Charity Sunday: Mighty Oaks

How Charity Sunday works: for every comment made on this blog post, I will donate money to the charity named. The same promise is made for every blog site listed in the group–click the Linky Links link at the bottom of this post to see the list of participants and read/comment on any of them to see a donation go to that blogger’s charity. We’re all different! Thanks for your help and your participation!

This month I’m helping support Mighty Oaks (https://www.mightyoaksprograms.org/). The mission of Mighty Oaks is: “…serving military & first responder communities who have endured hardship around the globe through intensive peer-based discipleship Programs, outpost meetings, speaking, and resiliency events. We have Programs for Men, Women, and Married Couples at multiple locations nationwide and globally. Those who attend our Programs are fully sponsored, to include meals, lodging and travel, ensuring their sole focus is on recovery and empowering them to identify their purpose as they move forward.”

One of the things that impressed me about this program is that each of the various programs are designed to help veterans and first responders to overcome difficulties that come from intense service and deployments and to reach the life of purpose each attendee is intended to live. And attendees are charged nothing. Having grown up in a military family—even one where the service member was not engaged in war—I know the stresses that can be placed on a family when one parent is away for long periods of time and then are expected to slide back into “normal” life seamlessly. Add to it, conflicts or intense duty, and the stressors are exponentially increased. Mighty Oaks serves a great need. Please leave a comment and help me contribute to this very worthwhile cause!

Blurb:
Two exceptional novellas featuring men engulfed in a war no one understands or wants—Vietnam. They’re both hoping for a miracle but have little expectation of finding it.

Jan Selbourne lends her award-winning writing talent to A Miracle in the Outback. Nick Saunders is in a hurry to escape a family argument and also to return to his Army base in Wagga Wagga. He doesn’t need another complication. Rachel Garth is a woman with a broken down car, a small girl, a deadly snake, and a baby on the way. She needs Nick’s help. He doesn’t know it, but he needs hers, too.

In award-winning author Anne Krist’s The Miracle of Coming Home, Army PFC Tom Stabler wins a trip to his parents’ Nebraska farm for Christmas. He needs the time away from the war. Lately, he’s been feeling lost and too alone. Trouble is, being home is almost as bad. Then Susan Swensen arrives, just as sweet and pretty as he remembers. Can Susan help him find himself again, or will it take a miracle?

Buy link:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Christmas-Miracle-historical-novellas-ebook/dp/B09MR8PKYT/

Excerpt:
With a jerk and cry, PFC Tom Stabler bolted upright, his heart pounding at an alarming rate. The dream of the woman receded, and his eyes shot open, unseeing at first. His arm darted out, reaching for the rifle that was always beside him like an extension of his right arm.

The weapon wasn’t there! In sudden panic, he snapped his head to the side, hoping to find with sight what he couldn’t with touch.

Then it came to him.

“Home,” he whispered. He was safe. Not in a steamy jungle surrounded by the smell of rotting vegetation, or wading through muddy river shallows filled with who-knew-what slithering things, or straining for the welcome sound of helicopters, or…

He’d been in so many God-awful situations these past eight months he could take his pick of a different terror every night for weeks. But he didn’t want to. For this week, these days at home, he wanted to put Nam behind him. Why, then, couldn’t he rid himself of the tension coiled like a snake in his belly?

Tom scrubbed his hands across his face, willing his breathing to slow and his heart to return to a normal beat. He picked up his watch. Two o’clock.

When he’d said an awkward goodnight to his father and made his way to bed, the clock in the hall was chiming midnight. He’d draped his clothes over his desk chair, stripped off his skivvies, and climbed into bed.

Unbelievably, he’d pulled up the quilt his grandmother had made for him, snuggled into the softness of the mattress, and drifted off to sleep as though he’d never left the safety and security of his room.

Awake now, he wondered if he’d ever adjust to the feeling of safety again, ever truly believe it existed. He feared he’d always be peering into shadows for the hidden enemy or listening for the almost silent, deadly snick of a landmine trip.

Falling back on the pillow, he stared at the posters on the opposite wall, illuminated by weak moonlight shining through the window. One was for a rock concert held in Omaha four years ago. He’d wanted to take Susan Swensen, but her father wouldn’t let her go the hundred-plus miles into the city with him. Too far, he’d said in his thick Scandinavian accent. Too much can go wrong with a car. Young people can get stranded. Alone.

The last was said with a long, thoughtful stare right into Tom’s soul. How had the man known of Tom’s evil intentions to fake a car breakdown in order to make time with his daughter? Eventually, when she was accepted into nursing school, Mr. Swensen had let Susan go to Omaha. By then, Tom had gone much farther. All the way to Hell, in fact.

The other poster hailed the Fighting Hawks, his high school football team, on which he’d been the star linebacker. Those were heady days. He’d made a great linebacker at the university, too, but a lousy scholar, which was what put him on academic probation and placed his ass squarely in the middle of that worthless strip of land called Vietnam.

Now he wouldn’t even make a linebacker. He skimmed his hand down his chest and across his stomach. Lean—skinny almost. Where once had been bulk there was sinewy muscle. He could still run, though. Oh, yeah, he got lots of practice running. From firing position to firing position, from cover to transport helicopters—black birds hovering over open kill zones to lift guys out of danger or drop them in—and from helicopter back to cover. Some days it seemed he ran the whole damn time.

It felt that way now. But what the hell was he running from?

Tom sighed. There was no going back to sleep. Throwing off the covers, he roused himself from the warmth and sat up, looking at the four walls and feeling dislocated.

This room held the bed where he’d slept since he was six. Today, Christmas Eve, he turned twenty-one. After all those years, the bed should be familiar, and it was. The bed and the room. Both fit, both were comfortable. But Tom no longer was.

It was the same with the house. When he arrived early yesterday morning, he’d sensed something was off but hadn’t been able to put his finger on the problem. Now he knew. Somehow, while he was gone, things had changed, and no one had told him.

His bedroom, the kitchen where he’d watched his mom bake cookies, the living room where he’d beaten his dad at chess for the first time, all felt cramped and alien, as though he’d read about them but hadn’t lived in them. Even his family was all wrong. Gray threaded his mom’s hair, and his dad moved slower. As for his granddad, he was a frail replica of his previous self, with a wrinkled face and almost translucent skin. The loss of grandma had taken him hard. He’d greeted Tom with a smile and firm hug but Tom hardly knew what to say to him.

This life, these people, belonged to a Tom Stabler who no longer existed. The man he was now would have to adjust his thinking to live here again, and learning how would sure as hell take more than one week.

Loneliness clawed at his insides. Here, in the one place he should have felt a part of things, solitude engulfed him. It would have been better to stay in Nam than be here with everything wrong, no longer a part of his home, his family.

Author Dee S. Knight:

A few years ago, Dee S. Knight began writing, making getting up in the morning fun. During the day, her characters killed people, fell in love, became drunk with power, or sober with responsibility. And they had sex, lots of sex.

After a while, Dee split her personality into thirds. She writes as Anne Krist for sweeter romances, and Jenna Stewart for ménage and shifter stories. All three of her personas are found on the Nomad Authors website (www.nomadauthors.com). Fortunately, Dee’s high school sweetheart is the love of her life and husband to all three ladies! On the last Sunday of the month, look for Dee’s Charity Sunday blog posts, where your comment can support a selected charity.

Author links:
Website: https://nomadauthors.com
Blog: http://nomadauthors.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DeeSKnight
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeeSKnight2018
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/265222.Dee_S_Knight
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B079BGZNDN
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/dee-s-knight-0500749
Sweet ‘n Sassy Divas http://bit.ly/1ChWN3K

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…