Spending the Night Away from Home

When I was ten or so, my best friend Susan asked me to go with her to Camp Zoe, somewhere outside Salem, I think. She had been there for a couple of summer visits with her cousin Sally, and loved it. I thought it sounded like fun – canoeing, swimming, hiking, and the like. Mother and Daddy said I could go, and I planned and packed and anxiously awaited our departure date. And then, I realized I couldn’t go. I couldn’t imagine spending two whole weeks in an unfamiliar place, with people I didn’t know, eating food that I might not like, sleeping in a strange bed. I couldn’t leave home.

Later that fall, Marilyn Cover (the woman whose child I should have been, believed my mother) had a special treat for me. She had tickets to see Rudolf Nureyev in St. Louis. We would leave on a Friday, drive to her sister’s house, where we would stay for the weekend, look around the city on Saturday, see the magnificent dancer on Saturday night, and then drive back to Thayer on Sunday. I was terribly excited until, you guessed it, the time came to go. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t go with one of my favorite people to do something she knew I would love (something I came to regret deeply after I went to college and watched danseurs of similar notoriety and quality), because I couldn’t go away from home to stay in a strange place, be around someone I didn’t know, sleep in a strange bed, or eat possibly weird food.

Then, the summer after my sophomore year in high school, our band director, Mr. Oliver, wanted several of us to go to band camp to study for a week under his leader and mentor, Mr. Mason, the band director at Southeast Missouri State College (SEMO). No one really wanted to go, but I, who would have done practically anything for Mr. Oliver, talked Nancy Martin into going with me. She played drums; I played the clarinet. Our mothers drove us over to Cape Girardeau, where they moved our suitcases and necessities to the third floor of an un-air conditioned, old dormitory, that was nowhere NEAR as lovely as our own homes. They left us, although we looked, I’m sure, stricken, and drove the 3 ½ hours back to Thayer. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. By now the theme is clear. We called our mothers and asked to be taken home. So, bless them, they drove BACK over to Cape the next day, picked us up, and drove us home. They were none too happy about it.

Ergo, you can probably understand my internal conflict as I sit here in Atlanta, at the international terminal, waiting for a plane that will take me away from my home for a year – and not to some “garden spot” of the world (from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), but instead to Afghanistan. You heard right. The thing is, I never have really left home. I did go to college, but I went home every weekend. I moved to Sedalia, but that was to marry my husband, and it was not long after that that my mother, and then eventually my sister, came to live in our town. Except for a couple of continuing legal education seminars that lasted three weeks and one week respectively, I have spent nearly all of my life in the comfort of my own home, making and eating my own food, sleeping in my own bed, and being around the people I love and who miraculously love me back. So how did this departure come about? What could possibly have possessed me to say that I would take such a leap to go to a third-world country for a year of my rapidly passing life?

The story started a few years ago: I am municipal judge, and have been since 1996. I am elected every two years, and I take my responsibilities to the voters very seriously. They have entrusted me with the job of finding and administering justice – even though most of my cases deal with relatively innocuous infractions: speeding or people beating up on each other on a Saturday night. I try to do the best job I can. Unfortunately, the City Council, a few years ago, decided that they didn’t like some of my decisions, and that the best way to replace me with someone who would see things more their way was to remove the position as an elected one, and appoint the judge instead. Being a generally smart girl, I knew they were NOT going to appoint me. And so I started looking for another job.

I was somewhat disillusioned with practicing law, and I was very disillusioned with the Council’s idea of separation of powers, so I decided to take my job search far and wide as well as close to home. I checked into getting a Master’s degree in criminal justice at our local University in Warrensburg, because I could not teach criminal justice at the University without a Master’s degree, regardless of the fact that I have a juris doctor. I looked into teaching elsewhere, but refused to consider teaching English at the high school level. I had one disastrous year of that and was not willing to subject myself to that stress again. Around the time I was feeling low, my husband got an e-mail from a colleague at the Trial Lawyers’ College who had just returned from a stint in Iraq – not carrying a gun, but instead mentoring defense lawyers in Iraq’s justice system. What an opportunity! To be a part of a nascent justice system, to do something that I believe is really important, to use my talents to make a difference, not just in my community, but in a different part of the WORLD! Max told me I should apply; I told him HE should apply. So we both applied.

In the meantime, the people rose up in revolt against the City Council and demanded that their right to elect their judge be reinstated, and feeling somewhat sheepish, the City Council complied and rescinded its decision. The next April, I was elected by a huge margin. I’m sure the Council was elated (add: dripping sarcasm).

So back to the story. For a long time after we submitted our applications, we heard nothing. And then I got an e-mail from a recruiter from an international company known for “logistics.” That means the company can put people on the ground, feed them, house them, protect them, and do a job – all over the world. The recruiter asked me to re-do my resume to fit a particular format, and to get it back to him ASAP; however, the company was re-bidding the contract, and it wasn’t due for several months. Then I heard nothing. I checked with him later, and he said the contract was delayed. Then I heard nothing.

In January 2010, I heard from him again, and he asked me to send my updated resume ASAP. I was in Las Vegas at the time, celebrating our daughter’s 21st birthday, but I was able to ship the resume via e-mail. Then I heard nothing. About six weeks later, I received an e-mail saying that I was going to be invited to a pre-deployment seminar in Washington, D.C., and you guessed it, then I heard nothing.

Last October, when I was celebrating my 40th high school class reunion (I graduated YOUNG!), I got an e-mail asking for my latest resume, and so I sent it, expecting to hear nothing. However, I did hear back: the company asked me to attend a pre-deployment seminar in April, but I couldn’t go because the substitute judge couldn’t take the bench for the two Wednesdays I would be gone. So I declined, explaining that for me to be gone from my life for any time at all, I have to find a substitute pianist, organist, judge, and teacher, and need more than two weeks’ notice to do so. I received a reply telling me that perhaps the company’s customer would no longer be interested in me. Boldly, I retorted that I believed I would be very interesting to the customer, because I was not interested in ducking out on commitments. I suggested that with more than two weeks’ notice, I would be happy to attend the next seminar. I heard nothing.

Then lo and behold, six weeks prior to the next seminar, I received what would be my final invitation to a seminar, this one to be held late July. It was somewhat miraculous, if you believe in miracles. It was the best of fate, if you believe in fate. And if you believe in the idea that, given enough time and God’s discernment, things generally work out for the best, then God was granting me discernment to see what could be a wonderful opportunity: I was not teaching, and so did not need to find a substitute teacher, the choir was not singing and so I did not need to find a substitute accompanist, I had only one trial scheduled for the day the substitute judge could not attend, and so it could be continued, and the substitute organist and praise band pianist were both available for the one Sunday I would be gone. It was obvious to me that it was meant to be.

And here is the kicker, and the one that truly makes me cry: I went to the City Council to tell them that I would probably be requesting a year’s leave of absence, and instead of greeting me with little-disguised glee at their opportunity to get rid of me, the current mayor and Council members congratulated me on my achievement, told me they were proud of me, and wished me well, hoping that the year would bode well for me, and as a result, for the city. I was overwhelmed with their generosity of spirit and their support, and figured that the way it worked out, this was obviously the right and best move for me at this particular time. I went home in tears, both because of the support I felt, and because I knew that there could be no option for me other than to do well at the seminar and then go on the deployment that would most likely be offered. As many of my friends would say, “It’s a God thing.” And at this point, I think I tend to agree.