Soldier
SOLDIER
Remember me in my raincoat
I didn't want to wear
I knew for certain I could bear the downpour
You said son you’re only 5 years old
I swore I would be the fine out in the cold
Wear this cape for the whole wide world to know
I could be your Soldier, be your Hero, I could be Strong
-Remember the words he spoke I didn’t want to hear them where
I knew for certain your heart would tear
You said son you’re only 10 years old
I know you don’t know the ways of the world
Where you going to go when it’s not safe here anymore?
I could be your Soldier, be your Hero, I could be Strong
CHORUS: If I had just one more day
Promise I would make it all okay
Stitch your dreams and glue your smile
Pick you up in my wings
And fly so high Your troubles couldn't be seen for miles
I promise Momma I’d make a Soldier out of me
-I swore I would be your antidote
Swallow this bitter pill for us both
You said son you’re only 15 years old
I’m getting sick and I’m about to go home
Wear your faith for the whole wide world to know
You have been my Soldier, been my Hero, you have been Strong
CHORUS: If I had just one more day
Promise I would make it all okay
Stitch your dreams and glue your smile
Pick you up in my wings And fly so high
Your troubles couldn't be seen for miles
I promise Momma
I’d make a Soldier out of me
- I won’t forget the raincoat I didn’t want to wear
I won’t forget this broken home
Cause I can built a better one of my own
You went to sleep
Before you could see
Me take up my sword And take up my shield
And start a war for us and those like us
And all that we Believed
And make a Soldier out of me
And make a Soldier out of me
Soldier is a song about growing up in a home with abuse and addiction, which often go together like a bullet and a gun. It’s more specifically about the helplessness of childhood for boys in those situations, who are created to be warriors, to fight, protect, to defend when the season has them ready but all too often they aren’t old enough for the battle they are the only ones available for fight. Watching your mother or siblings or in some cases your father be victims while you are helpless births a ghost who haunts a child the rest of his or her life, and yes men are sometimes the forgotten victims of abuse and neglect. Many men are the victims of financial and emotional exploitation by former spouses and the court system with their children as the hostages, which creates a lot of guilt in the child. Despite the reasoning and logic that comes adulthood, aside from the Grace of God and His Forgiveness which can help with the forgiving the most person we hold to be the most vile and cowardly men in our own hearts and minds (ourselves) there is no simply exorcism for the ghost of guilt. There is no simple remedy for the “I should have done something”, “it was my place to stop it”, “why was I such a coward” and the helplessness can follow a man who was once a boy to haunt every home he lives in the rest of his days, whether that home is broken or whole.
This is really a form of Survivor Guilt which is endured by soldiers of every sort, from the 1o year old who has to be call 911 to save his mother’s life, the 15 year old who takes the shameful abuse that was intended for his brother or sister, or the only man in the platoon to be carried off in the medivac chopper instead of a body bag. I saw this last one in my grandfather’s eyes one of the few times in the three years I lived with him that he ever talked about World War II or the D-Day Invasion in which he lost many of his best and only friends to Nazi Machine Gun Nests, and for a year of our life together in his little white farmhouse I was on a waiting list to join the Air Force as his son Randy had done and served in Desert Storm. After bearing witness to some events, a man is never really able to feel strong inside again the rest of his days (and a man’s strength is the substance of his life, without strength he has no life inside), no matter his muscle or his stoic demeanor or his number of confirmed kills or even the lives he saves in a future life as a cop or a surgeon, it is one of the invisible wounds of a warrior.
"He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing." Deuteronomy 10:18
Soldier is also a story about my mom and growing up with my Dad, who was actually well liked by most when he was clean and sober, but those occasions were so few in my memory of growing up that I could count them on my now man sized fingers. He must have been someone else entirely, someone that left quit a mark on my mother’s heart before I was born, because she absolutely refused to leave the man. This may have been in part because she didn’t believe in divorce and I think it was partially because she didn’t want to take my brother from him as they were very close. His clean and sober self was almost contrary to the angry raging gorilla in a cowboy hat holding a bottle of tequila that he became when he was drunk.
