Dear Reader:

It had been awhile…at least a couple of years…since I had gone to Conway and suddenly (Saturday afternoon) I found myself noticing different things along the same route I always took.

I almost missed the turn to Jamestown (instead of Pinopolis) and had to veer at the last second…something threw me off…perhaps a new building…or maybe I was just in a fog like the drizzle coming down.

Then I started second-guessing myself if I were still on the right road…because new houses had gone up and some old landmarks before Jamestown were gone. Even the four-way stop at Jamestown (to turn left) looked differently.

By Georgetown…coming in on Hightower Street…road construction signs and detours were everywhere…Thank goodness I was able to turn onto 701 to Conway just before hitting the detours.

Then, when I was almost at the end of 701…a terrible accident appeared around a corner… the highway patrolmen were detouring us back a different way. I could only see a motorcycle that looked like a big accordion in an open field a few hundred yards away and a body under a blanket… with two other cars in a ditch.

What was unnerving was the “deadly” silence…the ambulances had not arrived yet and all the highway patrolmen and policemen were ashen-faced. We were detoured back to Brown’s Chapel…a beautiful little chapel in the woods and I couldn’t help but pause and say a prayer for the families involved… who had just lost loved ones but didn’t know it yet. How tragically sad!

Ben treated Reverend (Randy) Riddle, his wife, Judy, and myself out for dinner. We went to the Sea Captain’s House restaurant and had a wonderful time getting to know each other….Judy is an Erskine grad too…Go Due West!.

*(See title photo)

It is one of my all-time favorite restaurants in Myrtle Beach and brings back warm memories of family outings from the 60’s on….At first everything looked as I remembered it…especially the scent of the hard-wood floors and panels. Smell is one of the most poignant memory catalysts, isn’t it?

It was still bustling with people waiting in different lounges for their buzzer to go off…its on-going popularity made me happy to see. But it was also this same attribute that had necessitated extra dining rooms to be added… which once again….gave me the deja vu feeling of things being the same but different; different but the same. *The food was definitely a constant…delicious!

It is Randy, Ben’s friend and pastor, who has encouraged Ben to tell his story about his experiences in Vietnam and (subsequently) how the results of these experiences placed him in another fight back home…one for compassion and help for veterans with PTSD.

Ben was telling us on the way home from the restaurant that he read an expression, concerning PTSD, that felt like it defined his own mental and emotional struggles, since the war, far better for his own personal analysis and understanding.  Spiritual Depression.

Ben had an “aha” moment, not long ago, while looking over a list of characteristics, used by the Veterans Administration, to identify PTSD. He suddenly realized that the very things young combat soldiers were taught to stay alive in life/death battle conditions… morphed into similar PTSD traits… during “normal” life back home.

Here are a few examples: Don’t bunch up or stay close together (one grenade could take everyone out.) Don’t get too close to other soldiers emotionally in friendship…because many of your friends won’t make it out alive. Keep a distance from others and stay a loner. Always look for the corners in a room (hut) and sit/stand with something solid behind your back. Only trust your top commander…no one else.

You can see how “helpful hints” to stay alive in a war condition breeds problems in everyday life with close intimacy, large crowds, physical separation in social events, and trust factors in relationships.

…And then remember that most of these young men were still teenage boys…19 being the median age…and they have to live the rest of their lives with memories of themselves killing and wounding to stay alive. They pay a high emotional price…we call it the price of freedom…for many who fought they live with the price of  “spiritual depression.”

I will certainly let you, the blog readers, know when Ben’s book will be published and available for purchase. I have been honored to read a couple of chapters and I do think that veterans of any and every war…will be able to identify with Ben’s journey of grace under fire.

Everyone, regardless of gender or civilian life over military, will still relate to the God Winks that saved Ben’s life over and over…he hopes it is this book for which his life was saved…to help others who endured the same hell he did.

*Here are some family photos of us gathered to see Ben join Westminister church…before and during the service. *A special “thank you” to Nancy Hendricks for joining us yesterday…it meant a lot to the family!

*After I took Ady’s picture…she took the camera and promptly took mine and Ben’s (Papa) photo…not bad at all!

It was only after I got home last night that I started thinking that the vague sense of things being different but the same and vice versa on this weekend trip…was only a small taste of what Ben has felt for the past forty years.

He returned to a country that he thought was the same but it wasn’t…it was different…and he has fought to find his “home” ever since.

So until tomorrow…Let us always remember that God is right beside us with one hand outstretched and the other holding the lantern to show us the path home again.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*You will all be happy to know that everything went uphill after Rutledge’s boo boo-owie on his forehead (ER and 5 stitches)….Great fun for the entire family at the Clemson game and Tweetsie Railroad!! (Notice the jackets worn yesterday in Blowing Rock)

Mollie said that they found “solitude” from the crowds at Boo’s!

Then on to Blowing Rock and Tweetsie!!!

• Please say a little prayer for Libby…she slipped and broke her right wrist in two different places while attending her grandsons’ birthday party at an ice rink Sunday afternoon. What a trooper!
• Libby…Now you are definitely up for Grandmother “Warrior” of the Year !! (So so sorry!)