A Look at the Future on Thanksgiving Day

A Navy Seal, married with three children, posted this message on his door during his hospitalization for seven bullet wounds to the face received in Iraq. "If you're coming into this room with sorrow, or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. 

"I'm incredibly tough and will make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. Then I will push that about 20 percent further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you are about to enter is a room full of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere.”

If you need an image to hold before you to keep in mind our servicemembers, veterans and their families this Thanksgiving, that is a good one. If you need another, imagine a grim-faced man or woman contemplating a gun in an empty room, ready to end all that he or she cannot endure after serving our country. Suicides are at a record level in our military. Or a third: picture the last grizzled, homeless man sitting next to his  “Homeless Vietnam Vet” sign near a shopping mall, and then tell yourself that his generation will soon be gone, but another, larger one, suffering traumatic brain injury and PTSD at record levels, will be sitting in their places. 

Now think about the thousands of active duty servicemembers having Thanksgiving dinner at their bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Will we fail them when they come home needing us?  Will we work with them to merge their strength and battle-readiness for the new challenges of their lives with an equal national resolve of our own?

I am thankful to be spared these things, and I imagine you are too, but this Thanksgiving, let’s find time to remember that veterans who struggle have human stories too, and that they are often marked indelibly, and tragically, with the scars of serving so we don’t have to. Let's make sure our gratitude extends to genuine compassion for them.