Maj Rachael J. Mercer
13 June 2024
It’s encampment season. It’s Cadet Special Activity season. Cadets are out of their comfort zones and often come face-to-face with challenges that looked fun on paper but seem a bit more daunting in person.
They’re not the only ones. In 2019, I signed on for my first National Cadet Special Activity. The coastal town we were in experienced a heat wave with highs around 108. The DFAC’s air conditioning broke. There were personality clashes. Medical issues. Spiders the size of mice. My best friend and I wanted to quit. What looked like fun wasn’t turning out to be fun at all.
Each morning between 0545 and 0615 we would both climb into a CAP van after performing its inspection and call her husband. We cried. We were uncomfortable. We were being stretched. Our mantra for the week became similar to something JFK once said. “We’re going to do the hard right (and stick it out), not the easy wrong (getting in the van and going home).
We had a crash course in resilience that week.
Since it’s encampment and NCSA season, there are thousands of CAP senior members and cadets who are going to be experiencing this very same crash course. As members of the Chaplain Corps, it’s our job to help them develop their toolbox of resiliency—not just so they’ll finish the activity but so they grow as leaders, citizens, and people.
This summer as I plan to be part of one of the worship services at an encampment, I’ll be sharing this story and a couple others. When we “THINK” we can’t do something, our minds become the enemy. Instead of trusting what we know is TRUE, we focus on the obstacle.
For some the obstacle is THUNDER. Yep–I once had a child who was horribly afraid of thunder. Shaking like a leaf. At the first sound of thunder he would hide, curl up in a ball, and cry…..did he ever see the thunder? No. He just heard it and assumed it was scary. No amount of parental or sibling encouragement would help him understand that the thunder could not hurt him. After months of this, I began using scripture to help this child understand that we can trust in God in the difficult times….developing our dependence on Him and therefore, our resilience even in thunder-y weather.
We began to sing Psalm 56:3. “When I am afraid, I will trust in you, trust in you, trust in you. When I am afraid I will trust in you, Psalm fifty-six-three.” And we would sing over and over until one day the thunder happened and my child knew that he could trust the Lord to take care of him.
For others the obstacle is TEST TAKING. In the early 1900s, one of my grandparents who is nearly 100 now was afraid of test taking. I can’t do it. I’m not smart enough. I can’t pass this. Her mother taught her a poem-prayer. “The light of God surrounds me, the love of God enfolds me, the power of God protects me, the presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is.” On test day she went to school with this scrawled on a scrap of paper and wadded up in her hand. During the test, she was afraid, and opened her hand to read the words. The teacher thought she was cheating, asked to see what was in her hand….and that was the message. When my own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer twenty-eight years ago, this grandmother (not her mom) passed the story down….and when I thought I could not go on after my mother’s death, “Grandmary” as we call her, passed the story down to me once again. This poem is well worn and framed in my office.
In CAP we often talk about leadership skills fitting in a toolbox. For example, a cadet officer has more “tools” in their toolbox than an airman because they’ve developed a toolbox of leadership. While these cadets are at encampment, they are given time to develop their toolbox of resiliency and help a wingman do the same.
Just as my child needed me to tell him about Psalm 56:3, and just as my grandmother needed my great-grandmother to teach her “wherever I am, God is….” so do your wingmen need you. Whether you’re a senior member or a cadet, your faith has helped you develop tools for resiliency. When they want to quit, when they want to stop running the mile, when they don’t think they can climb the tower, when they want to go home–don’t be silent. Shine like the stars in the universe….and share resiliency with those around you!