Addicted to Love?

Let me begin this post with a startling confession: I sometimes feel like I am addicted to love.  Now, I am not continually starting new relationships in order to feel the high of falling in love, only to turn around and destroy the relationship in order to free myself so that I can start another one.  I think it would be more accurate to say that I am often craving love and feeling that I am not getting enough of it. For most of my life I have simply wanted to be loved by someone, only to feel frustration that I am not feeling loved.

I should say that this is not because there has not been anyone to give me love.  Rather, the issue seems to be with myself as I think I have a hard time receiving what love has been given.  As an example, I crave compliments, yet when they are given I find myself not believing them and in some cases even deflecting them.

When I was a child I felt that I did not belong any where, that I was an outcast at school, at church, and even at home.  An old friend once observed that is was clear that I had not received enough love as a child.  My younger brother was born exactly one year and one week after I was, and my mother more than once expressed guilt at not being able to give me the attention I needed.

Outside of the home, I experienced bullying and only a little friendship.  The kids made fun of me at school, at church and in my neighborhood.  My best friend dumped me in the fifth grade.  Later, in high school, I did make a lot of friends, but I was never really sure just how I fit in with them.  One of my biggest fears is that none of it was real.

As for the opposite sex, I had my first crush on a girl when I was in the first grade and my second crush in the fourth grade, but those were innocent and childish.  That changed in junior high when some girls played a joke on me by writing me love notes.  I was pretty sure the girl who supposedly signed the notes did not actually like me, nonetheless, I found myself fantasizing about dating her, and at least some of my fantasies were not so innocent.

Then I fell for the one girl who had been genuinely nice and friendly to me, and I wanted her to like me as much as I liked her.  I took her to the junior prom on my first ever date with a girl, but it seemed that my love would be unrequited.  Then I met another girl, a sweet angel, and started falling for her.  But this time I wanted to be more careful, and decided to try and build a good friendship with her before asking her out.  But the school year ended and that was put on hold.

There was, then, another girl, with whom I had a "summer fling" between my sophomore and junior years.  I did some things that summer that I am not very proud of.

I met Katherine, and other new friends, in a group I joined during the school year called Braves Against Drinking and Drugs.  The group went around to some other schools making a presentation meant to discourage alcohol and drug use.  We put on a skit where I played the authoritarian father who lectures his son about using drugs.

During the state basketball tournament, I would go to one of the games with Katherine and her friend.  They were surprised when I was not so shy and retiring as I cheered on the Braves -- and yelling at the referees for a bad call.  On the last day of school, when we had finished signing yearbooks, Katherine and her friend came by my house to hang out for awhile.  One of the things I remember talking about was an idea for a novel I was writing -- one of many started and never finished -- and I even showed them the first chapter.

A few weeks later I asked Katherine out on a proper date and took her to see a movie.  After the movie we went for ice cream sundaes; she seemed to be having a good time.  But then I did something I am not proud of; I drove up into the hills and found a place to park.  I asked her if she wanted to make out, something I would never have thought to do with any other girl.  Thankfully, she said that she did not love me enough to do that.

She must have liked me, though, because she said yes when I asked her out a second time.  I took her swimming at the old indoor pool.  At one point we were playing basketball in the pool and I got a bit frisky.  In playing defense I got a little physical with her.  If any of my antics upset her, Katherine never said, and she said yes when I asked her out for a third and final date.  We played some board games at my house and watched a video.

Katherine was very smart, and a bit of a feminist.  I was taught to be a gentlemen, but she would object each time I would open a door for her.  "I can do it myself," she would say.

I think by the third date we saw that we didn't have that much in common.  Still, Katherine was the first girl I would date multiple times, and even after that summer she never seemed to mind spending time with me.  Maybe there was more there than I realized.  Could she have loved me more if we had continued dating?

But summer was ending, and I had just recently had an encounter with the girl I took to the prom, which gave me some encouragement that she might still like me.  With the school year about to start, there was another girl I wanted to build a friendship with.

Katherine and I remained friends, having a class or two in common over the next two years.  But in the spring of our senior year we had a few arguments.  We often ate lunch together and the differences between us, from music to marriage, led to some disagreements.  As I look back on it now, I feel that those debates could have been avoided if I had just minded my own business.  Instead, on a few things I really pushed my point of view, and in the end our friendship faded away.

