Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Clem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and monarchs. Today, I want to talk to you about a couple things. Well, two today, and I'll talk about one later on. Of the most important things I learned while I was in boot camp with the Navy.
[00:00:22] The first one is, being a great team. Remember, is the most important role of your life. And the second one is, it's okay to speak up when you have had.
[00:00:35] So I. When I moved back to Michigan from New England, I became a leader in a catholic health organization and in a leadership role. We had what we called leadership Development Institute, or LDI Quarterly, and all of the leaders were taken off site to go for educational learning, be able to collaborate with each other, because we don't necessarily all collaborate during the day.
[00:01:12] Nursing sticks with nursing, cardiology sticks with cardiology, and so on. So this gave us an opportunity to really collaborate, work together, get new learning, share ideas, and it was a lot of fun. And we always came up with a theme, and the theme was so that we could give out prizes, and it just made it fun to decorate the room.
[00:01:37] And then we always had a reflection to start out our two days together. Well, this particular LDI, the theme was nautical, and they asked if I would be the one that would give the reflection. And so I am going to read to you today the reflection that I learned or that I read to them. And it also has these two most important lessons in them that I learned from boot camp. So, here we go. In keeping with our nautical theme, I would like to share a personal story with you from when I entered boot camp after joining the Navy many years ago.
[00:02:22] I arrived in Orlando, Florida, for boot camp in January when I was 19 years old.
[00:02:29] I was herded into my barracks along with 47 other young ladies, also between the ages of 18 and 20 years old. The barracks was a large, empty room filled with only bunk beds. There were twelve bunk beds on the left side or port side, and there were twelve bunk beds on the right side or starboard side.
[00:02:53] We were informed that first evening that we would be awakened each morning by the petty officer somewhere between four and 05:00 a.m. We would have 15 minutes to get dressed and make our beds, and we had each evening after dinner to make certain our uniforms were pressed and ready for inspection. Each morning, once muster or our wakeup call was bellowed out each morning, we would rush to get dressed and make our beds. We would then stand at the end of our bed awaiting inspection from the petty officer.
[00:03:30] We were informed if we earned five demerits in total while we were at boot camp. Then we would receive a punishment. Boot camp was eight weeks long.
[00:03:43] I could not even begin to fathom what a punishment would be. What does that even mean? While I was about to find out, being a 19 year old young lady at this time in my life, I had long hair. It fell way down my back. I knew upon entering the navy that the requirement for hair is that it could not touch your collar. To me, this didn't seem like any problem. I rationalized that I would just wind it up on top of my head into a bun, and then it would be off my collar. No big deal. Little did I know prior to my arrival at boot camp that no hairpins could be visible during inspection. It did not take long before I got my first demerit related to a hairpin being visible. As a matter of fact, by the end of the second week, I had already accumulated three demerits because of hairpins.
[00:04:40] As you can imagine, the focus now for me became my hair. I was so determined to hide the hairpins that I barely had time to make my bed.
[00:04:51] The bed inspection was just like what you might have seen in some of the older movies. The corners of the bed had to be tight. And it's true what you may have heard. The quarter had to bounce on the bed. And they do bring that quarter out and bounce it, believe me. On Thursday of the third week, I failed my bed inspection for the second time. Now I had a total of five demerits. The petty officer got right in my face and proceeded to tell me not only was I a poor excuse for a navy wave, but I was an even bigger disappointment to my team.
[00:05:30] You see, not only was I about to receive punishment for my demerits, but my entire unit, the 47 others, would also receive a punishment.
[00:05:44] We were moved to the last position for everything. Last to go to the chow hall for meals, last to have free time, which meant phone calls back home, and last to do our fitness programs, which was one of the things that we cherished the most. There is nothing worse than having 47 young women mad at you all at the same time.
[00:06:08] Well, maybe there is something worse. Maybe being told that you had to show up at the commander's office at 1300 hours or 01:00 p.m. That afternoon could be worse.
[00:06:23] I was beside myself all morning, stewing and worrying. And I was mad at myself, too. 1300 hours came very slowly, but when the time arrived, I showed up at the commander's office as I had been instructed to do. He was waiting for me.
[00:06:40] He had a small office with a large rectangular window that faced the hall. He informed me that I would be standing at parade rest for the next 4 hours in front of that window. He also informed me that I could not move, not even to scratch my nose, could not speak. A fate worse than death for me. Definitely.
[00:07:02] And most importantly, I could not even go to the bathroom. Holy moly.
[00:07:09] I took my position as instructed, and I don't think I need to tell any of you that 4 hours at parade rest gives you a long time to think.
[00:07:23] I'm fairly certain that that first hour filled my mind with thoughts of being a victim and persecution. I mean, really, after all, it was only a couple of hairpins, and who really cares how tight your bed corners are?
[00:07:39] Somewhere into the second hour, I started to feel some culpability for my part in standing there at parade rest.
[00:07:48] And somewhere between the third and fourth hour, I was devastated at the fact that I had let my team down.
[00:07:57] Right at the end of that four hour mark, I was joined by eight other young women.
[00:08:06] None of them were from my barracks.
[00:08:09] The commander came out of the office and released me from parade rest, but promptly rushed a lot of us outdoors to the grindstone.
[00:08:19] The grindstone is a naval term for nothing more than a cement parking lot.
[00:08:25] Once we arrived to the grindstone, he proceeded to yell at us, get down and give me 20.
