The Soldier's Ride

A busy, harried career woman is forced to pull her car into a quiet and peaceful veteran's cemetery when she has mechanical trouble. After calling for help, she decides to leave the hot car and sit on a bench beneath a shade tree, overlooking the neat rows of crosses. As she waits impatiently, fiddling with her PDA and laptop computer, she hardly notices an elderly woman who comes from nowhere to sit beside her.The old woman begins a conversation, ignoring the businesswoman's lack of interest, and then proceeds to tell her?without even asking if she wants to hear it?what turns out to be an amazing story. It is the tale of a young soldier and his journey from an idyllic small-town home to a World War II battlefield on an island in the South Pacific. The soldier writes a long letter every day to the girl back home that he pledged to marry when he returned from the war. He talks of his desire to raise a family and become a minister as they had planned. Then, in a heroic act, the young soldier saves the lives of several of his buddies but, in the process, he is seriously wounded and loses his eyesight. When the young soldier returns home, he is bitter and refuses to marry his sweetheart. He claims he does not want to saddle her with the responsibility of caring for a cripple for the rest of his life, turning his back on her and God. She tries to share with him her outlook on life, her belief that God uses such tragedies to direct us toward achieving greater things in our ride through life, but the soldier refuses to listen and shuts her out of his dark, hopeless world. However, God does have bigger plans for both the soldier and the woman. With the help of some of the men whose lives he saved, the soldier's fiance makes him see God's purpose and that he can not only be a miracle himself but lead others through rough road on life's perilous ride.Then the businesswoman, captivated by the old woman's story, experiences a miracle in her own life. A final revelation shows the busy executive that her stop at the soldiers? cemetery that day, and her encounter with the old woman and a couple more "angels," were no mere coincidences. The mystery of how these three people and their fates are intertwined will offer hope for those who are hurting or who have loved ones of their own fighting a distant war.The story is a salute to veterans everywhere, regardless the war, and the sacrifice they make for their country. It is also a story of those who are left behind and the sacrifices they make in wartime as well. This theme resonates strongly with what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places today. But this is primarily the story of a love and faith that even a world war could not kill and of all the good that comes from what appears to be tragedy.