He never actually hit me, threw a full glass quart bottle of beer at my head, held me down and put sat on my chest, took a swing at me with the fists attached to a 6’2 or 6’3 wrestler’s body, but never actually hit me. As far as I remember he never hit my mom growing up either. The reasons for that never fully happening are in part because when I was a boy in around 5th or 6th grade he came home around midnight after drinking away the power bill in the middle of Winter, again, and my mom was of course absolutely furious with him. They got into an argument and he pulled back his fist to hit her and I reached into the six foot deep fireplace for the 5 foot long metal poker with the hook at the end and came between them by putting the hook to his Adam’s Apple until he was backed against the log wall and my mother was begging me to put the fireplace poker down. I made it perfectly clear in a quaking pre-pubescent voice that if he ever touched my mother he would go to sleep one day and not wake up because I knew which drawer the kitchen knives were in, and that was my first fight in life, and the last day I remember my Dad and I ever getting along. He slept with his door locked as long as I can remember after that unless he was passed out drunk and I would sneak into his room to get lunch money for my brother and I before he could drink it away after my mom died as she had held some kind of sway over him when it came to us. Part of the reason he never hit me was that I knew the names and faces and houses of every drug dealer in the county and would ask if I should call the Sheriff’s Department or the Narcotics Division if he would get too threatening and part of that, and ultimately all of it, was the Grace of God keeping me safe most likely in answer to my mother’s prayers.
If I hadn’t moved out and had places I could stay to move into I don’t know how long that safety would have lasted and thankfully I found places to couch surf whenever I ran away from home and we lived in a small town that was close knit. He never hit my brother, partially because my brother thought my dad did no wrong no matter how wrong it was, and partially because my brother was too young to do anything about the fights with my mom and my brother was also everything my Dad wanted him to be, a big strong fix anything country boy. My brother was in constant danger from the drunk driving though, as the demons swimming in the bottle had this way of convincing my Dad that his 13 year old son could drive him and his buddy from Crips to the beer joint at 10 at night over a river and through a swamp and all the way of the other side of the county safely. My Dad has lost his driver’s license to DUI’s but my brother not having a driver’s license or having never driven anything but a lawn mower seemed to have no influence on his decision making after a thought killing combination of whiskey and a crack rock he had just traded our mom’s SSI Survivor’s Benefits checks for. He tried to make my brother drive him while he was drunk twice that I recall when I lived in the log cabin with he and my little brother the year after my mom died and not long after God sent my Sensei to take me in and I began studying Combat Ninjutsu with him so that I could defend myself against the man the whole county was afraid of. The first time was the incident above, which was only halted when my dad took a swing at me with his massive right paw and somehow I managed to put him in a wrist lock and arm bar with him on his knees and his face against the heater until he promised that he was leaving with his Crip buddy but not with my little brother (even drunk he was actually a man of his word in most regards, a strange parallel). I also told his Crip buddy to stay the Hell away from my brother.
The second time this happened we were at someone’s trailer in the local trailer park, I think the lady that lived there was kind enough to feed my little brother and I when we didn’t have any food at the house and my Dad pulls up drunk in the truck my grandfather on that side had left behind when he died. My dad wanted my brother to go somewhere with him, not sure if it was back to the house or to drive him again or what the destination was but my dad was too drunk to walk straight and I told him Jeremy wasn’t going anywhere with him. This really infuriated him as he was embarrassed in front of the trailer park and grabbed me by my collar, which resulted in him being thrown over my shoulder and him landing on his back on the floor between a couch and a coffee table. He had degenerative arthritis which makes the vertebrae in your back disappear (and had made him shrink an inch of two over the years) and had Agent Orange which caused a 1/3 of his stomach to be removed in surgery, so it’s a miracle this incident didn’t paralyze him or rip some stitches in his stomach open. I knew I was dead meat if he got up after being thrown like that so I jumped on his chest immediately and put my knee on his sternum and thumb’s into his esophagus until he promised to not leave with my brother in the truck and I explained that we wouldn’t be staying with him then.
Despite all this, I couldn’t save my mom from the stress that induced her aneurism (she died of it when I was 14 years old, 2 days before her 39th birthday) or save my brother, who was buying crack from the same Crip my Dad ran around with after I joined the Air Force and was sent to Germany, or from all that came afterwards as my brother was too close to turning 18 for the Air Force to allow me to adopt him.
Remember me in my raincoat
I didn't want to wear
I knew for certain I could bear the downpour
You said son you’re only 5 years old
I swore I would be the fine out in the cold
Wear this cape for the whole wide world to know
I could be your Soldier, be your Hero, I could be Strong
-Remember the words he spoke I didn’t want to hear them where
I knew for certain your heart would tear
You said son you’re only 10 years old
I know you don’t know the ways of the world
Where you going to go when it’s not safe here anymore?
