ROK SOLID

Life’s Journeys

It has been said that life is a journey and is not necessarily a comfortable nor an easy one. The fifteenth president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley once made the following analogy:

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride. (Gordon B. Hinckley, CES Address, 12 June 1973)

All journeys have a beginning place and an ending place. Some are more significant than others but all serve to teach lessons that can be learned in no other way. Each journey provides its own tests, trials, challenges and a measure of joy and fulfillment. Life is not arbitrary; all things have their purpose, reward and instructive properties.

This journey we are all a part of upon this microscopic piece of cosmic dust known as earth, began in a different place than where we now reside. It began in a pre-mortal sphere where our spirits lived and awaited a time to begin this all-important journey through mortality.

The words of William Wordsworth speak of this and ring with a familiarity of their truth:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! (excerpt ODE: Intimations of Immortality)

In mortality we find ourselves engaged in many different kinds of journeys that are a part of this formative but necessary experience here on earth. In my own life there was one such experience. After graduating from high school at the age of seventeen, I found myself in Marine Corps boot camp at MCRD in San Diego, California. That training lasted eight weeks. It was the harshest experience I had ever encountered in my short life but I did learn that I was capable enduring much more pain, stress and opposition than I had ever imagined. There were times when we would run for three miles through loose sand with full pack and rifle and my quadriceps would be in such pain that all I could do was concentrate on one step at a time. Thinking beyond that was inconceivable. After what seemed an eternity the run ended and I had endured, somehow, without giving up or giving in, fear may have been a factor but regardless of the reason I had done something I had never conceived possible.

From there I went to Camp Pendleton, California for further infantry training for three weeks. There were long days and long nights with little sleep. Exhausting forced marches on long dusty roads that went on for more miles than I could count. Again my mind and body were subjected to circumstances and experience that were foreign to anything I had ever known and yet my survival, for me, was a testament of just how much one human body could endure and survive.

After as short leave I was flown Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for six weeks of training in Supply Administration School. What was learned here was nothing like the previous experiences. I learned how I learned. Telling me something taught me nothing but by being involved in practical applications I learned quickly and indelibly. This seemingly insignificant experience would have a life long effect on me, as a student and later as a teacher. When that training was finished I was informed I would be sent to Vietnam.

The leave I had prior to my departure allowed a brief visit home with my parents in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When it came time for me to depart for Vietnam I remember vividly, as I drove south leaving Cheyenne heading to Denver, looking in the review mirror of my father’s car and seeing the city behind me wondering if I would ever see it or my parents again. The experience was at once sobering and haunting.

After finishing Vietnamese language school and a short stay in pre-Vietnam staging battalion, I boarded a plane to Okinawa. Two days later, I was flown to the 15^th Aerial Port outside of Danang, Vietnam. It was May 26, 1967. Looking out the window there was red dirt everywhere. Men were sitting on bunkers wearing heavy soundproof headphones, flack jackets without shirts, and M-16 rifles on their laps. Upon disembarking the airplane, I was overwhelmed by the oppressive heat and humidity, the pervasive smell of rice paddies and pollutants in the air, and the distant rumble of artillery. It was completely surreal.  

In Vietnam there was always the presence of war even though I was never in heavy combat. There were occasions, like R&R, which were a pleasant respite from the conflict and turmoil that were so much a part of the war. There were also beautiful sunrises over the South China Sea giving hope for a new day. The occasional quiet calm of a star-filled night. However, there was a pervasive consciousness of death when driving by a barracks full of soldiers destroyed by a rocket attack during the night, in seeing black body bags lined up at the airport awaiting their return home, seeing severely wounded soldiers covered with blood and in feeling the concussion of rockets hitting jets filled with napalm turning the horizon bright orange in the middle of the night. During the long days and sleepless nights of patrols and other necessities throughout the Vietcong TET offensive of 1968.

I felt the loss of good friends whose families would never see them again in this life. Dealing with the challenge of survivor’s remorse, feeling guilt for still being alive and unharmed. Not the least of the experience was seeing a gentle and sweet people subjected to a war not of their choosing.

Such events and feelings symbolically mirror our journey through this life. Sometimes there are those things that happen that seem unfair, there are people who are defenseless, some are fortunate but not without some trial during their stay on earth. As for my experience I was fortunate enough to have survived, I was unwounded physically but there were emotional wounds that would take some time to fully heal.

