Knights of Heroes: More Encounters Off the Beaten Path

It was quite a random encounter to find the Knights of Heroes http://knightsofheroes.org/

signpost over Gold Camp Road in rural Teller County, just outside of Victor, Colorado. Terry and I had gone to Colorado for business and pleasure. He had wanted to show me this place, a place where he knew the grounds-keeper, Kim, a Vietnam veteran, who takes care of the ground now known as Knights of Heroes http://knightsofheroes.org/. When he said Kim was another Vietnam vet just like he was, I became intrigued.

After making our way up into the Colorado High Country, around tighter and tighter switchbacks, we finally emerged to a meadow where we came upon a lone and lonely log cabin unable to be used because of some kind of government bureaucracy. We had climbed the altitude up the side of that mountain, through a canopy of pines, blue spruce and an occasional aspen. The cabin was a welcome relief.

Terry then said, “Now we will be on a dirt road. You will love this!” At which point he drove our rental car under a simple wooden sign which hung from the skinny trunks of fallen aspen, into what might seem to be, another world…

Major Troy Gilbert, http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/467558/additional-remains-of-air-force-pilot-found.aspx,

an F-16C Fighting Falcon pilot for the United States Air Force, crashed and died in combat while engaged in the support of coalition combat forces 20 miles northwest of Baghdad. Ginger, Troy’s wife, while her husband was deployed, had already accepted her role as both Father and Mother, to raise newborn twin girls, a three-year-old daughter, Boston, age 6, and Grayson, age 9. Not Ginger had to feel completely alone. But it would not be for long.

While stationed at Luke Air Force Base, outside of Phoenix, Arizona, Troy had become friends with another US Air Force pilot, Steve Harrold. During the eighteen-month relationship, they were bound by work, the fact that both sets of their sons were the same age, and their relationship to Christ.

The day I first made contact with Steve Harrold, he had been up at the camp working with Kim. I had left him a voicemail earlier in the day, asking for Kim’s contact information for Terry, and I added, "Oh, by the way, if you are interested, I would like to tell the story of Knights of Heroes." When he returned my call, I was struck by his passion for life and the ministry he’d begun, and I was struck by his humility and willingness to serve others.

He said he would like to have me tell their story, that he somehow felt my motivation was intended only to help their organization. I told him he was right, and I also told him that I felt privileged and humbled that he would allow me to help get the word out. We set up a time to talk another day, but I left him to ponder the following questions.

1. What is Knights of Heroes all about?

2. What does it take logistically to implement your once-a-summer camp?

3. What makes you get up in the morning?

When we spoke the next time, Steve made it a point to mention that Troy had a way of making people with whom he came in contact feel special; he made them feel as though they mattered in the big picture of life. He said that Troy would fly missions all day in Iraq, only to volunteer at the hospital in Ballad, Iraq. One can only imagine how difficult that would have been.

The answer to my first question, “What is Knights of Heroes all about,” Steve gave me the following answer:

“Troy was deployed in August 2006, at the same time my family and I relocated to Colorado. Troy had long-before recommended that I read the book, Raising of a Modern Day Knight: A Father’s Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood. https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B005MZIDIY&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_yyi7xb9KNGP8P.

It was on November 27, 2006, while reading the chapter in that same book entitled, “Absent Father Wound,” I found out Troy had been killed defending the freedom we all enjoy.

Immediately, I began to ask the question, ‘What would Troy be doing with his sons, Boston, then six, and Grayson, nine?’ You see, my sons, Jake and Tanner were consecutively the same age, so it wasn’t hard for me to imagine the answer.”

Steve went on to say that he knew Troy would take them mountain climbing, teach them to shoot guns; they would hike, camp, raft, and rock climb, always with his core mission to teach his sons the tenants of manhood through activity. Steve knew what he had as his own goal: to instruct his sons in how to be godly men, how to be honorable and chivalrous to women, how to become great leaders in the community, and how to have no semblance of entitlement.

It was at that point Steve embraced the model that Richard Lewis had laid out, and then on a mission, became an ambassador for raising knights in his own sons. He also felt that he needed to do the same for Troy’s boys and other sons of fallen soldiers too. Thus was born Knights of Heroes http://knightsofheroes.org/.