I could be your Soldier, be your Hero, I could be Strong
CHORUS: If I had just one more day
Promise I would make it all okay
Stitch your dreams and glue your smile
Pick you up in my wings
And fly so high Your troubles couldn't be seen for miles
I promise Momma I’d make a Soldier out of me
-I swore I would be your antidote
Swallow this bitter pill for us both
You said son you’re only 15 years old
I’m getting sick and I’m about to go home
Wear your faith for the whole wide world to know
You have been my Soldier, been my Hero, you have been Strong
CHORUS: If I had just one more day
Promise I would make it all okay
Stitch your dreams and glue your smile
Pick you up in my wings And fly so high
Your troubles couldn't be seen for miles
I promise Momma
I’d make a Soldier out of me
- I won’t forget the raincoat I didn’t want to wear
I won’t forget this broken home
Cause I can built a better one of my own
You went to sleep
Before you could see
Me take up my sword And take up my shield
And start a war for us and those like us
And all that we Believed
And make a Soldier out of me
And make a Soldier out of me
Soldier is a song about growing up in a home with abuse and addiction, which often go together like a bullet and a gun. It’s more specifically about the helplessness of childhood for boys in those situations, who are created to be warriors, to fight, protect, to defend when the season has them ready but all too often they aren’t old enough for the battle they are the only ones available for fight. Watching your mother or siblings or in some cases your father be victims while you are helpless births a ghost who haunts a child the rest of his or her life, and yes men are sometimes the forgotten victims of abuse and neglect. Many men are the victims of financial and emotional exploitation by former spouses and the court system with their children as the hostages, which creates a lot of guilt in the child. Despite the reasoning and logic that comes adulthood, aside from the Grace of God and His Forgiveness which can help with the forgiving the most person we hold to be the most vile and cowardly men in our own hearts and minds (ourselves) there is no simply exorcism for the ghost of guilt. There is no simple remedy for the “I should have done something”, “it was my place to stop it”, “why was I such a coward” and the helplessness can follow a man who was once a boy to haunt every home he lives in the rest of his days, whether that home is broken or whole.
This is really a form of Survivor Guilt which is endured by soldiers of every sort, from the 1o year old who has to be call 911 to save his mother’s life, the 15 year old who takes the shameful abuse that was intended for his brother or sister, or the only man in the platoon to be carried off in the medivac chopper instead of a body bag. I saw this last one in my grandfather’s eyes one of the few times in the three years I lived with him that he ever talked about World War II or the D-Day Invasion in which he lost many of his best and only friends to Nazi Machine Gun Nests, and for a year of our life together in his little white farmhouse I was on a waiting list to join the Air Force as his son Randy had done and served in Desert Storm. After bearing witness to some events, a man is never really able to feel strong inside again the rest of his days (and a man’s strength is the substance of his life, without strength he has no life inside), no matter his muscle or his stoic demeanor or his number of confirmed kills or even the lives he saves in a future life as a cop or a surgeon, it is one of the invisible wounds of a warrior.
"He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing." Deuteronomy 10:18
Soldier is also a story about my mom and growing up with my Dad, who was actually well liked by most when he was clean and sober, but those occasions were so few in my memory of growing up that I could count them on my now man sized fingers. He must have been someone else entirely, someone that left quit a mark on my mother’s heart before I was born, because she absolutely refused to leave the man. This may have been in part because she didn’t believe in divorce and I think it was partially because she didn’t want to take my brother from him as they were very close. His clean and sober self was almost contrary to the angry raging gorilla in a cowboy hat holding a bottle of tequila that he became when he was drunk.
He never actually hit me, threw a full glass quart bottle of beer at my head, held me down and put sat on my chest, took a swing at me with the fists attached to a 6’2 or 6’3 wrestler’s body, but never actually hit me. As far as I remember he never hit my mom growing up either. The reasons for that never fully happening are in part because when I was a boy in around 5th or 6th grade he came home around midnight after drinking away the power bill in the middle of Winter, again, and my mom was of course absolutely furious with him. They got into an argument and he pulled back his fist to hit her and I reached into the six foot deep fireplace for the 5 foot long metal poker with the hook at the end and came between them by putting the hook to his Adam’s Apple until he was backed against the log wall and my mother was begging me to put the fireplace poker down. I made it perfectly clear in a quaking pre-pubescent voice that if he ever touched my mother he would go to sleep one day and not wake up because I knew which drawer the kitchen knives were in, and that was my first fight in life, and the last day I remember my Dad and I ever getting along. He slept with his door locked as long as I can remember after that unless he was passed out drunk and I would sneak into his room to get lunch money for my brother and I before he could drink it away after my mom died as she had held some kind of sway over him when it came to us. Part of the reason he never hit me was that I knew the names and faces and houses of every drug dealer in the county and would ask if I should call the Sheriff’s Department or the Narcotics Division if he would get too threatening and part of that, and ultimately all of it, was the Grace of God keeping me safe most likely in answer to my mother’s prayers.
