Memorial Day Letter 2021

(Archived post)

(Note: I am slowly bringing my entire back catalog of posts, letters, and podcasts onto Substack for paid subscribers. This post is from Memorial Day 2021.)

Hey friend,

How was your week?

We had, frankly, the toughest and most frustrating week since we've been in Nebraska. Just a series of things not appropriate for this letter, but it felt like the old torture technique of "death by a thousand cuts."

But these are all small things in the grand scheme. All will be made right, and we're surrounded by an amazing team and family of people united by common purpose and love for each other and the Lord, and it will all be okay soon.

Yesterday, Lisa and I had the great honor to travel with our friends Jo and Dale Margritz to the Fort McPherson National Cemetery in Maxwell, Nebraska. They lost their son B.J. to glioblastoma a few years ago, and it was our mutual loss of sons and the connection of B.J.'s illness and my specialty that connected us to the Margritz last year when we bought their land and home from them.

We watched as Dale and Jo placed flowers on B.J.'s grave, and we prayed together and thanked God for our sons, B.J.'s service to this country, for continued healing, and for the great sacrifices so evident on that sacred ground.

Standing in that field, surrounded by thousands of markers of lives lived in service to others, I was almost overwhelmed with how petty and small my perceived problems are. And God did some heart surgery on me, reminding me to zoom out a little and notice that my "extraordinary" trouble was actually manageable and pretty "ordinary" in the larger view of what people go through every day.

And it just sort of reset me. It grounded me, and turned my face from my issues to the real reason we were there: to honor B.J. and all those who have served.