I then asked the second question, “What does it take logistically to implement your once-a-summer camp?”

Steve then began to tell me that they had started the ministry ten years ago with a $15K a year budget, but the program had quickly grown. This year, they will have 95 children at camp, 50 boys and 30 girls. He told me that they had purchased the property that I had stumbled upon after raising $250K for a down payment on the total purchase price of the property of $735K. Most were donations that came by word of mouth.

He was careful to mention that they have an operating budget of $120K; The Free Wheel Foundation, who sponsors a 4-day bike ride where they raise almost $100K for Knights of Heroes, annually, donates many of those dollars. Home Depot has donated a $22K grant, and MyLineage.com https://secure.mylineage.com/index, although a very small organization, donates hand-embroidered crests, which are given to each child their first time at camp, along with a history of their name.

MyLineage.com https://secure.mylineage.com/index, also gifts the boys daggers their second year, and a sword, the third year. I remarked how those boys should feel like true knights once they’ve received such amazing symbols of all their mentors and activities teach them throughout the week.

“Once the boys graduate from the 1^st-3^rd-year program, they go on to the “High Adventure Program,” where 8 boys and 3 mentors pack into and out of the Colorado High Country.” Steve went on to say, “In the 1^st-3^rd-year program, the volunteer mentors are one-to-one with the boys, and we have additional volunteer staff of about ten, including a physician and a photographer.

Our biggest corporate contributor is South West Airlines https://www.southwest.com/.

They donate 100 tickets for the children to have free transportation to the camp. That is the equivalent of about $140K. We are most grateful to them.” We also give each boy a backpack with their name on it when they arrive at camp, which contains 5 t-shirts, a fleece jacket, and a cap. They must give back all but the cap and one shirt. We recycle the others for the boys who will attend the next summer's camp.”

Then I asked my final question. “What makes you motivated to get up in the morning,” to which he replied, “When my children were young and left them sleeping when I went to fly a mission, I never left that I didn’t have the thought of what might happen to them if something happened to me. Of course, it did happen to Troy and so many other US soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. I want to be there for as many of those soldier’s children as I can.”

Steve is now retired military and an active firefighter. He and his wife, Suzanne, along with their sons, Jake, 16, and Tanner, 19, currently live in Monument, Colorado.

I would ask each of you to answer the last question for yourself. 

My answer to that question is simple. “I want to find the hope that is in today.” This organization, my friends, brings me hope. My desire is that it does the same for you.

If so, please feel free to follow this link to donate to Knights of Heroes http://knightsofheroes.org/home/donate-now

My Personal Abortion Question?

When I was 25-years-old, I gave birth to my second child, a son named Jesse, who was born with the most severe urological birth defect one can have. Ten years, 36 surgeries, and a million dollars in insurance payments later, along with the loss of my mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health for having been a caregiver 24/7/365, Jesse reached a point where he could live a normal life. He has since had a dozen-plus more surgeries, but is currently living in Denver with his wife, where he is happily married and functioning as a healthy, successful adult.

This story of pain and loss, and my never-ending search for all that is lost in the ashes, is chronicled in my first book Outer Edge of Grace. In that book, I ask many more questions that I attempt to answer.

However, there is one question I asked and to which I found the answer in Scripture. Did God make Jesse like he was born? My paraphrase of Psalm 139: 13-14 says, “For Thou didst form my inward parts when I was yet in mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” That was and is enough for me. Jesse, and all that he is, was never an accident.

God in his faithfulness and his mercy that is new every morning gave me, as Jesse’s mother, the strength and courage to do what I never would have dreamed to do as a very young woman. I am who I am today because of the challenges and the victories I’ve experienced over the course of my life.

Bladder Exstrophy with Epispadius Complex, the birth defect that Jesse had, is a neural tube defect, occurring between five and six weeks of gestation, although it is not until twenty weeks gestation that the bladder fills and empties and can be seen on an ultrasound. Subsequently, many are being aborted because it’s so expensive and time-consuming to care for these children.

Why this long commentary? Because I ran across a powerful video tonight about abortion.

I have known women who have had abortions. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” My goal in this post is not to in any way judge. My goal is to inform and educate. If one woman reads my post, watches this video, and chooses life for her child, it is worth my time.

