ESOAL

As warning for all of you who have complained about my long blogs before…you'd be better off if you stopped now. I'm about to embark on a very long story about my ESOAL. My Emotionally Stretching Opportunity of A Lifetime. If you want to know in two short words how ESOAL was: it was horrible, and it was intense. If that makes you wonder what I mean…by all means, be my guest and read on.

This is what the HA website says about ESOAL, and it doesn't even come close:
ESOAL (e-saul) ESOAL(Emotionally Stretching Opportunity of A Lifetime) is an optional LTE designed to stretch interns physically and emotionally. Interns routinely select ESOAL as the most popular and productive LTE. Being stretched through simple repetition allows interns to confront potential problem areas in their lives that often go undetected. The Honor Academy staff works intensely with interns during the LTE to ensure that the interns take full advantage of this unique learning opportunity.
I love the part that says "the HA staff works intensely with interns … to ensure that they take full advantage of this unique learning opportunity." That makes me laugh.

I hope this inspires some of you to wonder just how justified you are in complaining about anything…ever. I am not even justified. Some of my friends are still out there being emotionally and mentally shot at all the time while they are physically beaten, and here I am clean and well-rested and well-fed. Beyond that, there are people in other countries being persecuted for their faith, and they have no bell to "ring out" with. They have no "Plan B" or way to get around their torture. Keep that in mind as you read this, and don't feel sorry for me. I didn't feel sorry for myself. I had no right. So here's the story of my ESOAL.

It started at 8pm Wednesday night. We all went up to the auditorium and sat with our companies and platoons. Right after the mountain trip, they had organized all 400 of us into 13 companies. In each company there were 5-6 platoons, and in each platoon there were 5-7 people. Each platoon was led by one of us, called the "sergeant major," the company was led by another intern, called the "second lieutenant." The company was facilitated by staff; the major, captain, and lieutenant. These three were there to make us do physical labor, run us through "evolutions" (the physical exercises we did), and yell at us. There were also a lot of other facilitators who would walk around and just pick on people…unfortunately I knew too many, and they'd come and yell at me saying I was dragging down my team and that I was a dead weight and that I should just go ring the bell because I was only hurting my team, all of these lies that are just thrown at us to beat us mentally and emotionally. Let me tell you; it's awful when your gauntlet core advisor comes up to you during ESOAL and starts telling you that you're failing your team, when she was so sweet two days before that. It kills your spirit. They made us wear kids army helmets. And we painted our numbers and company names on them. Mine said 09-03-355 on the front and Michigan on the side. That's company nine, platoon three, and personal number 355. Our company name was Michigan, after the state…all companies were named after different states.

Mr. Hasz, the director of the Honor Academy, was leading the whole thing. During ESOAL, we are supposed to call him "General Hasz." IN case you haven't figured it out already, everything was going like a military boot camp – except ESOAL is a lot more emotionally painful. And instead of saying "yes, sir" it's "whoo-yah, sir." Don't ask me why…all I know is that if you said "yes" instead of "whoo-yah" you were going to be doing pushups or army low-crawls across the football field. (That is crawling on your elbows with your legs flat behind you…the insides of my knees are rainbow-colored from the bruises and they are quite raw from the grass, and my forearms and elbows are bruised from this as well…we did army low-crawls a LOT…not just for punishment.)

So in the auditorium, we sat in our companies and platoons. General Hasz walks up and says, "So this year we are doing things a little different. This year, my friend here, he's a retired NAVY SEAL, is going to be helping us facilitate. He has also helped us come up with some of the evolutions we will be doing throughout the course of ESOAL." I'm thinking, "Oh, shoot. Forget finishing…I'm going to die here!" So this navy seal vet gets up and he's talking to us for about an hour and a half about the attitude and the heart of a seal…it was just intense. The whole time I was getting more and more scared.

After he was done, General Hasz had us all get over to the Student Activity Center (the SAC, it's basically indoor basketball courts – where the missionaries eat meals during the summer) "with alacrity" (basically quickly and efficiently). So we ran over there and stood at "attention" until they came over to give us further orders. They came over and said that they were going to give us some rest time, and they turned out all of the lights, and all of the facilitators left. So it was just us interns hanging out and waiting. We didn't know if we were supposed to sleep or just sit there. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the dark, we realized that they meant that we were supposed to go to bed. But we're on hard floors, and it's cold! They had the air conditioning WAY up…It was basically impossible to sleep because it was so cold. So I didn't sleep at all. I was just laying there, scared out of my mind. I didn't know what to think. We're just waiting…and waiting…and waiting. I felt so alone and small. As much as I wanted to, I was NOT going to cry, I kept telling myself that. All I could do was to keep saying the three scripture verses they had had us memorize, and I was saying them over and over in my head: 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Isaiah 21:3-4, and James 1:2-4. That helped a little…but I really just needed to sleep and I couldn't.

