Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Endless (01/09/14)
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TITLE: Days Without End | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Reicks
01/14/14 -
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It is early June, 1944. Dad’s ears are glued to the battery operated radio in our nonelectric rural home. The news is full of the reports about the American and British military forces landing at Normandy on June 6. The entire family believes my dearly loved brother is involved in that landing. He is a highly trained radio operator. Would he have gone ashore with the infantry? Which beach landing was he involved in?
Dad described the landing at Omaha as the toughest. Germans hidden in the rocky hillsides found easy targets of the infantry pouring inland off the vessels in which they crossed the English Channel.
In the days following, Hitler’s army fought fiercely to defend their hold on France. The Allied forces are attempting to liberate France from the clutches of the German Nazi armies and force them back over the Rhine River.
Days go by; there are no letters from my brother….no word of any kind. Is he wounded? Is he alive? Why don’t we hear something?
The anxiety of not knowing is hard on mother. She looks pale and tired. Even though mom looks weary I know that she is a strong lady who goes to her Lord in prayer. She knows He is the rock from which our strength comes. Daily she searches the Scripture to find verses to give her hope and the energy for daily tasks.
My dearest friend, my childhood sweetheart is in the mountainous terrains of Italy. Sometimes it has been days, even weeks that I do not hear from him. So, I have two very dear to my heart loved ones, who I deeply miss in my life, in harm’s way.
In the evening sitting up in my bed, writing in the light of my kerosene lamp, I underline with my fountain pen scripture that helps me keep living above my troubles. Each evening, I find those underlined verses and repeat them to myself. They reinforce my fortitude and faith. A calming peace pervades my soul and I feel that God is carrying my burdens for me and has not forsaken me.
But in the wake of each day, I have all I can do to keep going to the classroom to teach. But in one way it is a blessing. I am kept so busy helping my students that I have less time to be troubled over the war news and lack of hearing from loved ones.
Each day I push myself to do my daily routine thereby keeping my mind busy to keep out the tendency to worry. Worry like anger can weaken the vessel it is stored in. It will not do any good to endanger my health with excessive troubled thoughts.
My father appears to be undisturbed but I know better. Beneath his stoic exterior, I am sure he feels much concern for his son’s welfare. Dad is like a strong oak in the winds of an unrelenting storm. Dad wishes to protect mother and not increase her worries by adding any of his own to her already overburdened despair.
On every Wednesday evening, mother asks the whole family after supper to kneel and pray the rosary. Mother leads saying, the “Our Father” and ten “Hail Marys” for each of the five decades of the rosary. We pray for the safe return of my brother and the end of this dreadful war.
As each day passes with no message of big brother’s wellbeing, it is a real trying of my faith. The following verses are like lifesavers to me when I feel I am drowning in a sea of misery; these words buoy me up.
"Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye
may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." James 1:3-4 KJV
Will we ever know what happened to my brother? Is he already buried by caring comrades in some shallow grave in France? Has he been taken prisoner by Nazi soldiers? Is he nearly starving in some concentration camp? Are his captors torturing him with inhumanly cruel Hitlerian torments?
This time of the unknown seems endless. Dear God, let us know soon where my brother is. I pray that he is still alive somewhere and there is a reason why we do not hear from him. This waiting to get answers to our questions seems endless. Please, dear God, let it end soon.
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As a teacher, I identify with the act of teaching as a great distraction from the troubling things in life. Many times I've been grateful to be in this field as opposed to a desk job which wouldn't be as distracting.