The video is narrated by Anthony Levatino, MD, who is a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. Dr. Levatino performed over 1200 abortions. The video is very graphic and disturbing. It should be. It is a video demonstrating the brutal murder of unborn children, some of whom could survive outside of the womb.

Why am I sharing? Because after Jesse was born, his father and I decided to have a third child. On the day I found out I was pregnant Jesse had the first of twenty surgeries in fifteen months of time. My oldest daughter, Joy, was only four-years-old. During that first trimester, I lay on the cold tile of our bathroom floor, blaming my ex-husband for getting me pregnant, bitter in that moment for the desperation I felt, as the vomiting of my pregnancy seemed to never end.

I remember finding my feet while wiping my mouth and leaning my weak body against the door jam. In that brief moment I thought to myself, “I know why women go to the abortion clinic,” which was not a mile from our home in Jackson, Mississippi. In that same moment, I learned how very human I am. “But by the grace of God go I.” And, in that same moment, I knew that I carried life inside of me and she was worth the cost. I have my sweet Hannah today because of my conviction. That moment shows only how very weak I am and that moment demonstrates how powerful the Word of God is.

Please take four minutes to watch this video. While it is gruesome in nature, it is no more gruesome than what we watch on our televisions each night. Terrorists who kill en masse are rampant in this world, while abortion clinics are open for business en masse each day, everyday in the United States of America. The difference? Terrorism is illegal and abortion is legal.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. And thank you for taking the time to share this post. Remember: If one life is saved, it is worth my time and yours.

Sarah Beaugez

Essay on Divorce: A commentary on the lack of checks and balances in the Evangelical church

Divorce. One of a the few words for which I had no definition. I really didn’t want to know what the definition might be, for it was not going to happen to me. I was a Christian and I both knew, and practiced, the truth of scripture. It seemed I’d married for the right reason, with the right motive, one who seemed to believe and desire truth as much as I. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end, or better yet, all that glitters is not gold. That’s when I found myself one of the statistics helping to place some kind of parameter on the current meaning.

At that point, the greater question for me became very simple. “What is a marriage?” The answer again is straightforward and anything but simple. God designed marriage for two people to join together and become one, in every way. He designed marriage to be a beautiful partnership, that included always being in communication with him.

However when man fell, when Adam and Eve were filled with the knowledge of good and evil and God cast them out of Eden to struggle in order to make it on this earth due to their rebellion and disobedience, everything that God had designed as good in His sight, fell as well.  Nothing was left out. Weeds suddenly grew where there had been none. Hearts became hard where there had only been love and acceptance. Hatred was spewed, kings became whoremongers, lies were told where only truth had abounded, covetousness was the norm, and adultery, well adultery became a part of the landscape. 

Does man’s fallen state warrant sin or disobedience? No. Paul said where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Does man’s fallen state give cause for rebellion from what God ordained to be of “good repute?” No and no. Let it be stated, “There are no excuses, only explanations.”

Recently, the question was raised to me, “Do you think it a good idea that so-and-so be considered for a position of leadership in the church?” After fifty-five years on this earth, I’ve learned a thing or two, one being that a church leader is as much a sinner as any who sits in the pew. Yes, I understand the scriptural guidelines we have regarding the kind of men who should sit on elder boards and become deacons. I am also acutely aware of the fallen state of the many men I’ve known through the years who sit in such positions.

My answer to the question posed was as follows: I cannot answer that question, for I have personally known more disappointment among church leadership than any other group as a whole, simply because they set themselves up to be wise, and acknowledged by their peers as wise. However, truth and wisdom come only with humility of heart and spirit. I’ve known few with the aforementioned qualities, for the latter is a rare find, indeed. Actually, the men who have fit in that category were not in a position of church leadership at all, one being my own father. They were quiet giants, walking in the truth and light, without position or acknowledgement from anyone but God himself.

Having been completely committed to living with the one to whom I chose betrothal and who became the father of my children, I completely understood and had accepted for myself, the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It’s meaning could not be more clear. Monogamy is the way God designed marriage. However, when the one to whom I chose betrothal, in conjunction with some of those “godly” men who sat on elder boards, passed judgement on me and my marriage, deeming it unworthy to remain intact, I also have a very clear understanding that men are just that, men. 