After serving a tour of duty all came home; some reluctantly some gladly, some wounded physically some wounded emotionally, some gratefully some angrily, some scarred and some unscathed and some left the war there and some brought it home with them. Having finished the tour of duty no one came home the same person they were before the left to go to war. When I returned to my home I was not the same eighteen year-old boy that drove the family car out of Cheyenne nearly eighteen months before. It would take time to understand and deal with that experience. That transition began in June of 1968.

After some very long flights I finally landed in the small airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming at about 10 P.M. on a warm June night. I got a cab and had him drive me to the corner of the block several houses from my boyhood home. I paid the fair and put a duffle bag on each shoulder and walked the half block to my home. It was with mixed feelings I made that walk; it was peaceful to be home but the effects of the war remained embedded in my mind and heart. It was almost unreal that in what was about seventy-six hours I was transported from a war zone to my home.

When I reached my home the porch light was not on; there was no moon. The front door was open and I could see my father sitting in his easy chair intently watching TV. He didn’t see me. I supposed mother was lying on the couch watching TV as well even though I could not see her. It was a picture that is indelibly etched into my memory. Well over a year before I was wondering if I would ever see this place again and here I was, returned to my home, to my father and to my mother!

Slowly I approached the front steps leading to the front door being careful to make no noise to interrupt this moment that was like no other experience I had ever known in my life. I put down my bags quietly and rang the doorbell. My father was slightly startled as he said, “I wonder who that could be?” Because the porch light was not on he could not see who was standing on the front porch.

When he opened the door and saw who it was he fell upon my shoulders with a bear hug that nearly took my breath away. With tears streaming down his face, he said with great emotion while holding me tightly, “Welcome home, sonny boy!” That was his pet name for me. I could not respond but in my heart I felt a peace that can only come after passing through and surviving a great crisis.

Mother came over, she was a woman not given to tears, but her joy and relief were apparent as we embraced in a way that only a loving mother and a grateful son could. Her love was as powerful as any as I had known to that point in my life. It radiated security where there was fear, doubt or uncertainty. That was, to that point in my life, the sweetest experience I had ever known. I was home! I was safe! I was loved and gave love in return!

That is a very small example of how I see our return from this mortal journey to our heavenly home and our Heavenly Parents who are as real as those we have here in this life. The experience of Vietnam taught me things I could have learned in no other way. In retrospect I saw the hand of God in conflict, I learned much about the frailty of mortality, I learned it was possible to survive emotionally as well as physically in very intense situations.

I don’t know what we knew about this life before we came here but we were anxious to come knowing, then, that it would be our path back to our eternal home. We understood the necessity of coming to mortality and learning all that could only be learned here. The joy we will feel when we complete our time here, having done all we were sent here to do, will be beyond any joy we can even begin to understand in this life. The words of a beautiful hymn called “O, My Father” come to mind.

For a wise and glorious purpose
Thou hast placed me here on earth


And withheld the recollection
Of my former friends and birth;

Yet ofttimes a secret something
Whispered, "You're a stranger here,"


And I felt that I had wandered
From a more exalted sphere.

I had learned to call thee Father,
Thru thy Spirit from on high,


But, until the key of knowledge
Was restored, I knew not why.


In the heav'ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!


Truth is reason; truth eternal
Tells me I've a mother there.

When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,


Father, Mother, may I meet you
In your royal courts on high?


Then, at length, when I've completed
All you sent me forth to do,


With your mutual approbation
Let me come and dwell with you.

(Eliza R. Snow, O My Father, bold added)

Because we are eternal beings in a temporal world we have forgotten our place of origin. Wordsworth’s words are applicable as we come to understand this small journey that is part of a much larger one. It is not “in entire forgetfulness” that we ponder either from whence we came or to whence we will return from this time in mortality. And truly our soul is our “life star” and will rise with us after this journey is through and our mortal body is laid to rest. But that separation, like the one from our eternal parents, will be temporary. For as our Lord and Savior had the power to raise himself from the dead in resurrection so by that same power will our body and that “life star” be reunited and then we will begin another journey that will be eternal.