Yesterday was like most of the 19190+ days that preceded it in my life. The big difference was the call that came at 1647 Central Daylight Savings Time. I was just sitting down to dinner with my wife and a friend when my cellular phone rang. I hate people who sit at the table in a restaurant and talk. I got up and walked out to take the call.
It was “The Agent.” A person whom I respect greatly who had been looking at my work for quite some time. I’d sent an email a few days before asking if they’d finished the revised novel. I’m now less than a month out from the ACFW conference in Dallas and I wanted to know if I had an agent and a book to shill, or if I needed to move on to “Plan B.”
Where I plan on being soon.
As is always the case, he was pleasant and in this case apologetic for not getting back to me sooner. But after long reflection and consultation with his fellow agents at his place of employment he regretted to inform me that he was not going to be able to represent me in my career as a writer at this point.
The reason? Simply stated I’m out on the edge of the cliff with my book. It isn’t a historical romance, nobody in the book is Amish (that I’m aware of, anyway,) and it’s more like Vince Flynn than Norman Vincent Peale. Mitch Rapp would feel right at home with some of my characters.
And that’s cool with me. I want to thank him (he shall remain nameless) for his mentoring words and kind assurance that I actually have something to contribute to the world as a writer. But not in the current marketplace of Christian Fiction. And, given that he’s an expert in the field, I’m going to take him at his word. He was/is a great fellow, fun to talk to, full of insight and inspiration to a fledgling like me. And I don’t regret a moment of the wait for his verdict.
The reason for no regrets is that I’m starting the revisions on the novel tomorrow. I know some things that I didn’t know 4 months ago when I sent him the book. I have some very good ideas on how to tighten the plot, cut some fat, and make it even more readable. And I’m not giving up. I plan on being in that picture above in the near future. (It’s where I fit on the shelf when they get the thing in print – Alphabet, dontcha know?)
Maybe it is time that the Christian Publishing world opened a new division for gritty thrillers with a Christian message. I’m volunteering to lead the way. The simple fact is that Satan is alive and well in this world and there are a great number of people under his influence. The Bible is replete with heroes who fight against evil and great odds. It’s almost always bloody and it’s always a test of wills.
That’s essentially who my characters are: Biblical heroes and villains set in the 20th and 21st century. Each of them has a place. And there’s a message to my fellow Christians as well as non-believers: you can have a darned good story with real life events that brings the Gospel to the masses. It’s not the cup of tea that many seek when they go to LifeWay Bookstores, it may not be on the list at most Christian presses, but there’s a place for it in the literary world.
So, what’s the plan? I’m going to keep writing, keep editing, keep working on the first two books I have completed. Book #3 is getting set aside for a brief time but it’s over 25% complete and it’s a good time to let it simmer a while. If there is no agent (and I’m not done with that avenue yet, one more agent is interested,) and if there is no publisher on the horizon, there is always direct to E-Book. I’ve got enough positive feedback on the manuscript to think that it’s worth a whirl taking that route. Maybe not with the opus I just finished, but with the first book. That one is worth rolling the dice on an E-Book platform.
No matter what happens, I’m just tickled that “The Agent” was so darned nice to me and had so many positive things to say about my writing. I’m thankful for his guiding hand. And when the books eventually sit on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I’m autographing one of the first dozen copies and sending it to him in thanks for his friendship.
I’m not demoralized, I’m renewed. And I plan on pursuing my writing as the strongest evangelistic tool in my arsenal. God gave me this gift to use and I plan on doing just that for him.
My wife has worked with ESL (English as a Second Language) for years now. She’s tutored Russians, Somalis, and who knows who else. I think she needs to work with me.
I just got done with the Neurologist. I got the official “you are a twit” look when I told her about my medication and how much I took. Seems your beloved correspondent is illiterate. I was quite sure the dosing instructions said one thing. She showed them to me on the computer. No, they said I could actually take twice as much as I thought for my migraines. I was sure the label from the pharmacy was misprinted, but didn’t protest too much.
Good thing I didn’t. Upon reading it again, it appears that my damaged brain retained only part of the label. I really could take a whole lot more than I did. I could have avoided months of misery if I’d only read the label again instead of being so sure I was right. Much better than going the other way and overdosing, but not my much.
I won’t say “I can’t wait to try it” because I dread migraines. But I’m a lot more optimistic about the battle than I was three hours ago.
I am, however, still a moron.