For further explanation, I must state that after I had been mentally, physically, and emotionally ill, due to no fault of my own, my ex-husband sought counsel as to how long he might have need to put up with me. In other words, my ex-husband sought and received counsel from men of positions of leadership in the church, who gave him cart blanche to divorce me, which he did with great freedom. His disposal, and subsequent ability to deny me what I had rightfully earned in a quarter-century marriage, more than half of my life at the time, was blessed by some leaders of the Evangelical, Bible-believing church.

Although the church is the Body of Christ and should act as a body in simpatico, it sometimes acts in parts, which is exactly what Paul loudly preached to the Corinthians not to do. It mattered not. The Corinthian church acted as pieces of the whole. The piety of man is less clear (or I suppose might be more clear, depending on one's vantage point) when a man sits in a position of leadership in the church, for suddenly it appears that the man has joined the ranks with other men who also believe themselves to be wise. Otherwise they could not fill the position.

It has been my experience that those same men have failed me and my needs, for when I was abandoned by my betrothed, there was not a single man in a position of church leadership, who  made opportunity to inquire as to how I was, or if I might have need of something, save only a handful of lay men, one of whom was my father. Again I am speaking specifically of the male species. I must also state I am speaking of my own expectations.  Of note would be that more women than I could count on several hands, came alongside to help me navigate that thing known as divorce. 

Of all the painful aftermath of divorce, this has been the one thing I’ve not been able to resolve, for I know well the scriptural requirements of those who sit in church leadership. 

I made opportunity to seek out their counsel, to attempt finding answers for so many questions about how I was to live, make it financially, to recognize my failure in the marriage, or how to forgive all that required forgiving. Yes, in this matter, I did as I was commanded. However, the same was not true of those who were to tend to the widows and orphans, of course which I was not one. No again. I was in a category not defined in scripture. I was a divorcee and it had nothing to do with my culpability, or lack thereof.

The church, as a whole, does not have much need for the divorcee, especially those of the female persuasion. Although I attempted to find fellowship, I have yet to find any that has suited my personal needs. Most likely that is more my fault than any other. But when I attempted to apply to mission organizations to serve in Africa, I was not only unwanted, I was unable to apply, for my marital status now mandated whether or not I was godly enough, i.e., suitable enough, to share the gospel. I was suddenly, and without warning, tainted goods.

Now, I return to some of my earlier questions. Should so-and-so be considered for a position of church leadership? My answer? “But by the grace of God goes any who would be, or are currently serving, in positions of church leadership” I am a sinner saved by grace. My contemporaries currently serving in the capacity of leadership, or, have served during the last nine years since my divorce, are also sinners saved by grace. I’m sure all would contend the same, for they know scripture or they wouldn’t be in the leadership positions they have been placed, but more rightly, have placed themselves.

Do I believe them all to be pious, insensitive, so-and-so’s? Absolutely not. However, it must be again stated, that my experience is just that, my experience, and is the only one to which I can give voice. I have yet to be approached with those questions, “How are you and is there anything that I can do to help?” I have been told by one of those men who’s counsel I sought, that God did not give us what is required to deal with divorce. He gave us what we need to deal with death or adultery or lying or cheating or… but there is nothing God could have done to prepare us for divorce.

Oh my, have I thought on that comment more than a few time in the last nine years. Although everything stated for provision by God happened to also be needs since the fall of man, it seems, according to this Body's belief, that God somehow forgot what he promised. In other words, how could He say that he has provided all that we need, but left that one situation, divorce, out of the equation. My contention is quite simply, “My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory.” Philippians 4:19

Oh, I know how this observation made by lil ole me can be, and may well be, taken apart, piece by piece, one side looking at it from dispensation, the other looking at it from a Covenant viewpoint, and of course there are many on either side or in between those two very large words that carry very weighty meaning, as well.

My point? This essay is a statement of my personal struggle. I struggle that all of those trained, godly men, who are placed in a position of leadership, and how they choose whom they might lead instead of realizing that all with whom they have contact, those for whom they are to be shepherds, are only sheep.

In conclusion, I have no answers, only questions. However I do know this to be true: “God has never left or forsaken me, regardless of the situation. He will give his angels charge concerning me, to guard me in all my ways. He will remain faithful and his grace will be new every morning.”

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