy gasoline in New Bern. While I was in the store, a very young mother was inside with a small daughter. I noticed that the child had stitches around one of her eyes and bruises on her face. The young mother did not look happy as a mother should; there was a note of sadness in her face. In just a few moments that I was in the store, I heard her say to her friend in the store that she would soon be receiving child-support checks from the girl’s father. She seemed relieved financially that she would soon be receiving the support. I wondered how her home could have failed so soon in their young lives.

No proof is needed to say that much of our happiness in life is dependent directly upon the stability of the home. Whether it is soldiers receiving mail from home in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the young mother in New Bern, their happiness in life is related to the relationships in the home and family. Every person from a troubled or broken home testifies to the truthfulness of that observation. Every person from a stable and whole-some home is an example of the value of the home and family as God would have it to be.

You may not remember that there was a socialist experiment in the early years of our country in New Harmony, Indiana. The leaders of that experiment from Europe tried to dissolve the traditional, biblical home and family.

George Rapp (1757-1847), the leader of the religious group called Harmonists, founded the village of Harmonie in 1814. Rapp brought the Harmonists from Germany to escape religious persecution. They spent 10 years in Butler County, Pennsylvania, then migrated to Indiana. The Harmonists practiced celibacy and members could not own property. In 1925, Rapp sold the town to Robert Owen, wealthy social reformer and industrialist from Scotland. The Harmonists returned returned to Pennsylvania, where the society died out toward the end of the 1800s.

Robert Owen renamed his town New Harmony. He established a social order based on community ownership and equality of work and profit. The experiment in community living made New Harmony famous. Scientists and scholars flocked to the town. But few of the 1000 or more Owenites understood the principles of the experiment and they split into several factions. By 1827, it was apparent that Owen’s plan had failed.

However, the Encyclopedia article from World Book does not tell the role of Alexander Campbell in exposing the socialist experiment and hastening its demise. Social communities were quickly organized not only in Indiana, but also at Kendal, in Stark county, Ohio. Campbell and Owen debated the role of the home and the New Harmony experiment, April 13-21, 1830. Owen tried to show that religion was the cause of the unhappiness of man. His communal living experiment sought to destroy religion, marriage and private property ownership. They abolished the marriage contract and hired nurses to care for the children. In regard to this Alexander Campbell spoke tenderly about the role of the members of the family. He referred touchingly to the joys of the mother in having the care of her own offspring. "The smiles of her infant," said he, "the opening dawn of reason, the indications of future greatness or goodness, as they exhibit themselves to her sanguine expectations, open to her sources of enjoyment incomparably overpaying the solicitudes and gentle toils of nursing." He showed that the system, instead of being accordant with human nature, was at war with it, and "aimed a mortal blow at all our ideas of social order and social happiness." (Memiors, ii, 277.)

At the end of the discussion, Campbell decided to take the risk of asking the large audience to express their choice—Christianity and what it teaches about the family or the new social order as envisioned by Robert Owen. In an audience of approx. 1200 persons, it seemed that everyone stood in favor of Christianity. He then asked for those who favored the social order as proposed by Owen to stand. Only three persons stood. The philosophy was so defeated that Owen sold the property and returned to Europe. This social experiment in early America was defeated soundly. Campbell argued that it failed because it was against nature—the natural love of parents for their children, and children for their parents.

We should likewise stand against the varied efforts of infidels to destroy the home. In their madness to live irresponsibly, they have denied the very relationships that give any promise for happiness. There is little need for a long refutation of the obvious. Their proposals stand self-defeated. Like the Harmonists who practiced celibacy, in short order the participants and community died out. In our day, same-sex marriages stand under the same condemnation. If everyone lived as they advocate, in one generation the whole human family would come to an abrupt end and during that flawed experiment misery and shame would engulf every participant.

Radical feminists who express their hatred for men stand self-condemned. If not for the union of a man and his wife, the feminist could not have even been born! Judges and courts who allow children to be adopted into these sinful unions participate in the destruction of the lives of the children under their care. They will be held accountable by the God of the home and family. Nations, political leaders, citizens and courts alike that promote the death and destruction of the unborn show the extent to which a rejection of the knowledge of God leads. The end result of rejecting God is that God gives man up to vile affections and to a reprobate mind. (Romans 1.)

When young men and women enter into marriage, they are entering into a covenant before God vowing faithfulness to the marriage vows. About half of those now marrying divorce. This has a devastating impact not only on the young husband and wife, but especially upon the children of such marriages. They are the innocent victims of a mad society bent on self-fulfillment and pleasure.

There is not greater ideal and possibility for happiness to be found than that planned by God the Father. Husbands and wives are commanded to love one another and to love their children. There is no better remedy for the ills our society face than to discipline children lovingly, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.