A call to serve

By Andy Walters

So here I am on a plane coming back to the place it all started. Kind of full circle. 

It’s 2018 and I’m heading to Lackland Air Force Base for a military training I’m required to do. 

As I walked into the baggage claim area, my mind played flashbacks to the spring of 2012. 

I could see the USO, the handrail I leaned against for hours waiting for my departing flight, and the oddly placed fold-up table where drivers were taking poor, scared youth off to the unknown of basic training. 

I was 31 when I enlisted, but I was afraid too. I was scared of being away from my two boys and the anxiety it would place on our family and how hard it would be.

I had prayed and signed the Air Force contract with faith that it was the right thing to do. 

Still, I was fearful of what it would mean. My son has cried so hard when I had to board the plane for basic training. I had to miss my youngest son’s first birthday, and my oldest son’s fifth birthday.

An ironic thing about the military is that you’re required to give away your freedom so you can fight for freedom.

Hearing a call

This time I walked into San Antonio Airport on my own. I got a hold of another Air Force Staff Sgt., waved him down, then we drove into the city.

It’s been an incredibly long six years since I’ve made this trek but recounting it has been important. 

I didn’t join the Air Force when I was 18 like my best buddy because something growing up had made me hate the military. Honestly, I think it was my parent’s fear of it all.

One of my regrets in life is rudely telling a recruiter that I had no interest in a career of picking up dead bodies. That’s where my mind was in 2000.  

Then 9-11 happened and I felt a call for the first time. It’s hard to describe, I felt a push from God, a calling and a duty to serve my country.

Following God’s call to serve

I heard the call, but I declined. You see, I was starting a life with a good woman, which grew into a good career, a house, endless opportunities, and then before we knew, it kids. I was in full family mode and loving it. It still wasn’t right, however. 

Soon after 9-11 my brother was commissioned into the U.S. Marines. I think he had cleared the way for me, like all good older brothers do. Finally, on March 3, 2012, I decided it was now or never. I personally needed to answer this call. 

Basic training sucked, to say the least. Imagine yourself as a 31-year-old with a well-established career, a wife, kids, a dog, living the American Dream, and you wake up one morning standing in formation on a drill pad with two guys in your face trying to make you do six things all at once while hitting you with the brim of their large MTI hats. 

As soon as they found out I was old, they put me in charge of a bunch of crying, fresh-out-of-high school, first-time-away-from Mommy boys. 

These boys didn’t even know how to address a letter! Lucky for them this old guy was there! 

The weeks went on and I learned the game and finally made it out alive. I don’t want to stop there, though. This isn’t a story about basic training or a guy’s military career. This is a story about so much more I didn’t see coming.

God’s in control

I know a lot of people feel sorry for military members and their families, but I think everyone else is missing out. We may be away from our families we miss so much, but we get to come home to our families.

We get to embrace our families after that big separation and all of that conflict.  

There are moments of pure joy that change you, moments that will always be remembered. 

I believe we really don’t have control over our lives. We may think we do, but we don’t. It’s been described to me like this: I make myself available for God to use. 

I believe God moves through us to do his work. When I live like this, I’m taken to places I couldn’t imagine myself. My story grows deeper and better than I personally could make happen. 

It’s not that it’s been easy. I deployed to Kuwait and missed my sons’ birthdays again. I went through a divorce and I had to start over. 

But God has blessed me. I’m getting married this spring, I’m raising two amazing boys, and I have a faith that God is with me through the ups and downs.  

What I know to be true is that God walks in front of me, paving the way for me and preparing blessings I cannot see.