Did You Bring Your Gloves? by Gail Purath

The army has changed a lot in the last 35 years, but in 1973 when my husband went to Officer Candidate School (OCS) it was “old army” all the way.

OCS candidates were asked to do the impossible. For example, they had to maintain a perfect living area in the barracks, and there was a rule for absolutely everything. A man could actually be punished if one of the pencils in his desk was too short or if a button wasn’t buttoned on a uniform hanging in the closet! Because inspections came without warning (often in the middle of the night), candidates learned to maintain one set of personal items for “display” and another for use.

Believing that large doses of stress revealed a man’s emotional stamina, the instructors diligently harassed the candidates. Constant mealtime interruptions prevented the men from finishing their meals so they lived in a perpetual state of hunger. (It wasn’t unusual for one of us wives to get a late night “secret” order for 80 Big Macs to be left in a specified trash can outside the barracks!)

The physical training (often consisting of long runs in Army boots) forced a percentage of the class to retake the course due to injuries. Michael (23 years old at the time) persevered despite painful shin splints.

Because it was impossible to complete assignments in the time allowed, the men secretly studied and did chores after the official lights-out. They rarely got more than three or four hours of sleep, and sometimes slept fully dressed on top of their beds in order to be ready for reveille.*

While our husbands were going through this training, we wives were also learning how to become “good officers’ wives.” We had to learn about military protocol and social life: the rank system, the names and meanings of military functions, the difference between a tea and a coffee, when to wear gloves and a hat, what not to wear when we went grocery shopping, how to plan and give specific unit events, and how to treat our “superiors.”

The Colonel’s wife who led our group taught us a number of rules, one of which I will never forget. She emphasized that at any formal event, we must wear gloves in case the commanding officer’s wife wore gloves. To shake her gloved hand with an ungloved hand would be extremely rude, and any good officer’s wife would have a pair of gloves in her evening bag to be prepared. But she assured us that for the upcoming formal event she would not be wearing gloves.

When we showed up for that formal dinner and dance a few weeks later, all of us who had put a pair of gloves in our purse breathed a sigh of relief. There stood the Colonel’s wife at the head of the receiving line extending her gloved hand. I believe she took great delight in her little trick.

Although OCS accomplished some of what it set out to do—weed out men who were unable to meet the stresses and demands of combat leadership (more than half of the class dropped out before completion), it did it with arbitrary and meaningless rules, rules that focused on outward display and required dishonesty.

When I became a Christian a couple of years later, I couldn’t help but compare the OCS method of training to God’s methods. God’s rules are never arbitrary and meaningless. Instead, His commands reflect His character and prevent us from harm. Never is God interested in our outward “displays”—He is interested in our hearts.

Unlike the Colonel's wife, God never says one thing but does another. He never tricks us nor does He delight in our failures. From the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God has been open and honest with mankind. He gave Adam and Eve only one rule and He clearly explained the consequences of breaking it. And He took no delight in their defeat. In fact, He picked them up on the field of that defeat and offered them the hope of redemption—a redemption that cost Him His Son.

Whatever God asks of us is not only possible, but He gives us the Holy Spirit to help us accomplish it. His training leads us into deepening honesty, never into deception. And the most amazing thing about God’s training is that His purpose is not to weed out the weak—His purpose is to strengthen them!

*reveille is a sunrise wake-up bugle call