Soon enough I would realize that it is a mistake to push your beliefs and ideas onto another person.  There needs to be a certain amount of live and let live.  It is one thing to share with those who are interested, but another to be zealous with those who are not.  And, frankly, not everything is our business.

I have not talked to Katherine since the summer after high school.  I should like to someday so that I could apologize to her for pushing my point of view as hard as I did.  There are some other things I should like to apologize for, things that I have not mentioned here.  At least some of the things I should like to apologize for I think I did because of how much I was craving love and affection.

Forgiving A Brutal Enemy / Pray for Peace

On April 18, 1942, then Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led sixteen B-25s in an attack on Tokyo and other Japanese cities.  The unique thing about this raid is that the bombers took off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.  "Doolittle and his raiders had accomplished the impossible," wrote James M. Scott in his 2015 book Target Tokyo, "taking off as such a great distance that most knew the chance of survival was slim at best, yet the airmen still managed to bomb Japan and escape.  That more were not captured or killed is miraculous, saved only by a tailwind that pilot Harold Watson later described as the 'hand of heaven.'"

Eight of the Doolittle Raiders were captured by the Japanese: Dean Hallmark, Bob Meder, Chase Nielsen (from Hyrum, Utah), Bill Farrow, Bob Hite, George Barr, Harold Spatz, and Jake DeShazer. Three of the raiders, Hallmark, Farrow and Spatz, were executed by the Japanese. Bob Meder would die of starvation during captivity, and George Barr was so close to death when he was liberated that his mental and physical recovery would take two years.

After Meder's death, Hite wrote the governor of the prison protesting the treatment of the prisoners.  Hite then asked "will you please give us the Holy Bible to read?"  Meder's death must have caused the Japanese some trouble because changes were made, among them that the prisoners were allowed to share a few English books, including the Bible.

"It was the first time that I had ever -- and I think any of us -- the first time any of us had really read the Bible from cover to cover," said Hite. "I was sort of like a man being in the desert and finding a cool pool." Hite went on to say, "Instead of hating the enemy that we had such hate for, we began to feel sorry for them. . . . It was almost a miracle to realize the sort of thing that happened to us . . . we were no longer afraid to the extent that we had been . . . we no longer had the hatred."

"We thought a lot about religion," said Barr.  "When you're in tough straits God is the only one you can rely on."

"Faith kept me alive," agreed Nielsen.  "Faith in my nation.  My religion.  My creator."

Jake DeShazer's story would be the most remarkable.  One day he was cleaning his cell when a guard looked in and yelled "Hayaku!" (hurry up). DaShazer responded by telling the guard to "Go jump in a lake." The next thing he knew, DeShazer was knocked on the head by the guard's fist. The Raider kicked the guard in the stomach, and the guard hit back with the steel scabbard for his sword. Jake then threw some dirty mop water at the guard, which had the affect of cooling the guard off. Still, DeShazer was surprised that the guard had not cut his head off.

After the incident with the guard, DeShazer, who described himself as an agnostic, turned to the Bible and the experience would end up turning his life upside-down.  Jake felt that he needed some sign of God's existence, and as he read the Bible he felt that God was indeed present, reaching out for someone so abandoned, mistreated and hopeless as he was.  When he read for a second time Romans 10:9 "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" Jake started praying. "Lord, though I am far from home and though I am in prison, I must have forgiveness."

As he continued to study the Bible and pray his heart was filled with joy. "I wouldn't have traded places with anyone at that time," he would later say. "Oh, what a great joy it was to know that I was saved, that God had forgiven me my sins." DeShazer went on to say that "Hunger, starvation, and a freezing prison cell no longer had horrors for me. They would only be for a passing moment. Even death could hold no threat when I knew that God had saved me. Death is just one more trial that I must go through before I can enjoy the pleasures of eternal life. There will be no pain, no suffering, no loneliness in heaven. Everything will be perfect with joy forever."

The more DeShazer read, the more he knew that he had to change. He especially loved reading 1 Corinthians 13:

"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. . . ."

DeShazer felt that his sins had been forgiven through Jesus Christ, and that he, too, would have to forgive.  He had another run in with a guard one day.  The impatient guard slapped Jake on the back, yelling "Hayaku, hayaku!", shoving him into his cell and slamming the door on his bare heel.  The guard kicked his foot until DeShazer was able to free himself.  "The pain in my foot was severe, and I thought some bones were broken. But as I sat on my stool in great pain, I felt as if God was testing me somehow."