I don't know how long we were there. It felt like forever, but it was probably only 4 hours, max. Then our second lieutenants, who had been watching all night for the facilitators to come back, started yelling, "Everybody UP! They're coming, they're coming!" So we all jumped up and stood at attention. Then we heard one long whistle, so we dropped down on our faces. Two whistles, so we got in the low-crawl position, and the whistles kept coming, so we started crawling over one another to get towards the whistles. I was carrying my water bottle in my teeth because we were told to carry our things with us everywhere. We were crawling towards this wall, when a garage door started opening in the wall, and all the facilitators were standing at the door, shooting at us with blank shots, and lights were flashing and sirens were going. Guys, this may sound like a stupid game to you, but in the moment, it is terrifying. I honestly was afraid for my life. Any calming thoughts from before that they couldn't kill us were gone. I had forgotten them and all I was thinking was, "What can I do to survive?" So we got to the doorway, and they had us run down to the football field, where we began the hardest corporate exercise I have ever experienced at the Honor Academy.

Normally, in corporate, you can stop whatever you're doing if you feel like you can't do anymore, and you jog in place. You're not allowed to jog in place at ESOAL. You either make yourself keep doing it, or they'll give you alternate: army crawls, which you don't want to do. Ever. I thought my arms were going to fall off because we did overhead claps for so long. They also changed the rules, we were no longer allowed to say "eleven" when counting, it went back to one. So if you said eleven, you get to go up front, where they give you more work to do, like flutter kicks, where you're on your back with your hands under your rear, and your feet have to stay off the ground while you point your toes and do little kicks. It kills your upper legs and your abs. I said eleven once…so up to the front I went. Throughout this corporate, our major, captain, and lieutenant were going around "mentally" beating us with comments, and then saying things like: "if you ring the bell, think of your nice warm bed, and the food you'll get to eat," stuff like that. It's horrible. During that corporate, they called all of the sergeant majors forward, and they were each given a 7ft cross made out of 2x4s. They painted "Michigan" on the crossbeam, and our platoon number (03) on the top. The sergeant major had to carry this with us everywhere throughout the rest of ESOAL.

After the most awful corporate ever, we all marched over to the soccer field, in front of the pavilion. They were going to feed us breakfast. So our sergeant majors went over and brought back three "units" of food for each person in our platoon. It was baby food. Nasty baby food. I got two cans of this apple sauce stuff, but it was not just apple sauce – it definitely had something else in it, because it made me gag. The last one I had was this bacon stuff. HORRIBLE. Ugh! It was so gross. You had to eat with your dirty fingers, too, because we weren't given utensils, and it was too solid to drink it.

Throughout this whole time, people are ringing out right and left, and every time someone rings out, you can hear the bell ring across campus. If people are ringing out at a meal time, General Hasz will say their number, "462 is on the bell," and we all have to say, "462 is on the bell, ring well." We are not allowed to call anyone by name. If you do, on accident, you do army low-crawls. My number was 355. Basically for the whole time you're at ESOAL, you do not have a name. You are not known as an individual, but a big group of people who are all punished together. You are worthless and very insignificant, and you are told that no one cares if you just quit and go home. It seriously kills your morale. You feel so defeated. That might be why so many people rang out so early. By 11 a.m. on Thursday, about 160 of the starting 400 had already rung out. As you're watching these people, there are a lot of thoughts going through your mind. In some cases, I was disgusted with some people, because they rang out so early that there was no way they had reached BAR (Burial And Resurrection) or really even started suffering. It's also depressing, because you know they're going back to rest, and you've got a long way to go. (By Friday, though, General Hasz was asking facilitators to go easier on their companies, physically, because so many people were ringing out. They had barely started the emotional ESOAL, and over half had already rung out.)

