Here’s a powerful song by Mark Schultz called “Letters from War” that still gets to me because so many of our young men and women are still in Iraq. It hit home for me the night we went to dinner and we saw this young woman with baby twins eating all alone. We started talking to her and thought perhaps their dad was working late or something when she said “He was killed in Iraq a few months ago” and my heart ached immediately. She was so brave and stoic as she fed her babies. I had to go outside and get some fresh air. I think of her and so many others like her every time I read or see the news.
Look, it doesn’t matter what your political convictions are because this song is just about getting our loved ones home–safe and sound.
LETTERS
She walked to the mailbox
On that bright summers day
Found a letter from her son
In a war far away
He spoke of the weather
And good friends that he’d made
Said I’d been thinking ’bout dad
And the life that he had
Thats why I’m here today
And that the end he said
You are what I’m fighting for
It was the first of the letters from war
She started writing
You’re good and you’re brave
What a father that you’ll be someday
make it home
make it safe
She wrote every night as she prayed
Late in December
A day she’ll not forget
Oh her tears stained the paper
With every word that she read
It said “I was up on a hill
I was out there alone
When the shots all rang out
And bombs were exploding
And thats when I saw him
He came back for me
And though he was captured
A man set me free
And that man was your son
He asked me to write to you
I told him i would, oh I swore”
It was the last of the letters from war
And she prayed he was living
Kept on believing
And wrote every night just to say
You are good
And you’re brave
what a father that you’ll be someday
Make it home
Make it safe
Still she kept writing each day
Then two years later
Autumn leaves all around
A car pulled in the driveway
And she fell to the ground
And out stepped a captain
Where her boy used to stand
He said “mom I’m following orders
From all of your letters
And I’ve come home again”,
He ran into hold her
And dropped all his bags on the floor
Holding all of her letters from war
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home