As we often do, after we’ve used something, we throw it away, sometimes however, we throw things away that we later discover we need.
Crumbled Up People
He asked for help
We told him to help himself
But he did not, because he could not or would not
Then he committed that…do not…will not…tolerate sin
So
Like a piece of trash
We crumbled him up
Threw him away into that garbage heap of people
Thrown away
After a Torrentious rain
With condemning lightning and thunder
The light came down
From that garbage heap great flowers and grass grew
They looked…saw, and said
Look what we did
But the Lord said
No…Look what you threw away
By: Roger Harkness
*************************
I had a guy working under me when I was in the Navy. He came to me asking that I be meaner to him. A strange request, but he explained that he had always needed someone to be tough on him in order to keep him straight.
Shortly after that the Master Chief came to me saying that I needed to keep a better eye on him, he was not keeping good company and was libel to get into some trouble and then a couple days after that he broke his neck in a car accident. He was driving, it was his fault, he had been drinking.
He was due to receive a dishonourable discharge because he could not perform his duty because of his own misconduct.
His parents pleaded with us. He was now an invalid and they could not pay for his medical care and of course the Navy wouldn’t pay the bill if he was discharged dishonourably. The Master Chief intervened and some how turned it around.
But it reminded me of so many I have known in the past and how the Navy has changed so much and has become so unforgiving.
The best boat coxn I had every seen by far spent most of Navy career restricted to ship. When he would go on liberty he would get drunk, get into a fight, have the shore patrol or police bring him back and he would be put on a 30 day liberty risk restriction. He spent his whole four years in the Navy like this and in the end he was not recommended for re-enlistment and was discharged under other than honourable conditions. But wasn’t he the best boat coxn there ever was. After he left the deck of the captain’s gig got a whole punched through it after getting caught under the boat rigging while manoeuvring safely away from the ship during rough seas. I watched and I knew that this was a result of giving up one of the best boat coxn’s there ever was.
When I first joined the Navy, their were lots of sailors who were there because they did not fit in society and a lot of them had been to Vietnam and had their lives messed up. They were useful, many of them did a good job and the Navy attempting to improve its image was throwing these people out like they were useless garbage, and they weren’t, that was the sad part. They just needed someone to be tough on them their whole life to keep straight. In other words, they needed tough love and there are some people who just need that and we need to understand that, but nobody is useless, nobody.