And, if you’re interested, the weeklong headache has kept me from writing. It was just too painful to do any serious thinking. Sorry for the absence.
This is not a cry for sympathy for yours truly. But I really want to write about my migraine on Sunday. In the 52 years I’ve darkened people’s doorways on this planet I’ve never had anything like that before. It even topped the infamous “airplane stroke” headache. (That’s the one where I went right from the airport to CAT Scan machine because I was sure I’d had a stroke.)
I’ve always had migraines but didn’t realize that’s what they were until about a year ago. On the flight to Florida I was fine until we were on final approach. I was paralyzed with a blinding headache that came on suddenly. I couldn’t even reach the call button for the flight crew. After spending several hours with some very nice people at the Fort Meyers Hospital and getting my head examined (way overdue in the opinion of many) in the wake of the plane ride, I was sent to a neurologist to get looked at more closely. Diagnosis? Migraine headaches. Cluster headaches. Ugly shirt (I don’t always dress as well as I should.)
I remember having those headaches even as a little kid but just figuring that everyone must deal with that agony. I remember writing them off, even at an early age, to “needing a new eyeglass prescription.” Never in a million years did I think that I had migraines.
And that’s a good thing. I’d have missed out on being a cop, joining the navy, meeting my wife, etc.etc.etc., if I’d admitted to anyone that I had those darned things with that name. I just figured everyone had them.
I was never fully disabled by them like some people I know, and that’s a blessing. I do remember really struggling to get through the day and keep my attention focused on the tasks at hand. I spent a lot of years with my eyes closed to avoid bright light. I’m still pretty photophobic most of the time, I prefer to work over nights and have the overhead lights turned out. Seems I can handle sunlight and love to be out of doors, but only if I’m not trying to read anything or focus on a task that requires any visual acuity. If I can drift my attention off the page I’m doing fine. If I’m in the shade, I’m fine. But bright times using my vision to accomplish a task is a loser. Seems to provoke that demon from afar, causing the pain in my head to blossom.
Sunday’s headache started out like most of them do, a feeling like someone was trying to jab an ice pick up through the area just behind my left eybrow, just left of center, at an angle of about 20 degrees off horizontal. This results in the eye feeling like it’s under pressure and wants to distort. I will involuntarily reach out to cover the eye and usually wince. It’s bad, but I know it will get worse.
Sunday I took my medication because this one set off warning bells right out of the chute. The bottle says take 1-2 tablets. I chewed two tablets as quickly as I could to get them into my system right away. And the wait begins. Does the medication get there before the headache exceeds the tolerance level.
This happened about an hour before church. I was nauseous from the pain walking out the door to go to church, and the daylight hit me like a board in the face. I covered my eyes until I could get to the car and get my shades on my nose. That helped a lot. Inside the cool, quiet car it wasn’t too bad.
The drive to church was not too horrible, but within moments of hitting the sanctuary the ice pick started to move around and was replaced by a chisel. That was driven into my head about two inches. And then Satan just sat and pounded on the end of it for the next two hours.
I prayed, I begged Jesus for remission of the pain, I sat with my eyes closed and gave my full submission to God. I was helpless. I had never had one quite that bad before. I don’t think I had my eyes open more than ten minutes in the two hours we were there for services.
Just before the end of the service The Pain lifted. It was not a departure that left me dancing in the aisles, it was more like the chisel was removed and cotton was packed into the wound. I didn’t feel good, no appetite, no joy. I was numb.
We had to stop at the store on the way home to get some things for lunch. I might as well have been a zombie wandering the aisles. I’d already been shot in the head, now I just had to drop. Things were just a “beat off” but I made it through the store.
Driving? I put my all into it and was suitably aware. I’ve been dealing with these things for decades. When we got home I had planned on writing in the beautiful sunshine out in the yard. Instead I camped in the darkened living room and vegged over television.
My appetite came back a few hours later but I was completely exhausted. I kept dozing off for a few seconds at a time. I finally threw in the towel and went to bed at 8pm. I slept for ten hours.
I woke up Monday somewhat better, but my head was still dully sore. This was one for the records.
I guess the reason I wrote this today was so that if you know someone with migraines, please don’t think they’re exaggerating the misery. I’m one of the toughest people I know in terms of just getting through adversity. I broke my foot a few weeks ago (turned out it wasn’t just the toe….) and went to work. Gut it out, get it out, work it out. I whine more than many, but I’ve got to get whatever it is done.