After our delicious breakfast on Thursday morning, my company marched further back on campus to this stretch of open road, known as the "maniac mile." (It was the runway for Keith Green's plane when this was the campus for his ministry before he sold it to Teen Mania.) We stopped next to this school bus, and out major told us that we would be competing among our five platoons to see who could pull it the furthest. Mine barely got it 4 inches. Other platoons got it 6-10 feet. The feeling after trying something like that and falling so far short is so depressing. Not only that, but they're yelling at us, "Second place is first loser! You're all losers!" It just kills your will to keep going. So we did squats and pushups and other stuff as punishment for losing.

Then they marched us back over to the soccer field, and there is this hill at the top of the soccer field. They sat us down and began quizzing us on facts about Michigan. Each company was named after a state, and ours was Michigan. We were told before ESOAL that we should memorize facts about our state, so we all knew the capital, the state flower, tree, bird, etc. But they asked us questions like, "what was the FIRST capital of Michigan? What is the name of the bridge between the two peninsulas? What states border Michigan?" We didn't have anyone in our platoon who was from Michigan, so no one knew these things. So they made us roll the hill. You might be thinking, "Rolling down hills? Psh, that's fun!" No, it's not. Not when the distance you are rolling is close to 100 meters, it's rocky, and you ate only an hour or so earlier. Almost everyone throws up. And when you are down in the dirt, throwing up baby food, dizzy, disoriented, and you know that this isn't even close to the worst of it, I cannot even begin to describe to you the defeated feeling you get in your heart. And this feeling keeps coming, over and over and over and over again. After you get to the bottom of the hill, you get to hop back up and answer another question. And we got that wrong, so down we go again, and this time you begin to roll in other people's vomit.

Next we marched over to the obstacle course. On the way, we learned a "team spirit" building cadence about our state, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of Michigan, and to the state for which it stands! Two beautiful peninsulas united by a bridge of steel! For equal opportunity and justice our ideal!" We repeated it over and over…not fun, especially because I am a Seattleite 100%. I'll sing for Seattle all night long, but not for Michigan.

So we got over to the obstacle course, and our company was competing as platoons. The first part are three 5ft log walls to climb over. Then there is a 4ft deep tunnel covered with a tarp that you had to army low-crawl through. It was really dusty and you were basically breathing the Texas red dirt, and it was rocky so you got a lot of bruises, and when you came out, you had red dirt outlining your teeth. Blech…then we did over-under-over-under on these 2x4s they'd set up. Then we climbed a 12ft cliff with a net hanging over the side, and we came down a little path. Then we had to climb the cliff again, but our platoon had to carry a barrel this time. We got down from that and we had to dive into this ditch that was about 8 feet deep, and the opening was covered with a tarp, but the space was only about a foot and a half open, and we couldn't touch the tarp or we'd have to do it all over, I touched it. So there I went. Next we had to Tarzan swing across a little pond on some ropes, and then we ran through a bunch of tires. That was the end.

We marched away from that and we spent the next two hours just marching around the campus. Marching and singing our little Michigan song. Every time General Hasz would drive by, we had to assemble at the side of the road as fast as we could to stand at attention. He'd drive by really slow and stare at us. Very unnerving. It sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it.

Then we marched back to the obstacle course, but all of the companies were doing it together this time. And they had taken a major hosing to the course. So we got to the tunnels and it was muddy. They were spraying us with a really powerful hose at the over-under-over-under part, and by the time we got to the deep ditch, it was a pond, so we were practically swimming in it. We got done with that course, and we all looked like unidentifiable muddy animals.

All of the companies then marched over to the soccer fields, and we were led to the top of another field, and on the other side was a big pond. We had to walk through this pond, which was about as high as mid-stomach on me, and we had to carry our platoon cross above our heads without letting it get wet the whole time. So you couldn't fall or slip. The bottom of the pond was really slippery and it kept shifting as you would walk, making it difficult not to fall.

Then they took us to lunch. They gave us four minutes to eat pizza. We were surprised that they were feeding us pizza, because we'd expected nasty foods. But they said that they were pushing us more physically than any other year, and we'd need the carbs. Ha! Next, our major marched us over to the hill again, and yep, we got to roll it. Right after eating pizza. I cannot tell you how awful it was to be vomiting pizza. I will spare you the graphic details, but it was much worse than that morning. We rolled the hill twice, and both times I was a mess by the time I got to the bottom. Be thinking dizzy, my head was throbbing, and I was seriously considering the friendly bell at that point. I kept telling myself that I could not take another roll down that hill, and I'd ring out if they made us do it again. And then I rolled it again, my determination to go on was seriously only coming from God at this point. I had nothing left, and it was only lunchtime on the first day!

