This morning I had been awakened sometime after four with some nagging issues on my mind. It was meant for me, I think, to sit in the dark room, in my grandmother’s rocking chair; listening to its almost melancholy creaking noises, as I slowly rocked back and forth. (At least I think it was the chair that was making the creaking sounds!) My thoughts were mostly about a teaching assignment. The assignment turned in by one student had me concerned. As I worked through the issue, I could hear the gentle sounds of two of my pre-school age grandchildren asleep in the same room where I was sitting. The soft rustling by the children against the creak of the old rocker and the dark of the room contrasting the bright light of my computer screen, as I penned a response to my student, all sought to give me some perspective. A short time later, I looked out the window to see the sun slowly breaking through the eastern sky and almost straight above it was the crescent moon, as if it was battling to keep its place in the sky from the on-coming day. Perspective.
I know I have written before about my father who was aboard a PC boat, a patrol-craft, the 1261 which was the first recorded ally ship sunk at the D-Day invasion. My dad lived, though many of his shipmates did not. To this day, it is not known for certain whether my father’s ship was sunk by a shore battery or a torpedo from a U-boat that hit the PC1261 mid-ship, directly below where my dad was manning the radio room. The complement of sailors aboard the 1261 was usually just under sixty. My dad’s ship spent most of its duty hours escorting ships across the shark and U-boat infested waters of the Caribbean and the Atlantic When the 1261 was sunk, she lost 13 of her crew to the Channel.
This morning, I read an article about German U-boats, the scourge of the Atlantic during the war. According to an article on the PC Sailors Association website[i], the presence of the PC boats (sixty in all) deterred the U-boat activity and were credited with only a few U-boats sunk; but, the threat of their depth charges was real.
According to the U-boat article, there were 1154 submarines commissioned and, of those, 795 were sunk. Of the 40,000 German sailors assigned to U-boats, 30,000 men, or 75 percent, were killed when their ships were sunk[ii]. Over sixty-five percent of the ships were lost at sea.
The fear of an unseen enemy deep underwater for those on the PC boats and the terror of the sound of a falling depth charge which could mean your U-boat becomes a steel tomb at the bottom of the ocean – perspective.
Don’t get me wrong, here. I know, as well as most, that life is not all “cupcakes and rainbows” and no amount of glitter can just make everything Okay. Cooper and Sky Diamond could follow you around all day and you will still have all the concerns with which you started! Do you really want your day determined by trolls, anyway?
The key to perspective is who is in charge. When I am in charge, I am the center and everything must be about me. It is my pain, it is my inability to sleep, or my… you can fill in the blank. If God is in charge then there is a reason or something to be gained by everything. My not sleeping gives me time to appreciate the night, the children and the chair. My care is for the students, the people I will meet in the day and finding ways that God intends for me to be a blessing for them. Does perspective make the pain and problems go away? No, but it can shrink them to the right size for them to fit into God’s plan for your life and He will be at the center. Someone once said if you are down at the bottom of a very deep well, the only way to look is up!
[i] http://ww2pcsa.org/patrol-craft.html
[ii] http://usasocialcondition.com/incredible-facts-that-will-give-you-a-new-perspective-on-world-war-ii/6/
Doc Riggs' Ministry Minute 