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My Week With Superheroes: A Tribute To Military Teens on Veterans Day


A few months ago I was invited to serve as speaker and worship leader for a student service project in London, alongside 75 other teenagers and adult leaders.

The invitation came from one of my best friends on the planet, who has been overseas for the past several years serving as a youth worker on military bases throughout Europe, caring for students whose parents are stationed there.

It was a no brainer for me, a chance for me to do something I love; minister to teenagers, and to play music with some of my dearest friends (oh yeah, and in London, by the way). I knew it would be fun and rewarding and powerful, but the truth is, I really had no clue.

I always loved how passionate my friend was and is about these kids, but it wasn’t until I stepped onto the base and met them that I really understood just why.

Over the week I spent with these extraordinary young people, I came to know just how heroic they all are, the level of incredible courage they display every single day, just living ordinary adolescent life.

You see, they have everything that all other teenagers have; relationship drama, mood swings, acne breakouts, school stress, peer pressure, body issues, mad crushes, and every other kind of weight that young people that you know and love have to bear.

The difference is, they also carry stuff that most students (and adults for that matter), could never imagine enduring.

They live as virtual gypsies; moving over and over and over as is the military family way. Many of the students I spent my week with have already had a half a dozen major moves in their young lives. With each one comes more goodbyes, more new friends; new routines, more transition, more grieving, more separation, more change, and more staring over.

Not only do they have to navigate the unpredictable changes within their own bodies and brains, but they have to do so while standing on ground that feels like it’s perpetually shifting.

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One of the things you learn quickly when spending time with military teens, is that it’s useless to ask where they’re from, because they’re usually from everywhere. Home is wherever they happen to be at the time.

These young people live as amazing contradictions. They’re at once leery of making deep connections with people, while being willing and able to plunge head first into accelerated intimacy; making friends quickly and loving openly because they realize that time is short.

Within a matter of hours, I felt a great closeness with them that gave me a window into the painfully beautiful way they have to live; open-hearted and fully present, in a reality that will soon surely change.

And while these young people live with the tremendous difficulty of knowing that their roots won’t be able to reach very deep into the soil or for very long before they’re ripped-up and replanted somewhere else, they also have to do this while always wrestling away the unthinkable fear that comes with Deployment.

Life of military teens is one lived under a massive, ever-present shadow; the one that threatens that their parents could at any time, be called away from their family and into the field, where the danger is something unfathomable to most of us. It’s a place where the threat of terrible injury or death is a very real and personal companion.

Despite it all, these teenagers live in this face of this fear with a quiet strength and defiant joy that was inspiring to be around.

I’ve always respected our men and women who serve our country, but to be honest, these feelings were always tempered by the knowledge that they volunteered to serve. Knowing they signed-up for the task always helped me to somehow reconcile the horrible things and incredible adversity they faced. For better or worse, it gave me an emotional out, as I could at least rest in laying part of their experience on their own shoulders.

These young people made no such decisions. They didn’t sign-up to sacrifice. They have simply been born into these unthinkable circumstances, and they’ve had no choice, other than to adapt and react and flourish, and be brave. They live in the middle of the most turbulent time for any of us (adolescence), and they do so in extremely stormy circumstances.

Today as you pause to acknowledge the men and women who gave and give so much to allow the rest of us to enjoy peace and security, I’d ask you to take a moment and consider the teenagers and children who sacrifice too; young people who live quite heroically and sacrificially behind the lines.

Their uniform may be less recognizable, and they may never receive medals or tributes or parades or national days in their honor, but they serve us all faithfully and they represent us beautifully.

I’m proud to say that for a very brief time in July, I humbly shared my ordinary days with superheroes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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