Three Cheers For The Red, White, and Blue

Do you have a Bucket List? I have not developed mine but if I had, meeting this man would have been one of those items. Ten years ago just after 911, I agreed to send a package to "Any Soldier" through a ministry of the church in Nashville, TN. To my amazement, the recipient of my package wrote me back in the form of a hand-written letter. This began a penpal friendship between us. Sometimes hand-written letters, sometimes email, we communicated with each other about our families, his prayer needs, prayer needs of his men, etc. Lt. Cmdr. Mark "Mutha" Hubbard was flying off the USS Constellation in the Middle East and was in charge of a number of other pilots in his squadron. After his deployment he went to Rhode Island to War College and we lost track of each other when he left there. Fast forward to Sept. 28, 2011. In a conversation with friends of 33 years who live in CA, I discovered that these friends, too, knew my long-lost friend, Mark Hubbard. The next day I was able to share coffee with now Capt. Mark Hubbard who has served in the US Navy for 27 years. He is the Flight Wing Commander over all pilots at NAS Lemoore, CA, the very air station where my husband and I spent our early married days together in 1978. Meeting Ronald Reagan or either President Bush would not have thrilled me more, especially since I had a prior relationship with Capt. Hubbard. What a precious gift from God! How many people have we all prayed for in our lives that we never met or saw fruits of those prayers. Yet, we still pray on the behalf of others because we are instructed to do so from God's Word. If that is not enough of a thrill, this godly man may actually be in Nashville this winter where my husband and I could minister to him in our own home. There just are no words except to thank my Lord and Savior for this most incredible moment.