If I hadn’t moved out and had places I could stay to move into I don’t know how long that safety would have lasted and thankfully I found places to couch surf whenever I ran away from home and we lived in a small town that was close knit. He never hit my brother, partially because my brother thought my dad did no wrong no matter how wrong it was, and partially because my brother was too young to do anything about the fights with my mom and my brother was also everything my Dad wanted him to be, a big strong fix anything country boy. My brother was in constant danger from the drunk driving though, as the demons swimming in the bottle had this way of convincing my Dad that his 13 year old son could drive him and his buddy from Crips to the beer joint at 10 at night over a river and through a swamp and all the way of the other side of the county safely. My Dad has lost his driver’s license to DUI’s but my brother not having a driver’s license or having never driven anything but a lawn mower seemed to have no influence on his decision making after a thought killing combination of whiskey and a crack rock he had just traded our mom’s SSI Survivor’s Benefits checks for. He tried to make my brother drive him while he was drunk twice that I recall when I lived in the log cabin with he and my little brother the year after my mom died and not long after God sent my Sensei to take me in and I began studying Combat Ninjutsu with him so that I could defend myself against the man the whole county was afraid of. The first time was the incident above, which was only halted when my dad took a swing at me with his massive right paw and somehow I managed to put him in a wrist lock and arm bar with him on his knees and his face against the heater until he promised that he was leaving with his Crip buddy but not with my little brother (even drunk he was actually a man of his word in most regards, a strange parallel). I also told his Crip buddy to stay the Hell away from my brother.
The second time this happened we were at someone’s trailer in the local trailer park, I think the lady that lived there was kind enough to feed my little brother and I when we didn’t have any food at the house and my Dad pulls up drunk in the truck my grandfather on that side had left behind when he died. My dad wanted my brother to go somewhere with him, not sure if it was back to the house or to drive him again or what the destination was but my dad was too drunk to walk straight and I told him Jeremy wasn’t going anywhere with him. This really infuriated him as he was embarrassed in front of the trailer park and grabbed me by my collar, which resulted in him being thrown over my shoulder and him landing on his back on the floor between a couch and a coffee table. He had degenerative arthritis which makes the vertebrae in your back disappear (and had made him shrink an inch of two over the years) and had Agent Orange which caused a 1/3 of his stomach to be removed in surgery, so it’s a miracle this incident didn’t paralyze him or rip some stitches in his stomach open. I knew I was dead meat if he got up after being thrown like that so I jumped on his chest immediately and put my knee on his sternum and thumb’s into his esophagus until he promised to not leave with my brother in the truck and I explained that we wouldn’t be staying with him then.
Despite all this, I couldn’t save my mom from the stress that induced her aneurism (she died of it when I was 14 years old, 2 days before her 39th birthday) or save my brother, who was buying crack from the same Crip my Dad ran around with after I joined the Air Force and was sent to Germany, or from all that came afterwards as my brother was too close to turning 18 for the Air Force to allow me to adopt him.
Prayer for Soldiers With and Without Uniforms
To The God Who Is a Warrior
We ask that Victims become both Forgivers and Victors
We ask that Abusers become both Repenters and Restorers
We ask that the Weak are made Strong
We ask that the Strong are made Merciful
We ask that this Generation becomes the Generation of Justice
We ask that this Generation becomes the Generators of Mercy
We ask that the Pain is given a Purpose
We ask that the Bitterness is made the Fuel for a Blessing
We ask also that these Hands that these Mercenaries became Warriors
We ask that these Hands that were Shaking
Be Made Ready for War
“Of David. Blessed be ADONAI my Rock— who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” Psalm 144:1
Resource: Rak Chazak, The Ancient War Cry-Youtube.com
Resource: "6 Signs of a Rising Warrior" John Paul Jackson
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