[00:08:34] We all got down and started doing pushups. Per his direction, he continued to yell at us while he walked up and down the line. He said many despicable things, but the thing I heard the loudest was when he shouted that we were all a bunch of cowards and that not one of us had the courage to say we had had enough at that moment.
[00:09:03] And to this day, I really do not know what came over me, but I yelled back at him as loud as I could.
[00:09:14] Yes, sir, I have.
[00:09:16] I have had enough.
[00:09:20] In that moment, in my mind, the world came to a complete stop.
[00:09:27] I'm pretty sure I was saying, what is wrong with you? Why did you yell that out?
[00:09:34] The commander stormed over to me and stood in front of me. All I could think of is, today is the day I'm going to die.
[00:09:46] But instead, he looked down at me and yelled, you stand up.
[00:09:54] I stood up, and he looked me straight in the eyes and yelled, go home.
[00:10:01] I didn't need any more direction than that. I turned around and I ran out of there like a shot out of a cannon. I ran straight back to my barracks. I proceeded to apologize to each and every one of my teammates. The next day, during my free time, I went straight to the hair salon and got my hair cut short above my collar for the remainder of boot camp. I became the best teammate you could ask for. I became a member of the drill team, and I was also the lead for my own work unit. That experience made me the team member I am today.
[00:10:43] Don't get me wrong, I still question things or even get frustrated from time to time. But I will always be here for my team.
[00:10:59] When we stop and think about teams in a biblical sense, then we would realize that Jesus Christ himself had a team.
[00:11:08] Jesus Christ selected twelve men from among his early followers to become his closest disciples.
[00:11:19] He chose them for a purpose, to fan the flames of the gospel that would spread across the face of the earth and continue to burn bright throughout the centuries to follow.
[00:11:33] He selected and used each of these regular guys to carry out his exceptional plan.
[00:11:41] These men became the pioneering leaders of the New Testament church. But they were not without faults and shortcomings.
[00:11:52] Interestingly enough, not one of the chosen twelve disciples was a scholar or a rabbi. They had no extraordinary skills, neither religious nor refined. They were ordinary people, just like you and me.
[00:12:12] To human eyes, they may have seemed unqualified, but to Jesus, they were the best men. They were the men of many mistakes, but they were men of learning through their mistakes. Jesus was right in choosing them to become his apostles, to change the world.
[00:12:36] If we take a moment to think about where that team took Christianity, then I think you will understand that his team delivered.
[00:12:49] So in ending my reflection today, I would ask each of you, what kind of a team member are you?
[00:12:58] Do you need a four hour parade rest to think about it?
[00:13:03] And more importantly, what kind of a team member have you been called to be? And will you say when you have had enough?
[00:13:16] So that was my reflection. I hope you enjoyed it. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about being a team member. So it's not in the literal sense, team, because we're team members of many things in our lives. I'm a team member with my family, my immediate family. I'm a team member with my extended family. My husband and I are a team.
[00:13:46] I'm a team member of my community.
[00:13:50] No matter what your religion is, you're a team member with your religious beliefs or your religious community.
[00:13:59] We all are team members of the United States, and we should remember that and remain united no matter what our beliefs are.
[00:14:12] We're part of this team that makes this such a great country.
[00:14:18] So I think that's so important to remember. I don't think we really look at ourselves and think of ourselves as a team member, but we really are because it takes each one of us to be able to contribute something worthwhile to the team. No matter what that team is, no matter what your profession is, no matter who your family is, because you don't necessarily have your own birth children or immediate family members that live close by. So sometimes your friends become your team. I know I'm fortunate enough to have a group of women that I've known most of my life, and in total there's twelve of us, and each one of them means so much to me, and I lean on them at different times to talk to about different things, and I feel so grateful for that. So being a team member really is one of the most important lessons I think you can learn. The other one was knowing when to speak up. I think that's a really important lesson. And I'm just going to take you back to the analogy with Jesus because I think this is an important lesson. Knowing when to say you've had enough. If you think about Jesus's march with the carrying his own cross, being beaten the whole way until he finally gets to the hill where he is going to put that cross in and ultimately be nailed to that cross. And then he is on the cross for 6 hours.
[00:16:09] So this is like three days, and then the 6 hours on that cross and finally he yells out, my father, where are you? Have you forsaken me?
[00:16:25] So Jesus stood up at that time, even though he had gone through all of that turmoil, all of that beating, all of the abuse, and then gets on that cross. But that is when he had had enough and he said something.
[00:16:48] So I think timing is everything in this life. Timing really is. But hopefully we all get to the point when we know ourselves well enough, we know how to be a good team member, and we know how to say when we've had enough and stand up. Two of the most important things that I learned from the navy, and they have lived with me all these years since boot camp.
[00:17:18] Thank you.
[00:17:20] This concludes my podcast for today. I hope you got some inspirational messages out of that. You know, my husband doesn't like me to say inspiration, but I hope you see the transformation. Those two messages came to me while I was in boot camp and have stuck with me. Like I said, I'm this. So this podcast and my previous podcast will be posted today. I look forward to hearing any feedback that you have for me. I like to hear it good and bad. There's always room for improvement in anything you do. So I look forward to hearing from that. And mostly I just hope that you are listening to these stories and getting some messages out of them. That's the most important thing to me. So thank you so much. I hope all of you have a great day and I'll see you again in a couple of weeks.
[00:18:24] Bye.
