Heroes Behind Walls.

If walls could talk, I would tell you the names of heroes I witness everyday. They walk in, with their own baggage, carrying the weight of worlds on their shoulders, and I watch them toss it all to their backs like a soldier ready for rucking and ready for war. Over the years I’ve watched them carry it all and manage to make it out alive. My walls are filled with their knowledge, their wisdom and facts some people will never know.

Any typical day between August and May, they enter my walls and step on to a battlefield that only the veterans that have gone before them fully understand. Some mornings, they sneak in and in stealthily fashion they take their post waiting for infantry. I hear their deep breaths in preparation of the attacks. The silence deafening, their quickening pulse becomes the proverbial pin dropping. They gather their thoughts and plan their strategic attacks. I count the minutes because I know they are coming. She sits, even prays because she knows too and she must be ready.

Then the sounds of faint footsteps fill the walkways outside my walls. Shrills and screams get closer as they approach. Now running fast, they are in view as I peer through a small sliver of a window. The first ones arrive. Bursting through the door, she rises and I watch her calculate her every move. Outnumbered, she fights smart like Liam Neeson in…well in any action movie he’s ever starred in. Mrs. Neeson now uses her environment to extinguish and disarm all she can. Gracefully separating enemy lines, so she knows when and where to attack because civilians are with her. Innocents walking among the fire. Little lives unaware that an enemy walks among them. I watch as the battle begins.

I watch the way Neeson looks at them. I watch the way she talks to them: gently— yet direct. She commands them attention making sure they know the severity of what lurks within. Protecting their innocence, she calls them to be watchful and wary. Little do they know that she is training them to protect the innocent too. Something every commander charges their troops to do.

For eight hours she fights. She fights for their freedom to know, their opportunity to grow and for them to feel the power that knowledge can give them. Very rarely does she sit down. I watch her struggle to stop the ambushes of apathy, depression, pride, bullies, and broken lives. She dodges bullets as shots of anger and rage are launched from the mouths of the innocent. The enemy hides within walls—the walls of their brokenness. A sneaky little devil, he looks for the cracks in innocent walls thinking no one will look there. But strategically Mrs. Neeson lures him out and he knows the minute she locks eyes with him that she’s won. She fights for healing.

However, this lady is not only fighting to defend the innocent; she’s fighting to stay alert and alive. The days are long, the months are longer and the exhaustion wears thin her physical, mental and emotional conditions. Within my walls she’s fighting—learning challenges, family problems, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, time, anxiety, stress, depression, anger, lack of confidence, deadlines, labels, intolerance, drugs, addiction…and I clearly see they are not her own problems. They are the problems, the issues, the challenges of her troops. Her 8 hour battle is for someone else’s freedom—not her own.

Her problems are still stuffed in that ruck. They still hang on her back “weighting” the day's end. Oh but they’re there. I see them, I feel them weighing her down. I see the droop in her shoulders. I watch her posture change. She winches in pain and even wipes the tears from her eyes before anyone notices. I notice—-because I know her better than anyone else does. I’ve spent years listening to her. And if walls could talk, I would tell you the stories of her victories. I would name the innocents that she’s rescued, talked down from the ledge, and pushed to the top of the ridge, so they could see what they have overcome. Hundreds of lives changed because she helped them win against the dark side that tried to hide itself within the broken pieces of their hearts, minds, homes etc… I would shout accolades from the rooftops of school buildings everywhere, so the world would know exactly the battles these soldiers are fighting everyday for the future. Future leaders, future peacekeepers, future injustice fighters, future citizens that will know they are ENOUGH! And—that they can make the difference and help others fight the demons hiding within their walls too!

Mrs. Neeson doesn’t just fight to win future readers. She fights to win—feelers, givers and compassioneers. She fights for them to understand the world around them. She doesn’t just fight for them to know how to simplify fractions. She fights for them to multiply life. Then at the end of every 8 hour battle, I watch her walk away. Most days emptied, some days full, but everyday carrying her own ruck, now maybe fuller than it was that morning. I never see her unload the problems in her own pack, but as she closes my door I whisper a prayer that someone is fighting for my Mrs. Neeson. And I smile, knowing that I have witnessed some of the greatest warriors within my walls.