Yellow Ribbon Lightning Bolt

I try not to get too obnoxious about supporting our troops on this blog. If you have read my madness for a while, or go back over postings, you will not see a lot on here about OAP.

Sure, I have had my moments but if you were inside my head and knew how much I thought about it in contrast to posting about it, you would think I was downright disciplined!

I try not to make people uncomfortable. As the saying goes, war is hell and I have found that trying to talk to people about it isn't always much better.

You aren't going to find many people in social settings that want to sip their cocktail while you tell them about John, who spent a freezing winter in a tent with 7 other dudes in the middle of Iraq because they didn't have housing units for them. How all we could afford to send them at the time was coco packets, coffee and eight goody treats bags, but they loved it. When you launch into Capt Ellis' story too about his isolated base on a dangerous border area where everyone wanted to creep out of the mountains and kill them. They were just looking for condiments and salt to dress up their MRE rations. Or Tom, who upon finding out about our waitlist thanked us for the email, and asked if anyone could just write to him once in a while. He he lost friends. More important to him than snacks and toiletries was a link to the outside world that didn't involve the war and his role in it while stationed in Afghanistan. Yeah, just call me Captain Buzzkill.

So I try to temper my shiz. Afterall, there is a fine line between a passionate person and a fanatical freak. ASPCA and PETA. Small town pastor and Jim and Tammy Bakker.

So I am telling you all of that in order to negate it all by making this post about the troops. Hello, self-contradiction my old friend. Have a seat; I have a story to tell you.

This morning I sat down at the computer with a piping hot cowboy size mug of this new-to-me brand of Stash tea (it's a mix of Green and White teas -- it was pretty decent) to get my voyeur Facebook Devil Machine fix. While creeping along the news feed, I came across this video.



The washer was rattling away behind me when I hit play but I like to get the full Youtube experience, so I turned up the volume on the video. The music starts and off we go. As far as troop support videos of the last five or so years go, this one is pretty upbeat. It's a nice little social experiment/outreach effort. People look happy. It is uplifting. Was even filmed on a sunny day. There's smiles and hugs and high fives even. Nice. These are not always common to the military support world.

Anywho, in the middle of all the dryer noise, video music, and yellow ribbon rainbows in my heart, I didn't realize that my cell phone rang. I picked it up and listened to the voicemail. It was from a corporate contact I hadn't heard from in over a year. She was calling to verify that none of my company info had changed because her regional manager was organizing several of their store locations to donate items to OAP.

How tripper-roo is that?! Of course it wouldn't even take that big of a skeptic to say it was all just a coincidence. And perhaps they are correct. What the wouldn't know is that for months now I have been feeling sorry for OAP. I have been feeling blown out and tanked on moral over OAP. No one loves OAP. I haven't done enough for OAP. Maybe it is time to just hang it up. Apologize and go home. Failure.

Then this. Maybe the troop support gods are trying to tell me something. As one friend put it when I reached out for feedback, "Give that gal a call girlfriend - I think the universe is saying your work's not done yet!" My brother was perhaps a little more...er....blunt when he offered, "You are an idiot if you let OAP go - call her"

Okay, I will make the call. I'm dialing with absolute gratitude for both an encouraging sign post on the path, and the opportunity to serve.