i guess i should open up with a little preface… My name is Jared Messenger and i’m 30 years old. I’m not the oldest on the squad, but i am the oldest guy on the squad and the oldest on my team. Not by too much though, so no big deal. I grew up in KY, but now I live in the Northern VA/DC area and work for a Govt contractor. And if you couldn’t tell, by the delay in blog postings, blogging isn’t really my thing. So allow me to apologize in advance for those of you reading these blogs as i post them. And please forgive me for any misspellings, punctuation errors, and for random scatter brained thoughts that i might write down.
well, I would love to let the above paragraph be my first blog, but i think i might need to add a little more. So here we go…
Not only is this my first blog, here or anywhere, but this is also the first day of the next 11 months. And i have to say it definitely wasn’t what i expected it to be. To be honest this past weekend didn’t go as planned…but i don’t suppose thats really interesting enough to write about. One might even say, thats just life – things seldom go as planned. Though beyond the chaos of getting everything moved, sold, packed, and finalized – losing my Uncle today, the day i’m supposed to fly out, did come as quite a suprise. It put me in a pretty awkward position – Do i go ahead and leave or do i stay and go to KY for the funeral and then fly out to catch up with my team. I’ll be honest i definitely had to make some phone calls on this one. I needed some kind of advice on what i should do. I mean i’m pretty family oriented, or at least i’d like to think so, and family means a lot to me despite the fact that i moved over 8 hours away from them for work. And then on the other hand i felt obligated to maintain the already schedule itinerary and meet up with my squad since a high priority was placed on making it to “Launch” in the Philippines. At first thought it doen’t really seem as though it should be that big of a deal – go home, take care of your family, then go on the trip. Initially thats exactly what was what was on my mind – go home, family first. Still though i needed to make some phone calls and get a different perspective. So i called my mom. (yep, thats right, i called my mom). But after talking to her and doing the emotional thing, she convinced me to go ahead and go – to stick with the original plan. She said that he knew i loved him and my family knew that too. And that there really wasn’t anything i could do – not to mention they had no idea as to the funeral plans yet. Wow, now that was a hard pill to swallow. To be told to do something, opposite of what you feel is the right thing to do, for your family all for the sake of the MISSION at hand. And then to listen….that was tough for me. Still, those words provided the reassurance I definitely needed to hear and i was really thankful to have heard them.
After my conversation with my mom, i just thought about how glad i was that i got to see him while i was home – just the week before. And how amazing God’s timing is. That he made a time and a way for which i could go home to see him and my family, during an especially busy time of getting everything ready, before i left. And how had i not been able to do that, how much worse I would’ve felt. And I thought about how I know without a shadow of a doubt that i’ll see him again one day in Heaven and how much harder it would’ve been if i didn’t have that reassurance. And then i thought about how fortunate i am to have such amazing parents that would continue to encourage me to push forward towards the mission God had for me…
