What's in a Name?

Hi, family, friends, fans and interested strangers! :)

My family and my long-term friends know that I've recently deployed to Kuwait. In the past, friends and family have asked me to write fairly often when I'm deployed or on temporary duty overseas so that they know what is going on with me and whether I am well. Many have an interest in supporting, encouraging and praying for our military service members--especially those who are deployed--and their families and hearing from service members like me helps them to feel connected to us and informed, so they can pray wisely.

In response to those requests, I've developed the custom of publishing a newsletter when I'm overseas that I call "Tales from the Sandbox" -- a sort of multiple entendre, to coin a phrase.

Most people are familiar with the sandbox that is found on a child's playground, a place where imagination can roam freely and children have fun and learn by role-playing.

Those with military experience may also be accustomed to the term that arose from training exercises at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Fort Irwin is very near to Death Valley. In the summer it is as hot as you could wish a desert to be during the days and at night the temperature plummets so fast that one can feel quite chilled. Even though, objectively speaking, the temperature doesn't get very cold, when it drops fifty or sixty degrees in a couple of hours, it FEELS very cold. It is dusty and dry, and so the wind moves the soil around all the time and NOTHING stays clean.

At Fort Irwin, the "sandbox" or sometimes just "the box" is the maneuver space where combat exercises occur. When you enter the sandbox, you are expected to behave in every way as if you were in a real, combat environment. If you don't take seriously what is going on there, you will be "killed" by simulated weapons, you will be responsible for the simulated deaths of your fellow Soldiers, and possibly you may cause your unit's failure to achieve its assigned missions. Everything is as realistic as can be managed without incurring real, unnecessary danger to the lives of Soldiers.

And, of course, sandbox is a somewhat archaic term for the place where indoor cats do .... well, you know.

My experiences while deployed or training in the Middle East have ranged from fun, fantastic, learning experiences, to days with live mortars falling on the base around me when it was seriously possible that people I know and care about might be dead by the time the shelling stopped. God has sent ministry opportunities my way that touched my soul with joy, excitement and satisfaction, and a feeling that I could bring God's love to people in their direst need. He has also sent challenges that simply overwhelmed my capacity to go on and left me weeping and feeling completely helpless.

Yet even as I write this, I must acknowledge that God has dealt gently with me, because I have friends and professional colleagues who have faced far worse than I ever had to, and suffered much greater harm, and (I have no doubt) have done tremendously powerful ministry in the lives of servicemembers they touched with their presence and with God's grace.

That's what's behind the tongue-in-cheek title "Tales from the Sandbox". It includes, of course, a not-too-subtle reference to the terrain and climate where the current war is happening. More than that, though, it means that military service members' experiences here range widely, from interesting, fun, wonderful and joyful through challenging and difficult to overwhelmingly sorrowful and white-knuckled, heart-pounding fear, and just plain nastiness.

This time around, I'm in Kuwait for six months, and I've decided that instead of just sending the newsletter out by email, I'll post a blog. It's likely that I will continue to update and maintain it after I return home. I'll post news and photos for my family, friends and acquaintances who are interested to know what I'm doing and how I feel about it. I'll probably post some devotional thoughts too... maybe the text of sermons I've delivered over here (rare though they'll probably be), or devotional messages that I've written just to stay in practice. ;)

Knowing me, updates will be posted at irregular intervals, so don't anyone be anxious if you don't see any changes here for a while.

Anyway, God bless you all and good night, because it's bedtime now.