Warrior’s Weekend May 18 & 19
This is my 10th year to help with Warriors Weekend. What an amazing Blessing! I have welcomed 15 different heroes to my home and shared life with them. I have made breakfast, desserts and treats. I have cleaned fish and dishes and boats. I have sculpted sand and written names with tears in my eyes and pride in my heart at the sand site. I have driven heroes and their families and shared many meals and chats. I have taken literally hundreds of pictures of heroes, their families and weekend activities and shared them in two newspapers, three newsletters, four churches, 20 states and two foreign countries. I met an author who gave the proceeds of her book to WarriorsWeekend.org.

I have recruited more than 450 people to join me in volunteering in a variety of jobs and tasks associated with Warriors Weekend. Many of these people have become friends and a few are like family. I have met the babies of heroes I welcomed into my home. I have shared life with volunteers I met over a pot of eggs or a table of desserts. I have shared laughter and tears, work and play, stories and memories with those I have met. It was thrilling to open wedding invitations, graduation announcements, baby announcements, Facebook messages, emails, texts, pictures and letters from heroes and volunteers I have met. I have lost contact with a few, and two have died, bringing loss and grief. Yet each of them changed me.

However, I have gained so very much more than I have ever given in sharing Warriors Weekend with Heroes and volunteers alike. I have seen generosity on a grand scale. Meals and goody bags, massages and rides, and literally hundreds of cookies, cakes, pies and cobblers have flowed into town from POC locals and out of towners both. Quite old and very young, those with wealth and those with want have generously given each time I have asked, and we have had more than enough food, love and home baked goodies for heroes and families to enjoy. Twice I have seen heroes give up their spot in housing or fishing for a brother or a sister in service to go instead. Heroes who have already laid all on the line have graciously shared their life and their stories with me when asked.

I have seen love in action in hero guests and volunteers alike. I have watched night fishing guides refit their boat to enable a recovering hero to fish. I saw hundreds of hooks baited and fish cleaned without complaint. I watched boat captains carry some heroes to the ramp to ensure they made it safely onto a boat and rig special gear for others to use. I have seen vets volunteer to help the current heroes participating in the weekend despite their own difficulties in recovering from service. I watched injured heroes assist more incapacitated heroes in and around the weekend activities with no thought to their own cost in pain and effort. I watch in amazement as volunteers show up at 4:00 a.m. to stir eggs and serve coffee having had little sleep. I know of folks who drive 10 hours round trip to bring homemade desserts to share with our visiting warriors. There is love in every iced cake and decorated cookie, each baited hook and sharpened cleaning knife, each well-made guest bed and generous welcome. The love reflected in heroes is the only payment for the volunteer and the satisfaction of a job well done.

They beam with joy as they absorb the weekend, and many have told me they leave changed. I always hope and pray that each person gets what they need and hope for out of the effort. I pray that heroes, warriors in recovery, feel love and appreciation, and leave with new hope and purpose. I pray that volunteers feel down deep that even their smallest efforts make a difference to both the heroes who are our guests and to themselves.

The real lesson is that both hero guests and the volunteers are better for the experience because they are standing on the shoulders of each other’s service. They both stand taller together.

Thanks to all who come and to all who volunteer, and thanks for all the ways you both have changed my Point of View.

Warriors Weekend is a life changing experience. I hope you find a place to be a part. It will change your Point of View too.