DeShazer was tempted to take revenge the next day when the guard came on duty, but instead he called out "Ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning). This drew a strange look from the guard. The next day, however, Jake gave the same friendly greeting to the guard. This went on morning after morning until the guard came over and spoke to the Raider. Jake, using what little Japanese he had managed to pick up while a prisoner, asked the guard about his family.

Not long after this conversation, Jake saw the guard pacing with his head bowed and hands folded in prayer. The guard explained that he was talking to his mother, who had died when he was a little boy. From that moment on the guard treated DeShazer well, never shouting at him and never beating him. "One morning he opened the slot [in the cell door] and handed in a boiled sweet potato," said Jake. "I was surprised, and thanked him profusely. Later he gave me some batter-fried fish and candy. I knew then that God's way will work if we really try, no matter what the circumstances." He concluded, "How easy it was to make a friend out of an enemy because I had just tried."

"I lived on hate for the first year," recalled Hite.  "I think we were able to kind of keep ourselves together living on hate, instead of laying down and giving up."  Reading the Bible, however, made a big difference.  "We decided that we had no hatred for the guards, vicious as they were," said Hite.  "They were ignorant and mean, but perhaps -- we thought -- there was some good in them.  The only way to develop goodness would be by understanding and education -- not by brutally mistreating them as they were doing to us."

Hite's health started to decline in the summer of 1944.  One day the pilot overheard Nielsen and DeShazer talking outside his cell.  "Hite won't be here tomorrow," said Nielsen.  "I don't think he can make it."

Hite was startled.  "I thought I was going to die," he would say later.  "I prayed to the Lord, told him I was willing to die if that's what he wanted, that mother was a widow and she might need me, but that I wasn't afraid to die and I was trusting in him.  It was the most amazing thing.  I started getting well right there."

The examples of DeShazer, Hite and Nielsen stand out to those who have suffered far less than they but who still struggle to forgive.

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"America's maritime offensive had reached a climax in the summer of 1944 with the capture of the Marianas, the ultimate prize of the Pacific," James Scott wrote.  The islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam would be used as platforms for the bombardment of Japan.  "Day after day, week after week, B-29 Superfortresses darkened the skies over Japan by the hundreds," continued Scott.  "Bombers pounded Japan's major cities night after night in raids Doolittle could only have dreamed of years earlier when he throttled up his B-25s that rainy morning on the deck of the Hornet."

With more than 28,500 sorties, Superfortresses would drop almost 160,000 tons of bombs on more than 60 cities.  The results were devastating, with almost 158 square miles razed, including more than 50 square miles of Tokyo, 15 of Osaka, and 11 of Nagoya, while as many as 330,000 Japanese civilians were killed, 475,000 wounded and 8.5 million left homeless.  By the summer of 1945, Doolittle was moving his present command, the mighty U.S. Eighth Air Force, from England to the Pacific, and he predicted that "Japan eventually will be a nation without cities."

Then, on the morning of August 6, 1945, a lone B-29 took off from North Field on the island of Tinian.  Hours later, the Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, would drop the atomic bomb known as "Little Boy" over the city of Hiroshima.  After the war, American investigators would estimate that the bomb, which leveled more than 4 square miles, had killed approximately 80,000 people, and injured another 100,000.  Three days later a second bomb, "Fat Man", would be dropped on Nagasaki, killing some 45,000 more people and injuring some 60,000.

On the morning of August 9, Jake DeShazer awoke in his prison cell in Peking, China.  Inside himself he heard a voice which urged him to pray.  "What shall I pray about," he asked.  The answer he received was to pray for peace.

Not knowing what was happening on that same day in Japan, or what had happened in the preceding days, DeShazer began to pray.  From seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, the young airman prayed that Japanese leaders would welcome peace and that the public would not be demoralized or taken advantage of in postwar Japan.  Then he heard the voice again, "You don't need to pray anymore," it said.  "Victory is won."

Within days, Japan would surrender unconditionally.  Emperor Hirohito decided that it was time to stop the suffering of his people.  Despite a coup attempt by hard-line Japanese army officers, the Emperor would give a radio announcement of the decision to surrender, and to bear the unbearable.  Within a matter of days, DeShazer and his fellow prisoners of war would be free.


Sources:

Nelson, C. (2002). The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid -- America's First World War II Victory.  New York: The Viking Press

Scott, J. M. (2015). Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid the Avenged Pearl Harbor. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.