But Sunday all I wanted to do was take a great big narcotic and lay in a dark room until the pain quit. I didn’t, but the urge was there.
So, to all my fellow migraine victims, you have my sympathy. Now, it’s time for bed. I’ve been up almost 8 hours and that headache is starting to come back.
This is a re-post of an item I put up in January of 2012. It is the one year anniversary of the loss to our nation of some of the finest men we’ll ever know. Say a prayer for those still serving and remember those who have fallen.
I wrote this last fall and sent it off to Proceedings. Got my first real rejection letter yesterday! I’m told I’d best get used to them in the future.
I hadn’t published this until my fate with the magazine was determined, but since I’m not going to submit it elsewhere I didn’t want to delay any further on posting it on the blog.
Every day one of our brothers falls overseas. It was just 25 years ago this week thatRanger 12 crashed and I lost two classmates. For those of you who haven’t been in the military it’s hard to describe the feelings that brings out. My friends still choke up talking about it all these years later. The whole crew of that aircraft were lost, including Pat Price and Craig Rudolph. Both fine men. Both my comrades. Pat has a gymnasium named after him at the Defense Language Institute. It’s a nice gesture, but I’d rather see his post on Facebook about his new grandchildren. Craig doesn’t have a memorial yet. Except in our hearts.
Nicholas Spehar was one of the S.E.A.L. operators that died in Afghanistan last fall. I didn’t know him, but he’s my brother. We both wore Crackerjacks. This article is in tribute to him and the men that died in that CH-47 crash. It’s a tribute to all the fallen in every war and the peacetime incidents that train us to be ready for war.
A STATE FUNERAL
By
Joseph R. Courtemanche
Bucket truck with American flag at the funeral.
Friday was a long day. Work ended for me at 0700, 10 hours on the midnight shift behind me. But rest was a ways off. I had a promise to fulfill, and the journey I would take spanned three decades and thousands of miles.
I had promised myself that I would attend the funeral of one of our fallen when the opportunity presented itself. I didn’t have to know the person, but I wanted to honor their sacrifice and service to our nation. I made the promise a few years back, but one thing or another prevented me from attending the funerals. Either the funeral was too far away, or it was past my bedtime. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go. It was that I thought I couldn’t.
That changed when the CH-47 went down in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011. Two of those men were from the Twin Cities, and I’d happened across one of the obituaries while scanning the paper earlier in the week. I saw that Special Operator Second Class Nicholas Spehar was to be honored at the Cathedral in Saint Paul on Friday morning at 1100. I could stay up for that funeral. I needed to stay up for that service. I had delayed my promise too long, and I was without an excuse. The Cathedral is less than 2 miles from my house.
My wife and I don’t believe in coincidences. God puts things in front of us for a reason; it’s not random, capricious, or inelegant. He knows what He’s doing, and He wants to teach us through these events we were destined to experience.
I went home from work and put on a clean set of dress clothes, grabbed my American Legion cap from the closet and headed off to the church. I wanted to be there early so that I could pray quietly before the service. I figured that getting there an hour and a half early would give me plenty of time to be alone in the church before the family and Nicholas arrived for the ceremony.
I was wrong. When I drove up the hill to the Cathedral, I saw a mass of American flags lining the street in front of the building. There were fire units from the area where Nicholas grew up arrayed as a crimson honor guard for a man who gave his all for the nation. One truck, probably the only one with such a huge boom in his home county, was on the approach with its boom fully extended and a giant American flag hanging from the operator’s bucket. And there was a fire-fighter in the bucket standing a silent vigil in the muggy morning sunlight for this brave young man.
I parked in the lot and walked across the street. The Patriot Guard was arrayed up and down the sidewalk, silently standing watch. I rendered a salute and thanked them for their presence. Moving from the sidewalk into the church, I was amazed to see at least 200 people who had gotten there ahead of me. Hundreds more came over the next hour. Lots of people were there to honor Nicholas. I can only hope that every military funeral is like that around the nation. These warriors deserve the honor and love I was about to witness in person.
I sat there in the back of the church completely in awe at the quiet, reverent people slowly filling the church. I recognized “the look” of Special Warfare people around me. They are different and recognizable when you know what to look for. The heads on a swivel, the bearing, and the shape. Many of them were no longer on active duty… they were men my age and older. Members of the tribe come to honor the fallen. Gray hair, civilian suits, chiseled jaws, still there under liver-spotted skin.
