Words Fall Short

The Way

Jul 06, 2024

War is ugly. It is started, played and propagated by powerful principalities, all sides, whose only language is to war. They fail at language, they fail us, they fail the people who in the end sign-up to help defend the extreme evil of this world. In the end, many die, and we, if we are meant to live, live. I am convinced that had it not been for those who sacrificed their lives to run straight into battle, during World War 2, I would not be here.

Life is a gift. And there’s a lot to do.

War won’t stop until heaven. Or hell. It is suffered by defenseless children, animals and earth’s creation who made no grownup choice in the game. It is suffered by protectors who volunteer to leave their families, often their children and do the hard things. The ugly things that no one else who is living their life would do. They prop up our dreams. They go to battle so that we can walk the roads they have cleared of dynamite. War is the death of good and evil and you know what?

It is the circle of life…

With that said, I watched a movie last night, a true story, called “Unsung Hero.” It is not a war movie. It is an extremely humbling story of a father living the dream, doing the only thing he felt qualified to do, all the while creating a rather large family, climbing the ladder of success, through great risk, until everything came crashing down.

These are the day to day battles of life. It is a familiar-to-my-heart-story of what I saw as unequaled belief. It’s the ebbing and flowing of a marriage, not always on the same page, taking turns with the word faith, tossing it back and forth like a hot potato.

It can be so easy to lose faith.

This is a beautiful love story about an unassuming wife and mother hero.

and I have another…

Several years ago, I had an incredible opportunity to teach photography in a volunteer fine arts program at a very large church. I actually got to learn to teach. And from that I was able to teach several people privately, online as well.

What I didn’t know about stepping up to this opportunity, besides the exuberance of sharing my passion, was how it could have deeply affected any of my students. I volunteered for two eight-week programs a year for about four years. Students ranged in age from 15 to 90. It wasn’t easy at first due to knowledge, both from the student and from myself for their differing camera systems, which were all over the place! The first thing I did was ask them to download manuals for their cameras and get to know the basics. There is a good diagram for mechanical finger placement on each camera or the vaults from where to find the “how to’s,” as I moved along teaching. This was all based off of learning “manual functions,” to become fully manual in eight weeks. We would begin with Auto Mode, to explore how each student’s eye was working and go from there with assignments every week, adding in one main function of the exposure triangle, at a time. I had an overhead to project student’s images onto the screen and discuss “the metadata” (the settings recorded for each image from the camera) of the student’s favorite and not so favorite image of the week. We’d get into the dirt of what it meant to have “control” over the creation of a photo.

During one season of teaching, near the end of eight weeks, prior to our little showcase, a gentleman in my class, who rarely spoke up, yet dutifully fulfilled all of his assignments, raised his hand to speak.

It was a testimony.

And by the time it was over, you could hear a pin drop in the room.

<changed the name to protect>

Nick Gonzales was in his 40’s. He had been a cop for 15 years in L.A. County. During his time protecting one of our local communities, he also served four tours of Iraq, for the Global War on Terror after 9/11. The U.S. Military suffered 60,000 casualties.

Each time, he left a wife behind, then his wife plus one son, then two sons, behind.

Upon his last tour of duty, the unit he was with, were traveling in an M1 Abrams tank when they hit an IED that blew his best friend up and out of the tank and severed him in half. “I carried half of my best friend’s body and decided I was never going back,” were his words, verbatim.

I will never forget it. Never forget.

“When I got home the police department had me at a desk job because I couldn’t function. I was the guy chasing stolen cars. The V.A. is a terrible place for help. I have PTSD. I ended up in bed unable to do anything for a few years. I couldn’t get up to attend my son’s baseball games. My wife told me about this program here and I saw your class. She encouraged me to attend because I like photography but I didn’t know anything.”

“During the night assignment I went out and photographed car accidents (no bodily injuries) by myself, from information obtained at the police department. I compiled my own police reports and inserted shots of the vehicle interiors. I submitted them to my captain. I wanted you to know that he decided to send me to three weeks of forensic photography school, paid for by the police department, because he had hired a guy who was using a flash for the interiors, blowing out all the details. He said that what I was doing was exactly what they needed.”

Nick became the official police department’s forensic photographer compiling police reports for “all vehicle accidents,” crimes, robberies, etc.

He walked into my class and got his life back.

Nick’s wife never gave up on him. Like the movie, she had the love, patience, faith and guidance to search her heart for Nick. She wanted him “to see his boys grow up and play baseball.”

Perhaps overcoming my fear of teaching was entirely meant for Nick’s fear of living. To find purpose. God had connected the dots.

Sometimes the way is right there.

Words fall short. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room that night.

THE FAMILY WE KEEP

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