November. Conscious of and indebted to the efforts of veterans worldwide – I remember. An American expat living in Ireland, in matters of politics I have pacifist leanings. I am, however, untroubled by my passion for honouring the military and sacrifices made on my behalf. Generations of sacrifices.

American veterans, British veterans, Canadian, German, Italian, Japanese, Israeli and Arab veterans, I make no distinction. Every one was called upon by his or her motherland to serve.

Service. Few of those who served or died had a say in the arguments, feuds and passions that led to the conflicts. Some followed reprehensible orders, all faced circumstances I have not. I, therefore, respect their service, even when not in service to my ideals.

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour every year, I am proud to say that I have thought of, prayed and cried for the sacrifices of all veterans. Perhaps due to my age or the fact that I am an American of Irish and Italian descent who is Jewish, my mind goes first to the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. Beyond the dangers they faced in their war efforts until that day – most took to their graves the horror of what they witnessed, and only in its aftermath.

My uncle was an Italian soldier who spent most of WWII in a Russian POW camp. Was his sacrifice less noble or costly because the leadership of his homeland chose the “other” side? I have a dear friend, an Israeli veteran whose service in the Lebanon war haunts him to this day. You get my point. Veteran’s day is complicated.

I never thought that before, it was driven home by an effort to obtain a small red poppy for a British expat friend in the states. I live in Carlingford, on the border with Northern Ireland, the UK.  I assumed that in my travels I would be able to make a donation and pick up this token of remembrance known all over the British Isles.

Not so. “Ah sure, but you wouldn’t want to be trying to find that.”  “No lass, we wouldn’t be wearing that around here.” “You’re brave to be asking for one of those.”

I have learned to challenge that response. 50,000 Irish soldiers died in WWI and many now serve with UN peacekeepers. I am sorry for the legacy of the British occupation. I try to be sensitive to both sides.

That said I am outraged by the intolerance and disrespect of the young men and women who serve their homelands, anywhere. Especially here.

August (2009) marked the 30th anniversary of the massacre of 18 British soldiers in Northern Ireland. I can see it from my home. There is now an uneasy peace in that conflict. Those 18 mothers and their sons deserved to have their memories honoured. We in the Republic were largely silent.

We should not celebrate the wars – victory or defeat – but we must celebrate the gift of the young lives they and their families have given. Their gift is literally our present.

I have a US homeland, the gift of brave grandparents who emigrated. Ireland is now home. My Irish forbearers were driven out by the policies of the British. Can I hold that against a British soldier? The Irish government generously regards this grandchild still a citizen, their soldiers serve bravely with UN peacekeeping troops worldwide. Can I blame an Irish soldier for the Republic’s neutrality in the face of genocide? The genocide that left my Jewish children deprived of extended families that exist no longer? Here as a Jew I am pilloried as an extension of the Israeli occupation. I have no connection to Israel, should I disdain the service of her young?

Jews trapped in European homelands 70 years ago were citizens of countries and dependent upon the protection of soldiers in whose armies many served. Later they were grateful to soldiers of other homelands who liberated them.

Whose soldiers and what sacrifices would you have me forget?

There it was in my #MorningPages, something so clearly observed while emerging into consciousness.

I am grateful for my unanswered prayers.

At this writing, I am now fully awake with intellect engaged. It is different. It feels like some parent just sent me off on an unpleasant assignment.

That would be the loving, all-knowing parent who knows that the wisdom – retrieved from my unconscious needs to be processed.

This “morning pages” discipline often includes a list of things for which I am grateful. After all, there is a gift in counting the things that have gone well- before I rise and start measuring the bad.

Face it, we all complain about the rain as though our very existence didn’t depend on it.  Yet if I acknowledge the beauty in the blooms or the view of the mountain, I have taken back the power of the rain to bring me down.

Grateful for unanswered prayers, but why?

I have learned to honor why they went unanswered.

Self-will was obviously problematic through the ages.

“Thy will be done” is over two centuries old. It was a powerful and empowering closing to The Lord’s Prayer for the same people who were simultaneously reminding the divine to send daily bread and forgive their trespasses.

Thy will, not mine.

Humbly, I’ll remember that…

“I am rarely granted what I ask for but always given what I need.”

Keeping Score

I’d written a litany of unanswered prayers, and a few were noteworthy.

Indeed, I’d asked for relief and healing in my marriage, a sense of my own financial security when my children were small, and life for children unborn.

What might answered prayers have looked like?

Well, because the Divine has a sense of humor – I have had to face this head-on.

• My children’s father has remarried. He is well-loved, and they’ve been embraced by a new extended family, with the added benefit of step-siblings. He and I no longer know love qualified by our disappointment. We found each other very young and thought what we saw in each other was what we wanted (largely to be different people from our parents).It was not what we could deliver after our children were born. The imprints of our original families were overwhelming.  Imposing my will to “make it work” would not have allowed any of us to move happily forward.
• “Enough money” – well, we do come to learn there is never enough (10% more would surely make life easier). Whatever I thought enough was, I wouldn’t have learned the assortment of skills gained while working myriad part-time jobs. Moving into this life stage, I find I am grateful. Not a single one of the skills I learned or contacts I made goes untapped. I needed every one of those lessons and experiences.
• Life for children unborn; I have the gift of three grown children for whom my attentions are frightfully inadequate (back to enough, I know). They all want something more or different from me – and had there been four or five of them, would the stories of these three be as they were meant to be?

Above all, I know now that the reality of the “what if” would have been disastrous.

Oh, I’d have gotten my way and…

None of the happiness I now know could have come to be.

Even with this proof, I rise every morning struggling to get out of the way of my willful, judging self.

I rise wanting other people to treat me better (really, their world is about me?)

I want specific opportunities to become apparent (really, isn’t it arrogant to think I have envisioned the best of all possibilities?)

And I want sunny days! (really, next winter’s sweater will come from a thirsty sheep?).

Lastly, I now know to begin with – “Deliver me from the evil that is my willfulness into the redemption that is simply letting go“.

For more on #MorningPages see – Personal Change Management, The Tools or Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman’s article: This column will change your life: Morning Pages.