There were others I recognized. I think all vets can spot another vet when they look. The ramrod bearing, the concise movements, the “Feel of a Warrior.” That service was many years in the past for the ones I saw, but their eyes again gave it away – they were here to honor a brother.
People from all over Minnesota and the surrounding states were there that morning. The plates on the cars near the church silently spoke of their measure of devotion to this young man whom they had never met. They were there to honor an ideal, a concept, a sacrifice that some will never understand. It was a State Funeral held in a setting that would do justice to a President or a Pope. The Governor, a United States Senator, and dozens of other elected officials were there to pay their respects.
Dignitaries filled the pews alongside Nicholas’s neighbors, classmates, and friends. They were people I knew to be famous and yet they sought not the limelight. This day was about Nicholas, and they were not there for the cameras or the “face time” that may have come their way. No, these leaders of business and government were there to honor a 24-year-old sailor who will never be 25.
I was taken to my past as the sailors in their white hats occupied the rows near me. They were there for their brother. I could see the pain in their carriage, the pride in their faces, the loss on their hearts. One of US had died, and we were going to be there to honor him. I was seemingly transported back into a woolen set of “Cracker Jacks” that no longer fit. I was a 26-year-old second class petty officer once again. They were my brothers, even though most were young enough to be my children.
The other military services were there as well. Not a speck of lint, no dull shoes, perfectly turned out. Some came with wives and girlfriends. Some came with other military members. One young Marine impressed me the most: this Lance Corporal was there by himself in his dress blues. I’m sure nobody told him to be there that morning to honor Nicholas. But he was there, immaculately turned out. Regardless of which branch we serve in, we are a family.
I never met Nicholas in life. The day he was born into this world I was over 5,000 miles away, onboard the USS Wainright, somewhere in the Mediterranean. I don’t believe our paths ever crossed in the intervening 24 years. The day he was born into heaven, we again were separated by many miles; about 7,000 to be exact. I had long since left active duty, and the torch had passed to his generation to carry on the battle.
I was, however, in the Cathedral of Saint Paul on that warm Friday morning when his uncle, a Catholic priest, delivered the sermon about Nicholas’s life. I had the good fortune to hear his sister Marie deliver a moving testimony to both Nicholas and her Lord, Jesus Christ. She made me laugh with stories about her brother and his determination and joy in life. I cried when she spoke of how ever since her brother died, all she wanted to do was praise God for having given Nicholas to her for 24 years.
She told the story of a phone call the family got when Nicholas was in B.U.D.S. He was getting ready to embark on “Hell Week” and asked that the family gather around the phone. They put it on speaker, and Nicholas asked them to tell him about every trial, tribulation, and crisis that the family had ever weathered. He told the family that he was “Going to take them to Hell with me and leave them there.” How many young men understand their faith so deeply at such a young age and actually live it through their actions? I would be forced to say that they’re as rare as the men who make it through S.E.A.L. training.
The mass was beautiful. It was clear that Nicholas was well-loved by his team and his family. It was also clear that those two groups were intertwined for eternity by his death. Never will his family want for anything the S.E.A.L.S. could provide. And there isn’t a member of that elite fraternity that couldn’t drop into the home in Chisago, Minnesota, and find a bed and a meal if they needed one.
His deep and abiding faith were spoken of by many. He was like all of the other members of special warfare units with whom I’ve traveled, shared the air of submarines in secret places, and had a beer with in port. He was focused, smart, fit, and loyal. He put his money where his mouth was and loved doing it, by all accounts.
At the end of the funeral, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I went home and went to bed. When I got up four hours later, I headed off to work and sat at my desk before the shift started. I knew I had to commit these events to paper. I turned on the music on my computer and hit play for a random mix of Christmas music. You see, it seemed only right to honor Nicholas with Christmas music. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors. He was the protector of children and the weak. Nicholas Spehar was a protector of our freedoms. And I am Saint Nicholas in a bright red suit during the holidays. I no longer fit in the “Cracker Jacks,” but I look pretty good with my long-white beard and my shiny boots and red suit.
I hope that when my time comes I get a chance to meet with this exceptional young man whom I never met on this Earth. I hope I live the rest of my life honorably and appreciatively, remembering these young men and women who serve us every day.
I’m still a sailor at heart. And it brings me joy and hope for my nation that young men like Nicholas are still standing on the ramparts on my behalf. I pray for them often.