Then our major marched us back into ETAC (don't remember what that means, but it's their ropes course) and they took us to the paintball course. We get there, and they tell us that one person at a time from each platoon will be going into the course to retrieve as many flags as possible without getting hit by out captain or our major, who will be shooting at us with the guns. We will have six shots each, and when we're out of ammo, we are allowed to come out of the course. I was petrified going in. I've never done paintball before, and we're all wearing spandex and under armor because we were told to wear clothes that would dry fast, and I'm thinking, "If I get shot, this is going to hurt!" I also bruise really easily, not that I wasn't already REALLY bruised, but I didn't want to be shot at, that just scared me. So It came my turn, and I just grabbed as many flags as I could while I was trying to keep moving to avoid all the shot coming my way. I grabbed as many as I could see (7) and then I blindly shot in the direction of where the shots were coming from until my six were gone. So I yelled, "out of ammo," and started to run out. Other people were coming in, though, so my major was shooting at them, and got me in the hip with a stray bullet. Ow. But not as bad as I thought. I have a little bruise, but It didn't feel any worse than Air soft bullets. I guess my body was numbing itself to a lot of the pain, because normally, I think it should have hurt more if it got me enough to give me a bruise the size of a thumbprint.

After that evolution was over, we marched down to the football field. We lined up and guess who showed up to facilitate us for this evolution…yep, the good ol' navy seal. This guy is massive, in case you were wondering. He's this 5'6" ( I think…I just know he was pretty short) black guy with a buzzed head and he looks like a GI-Joe. I'm not even kidding. So he takes us out of our platoons and lines us up with people who have close height ratios. So I get put with three other guys, while the other teams have 5-6 people – we have four, and I'm the only girl. I'm thinking that I'm going to die right about now. So he sets it up so that we grab hands and run as fast as we can to go around him without touching him and get back before the other platoons. He's walking away from us the entire time. So I got lucky on this one. My team won every time, and it was definitely because we all had long legs. For all those times I said running did not give me an advantage because of my long legs, I was wrong. It definitely does…I just never strode out as much as I could or should have before. The teams that lost had to bench press these massive logs, while doing flutter kicks…so their arms are dying at the same time as their abs and their legs. I don't know how they kept their logs from smashing their faces. I am so lucky that they didn't get to my team in time to make us do that. It was awful just to hear about it. Then he has us pick up the logs and carry them to pass the team in front of us. We made it, but we were jogging with this log, and it kept bouncing off of my shoulder because the guy behind me wasn't holding it steady. That hurt.

Our major took us over to another part of the football field then, and we started doing flutter kicks, pushups, squats, overhead claps, and of course, a whole lot of army low-crawls. Then our major lined us up and said we would have a chance to earn a reward for our team, if one member from each platoon would go forward and do 50 stars. Stars: basically, you start in a squatting position, and you jump as high as you can while you spread your arms and legs as far as you can. It kills after about 10, so thinking 50 was almost impossible. Without thinking, I was like, "I'll do it." (This was part of my ESOAL, becoming selfless and sacrificing myself for my team). SO I did them, and the whole time my lieutenant was yelling at me to jump higher and to spread my arms wider, and stuff like that. But somehow, God put enough strength in me to finish them. And I won my platoon a Gatorade. Those electrolytes were much needed, let me tell you.

So then our major trucks us off to a grassy hill behind the obstacle course. He tells us we're going to be playing hide-and-go-seek. What? Basically, we had to make it back to where we'd just been on the football field, and we have to do it before all the other platoons, so that we don't lose, or become second (first loser) and we have to do it without getting caught by our major, captain, lieutenant, or any other random instructor that may happen to be wandering around. If we were caught, punishment would be awaiting us. My team made it, thank goodness. We tied with another platoon, so that was okay. It was scary, though, because we'd see the car with our major in it driving around – so close to us – and it just freaks you out. But we did it!

We all marched over to the soccer fields in front of the bell to "wave goodbye to the sun." And General Hasz was making it sound very bad that the sun was going down, because we would be "wishing for our friend the sun the whole night long." It was a very uncomfortable and foreboding feeling that we all got then. Shivers again. For dinner, we got these cans of Chef Boyardee noodles and ground beef, and some rolls. The good food surprised us, and I'm thinking, "Oh, no…here come the hills." But we needed the carbs to keep us going, so down the tube they went. I felt even more like an animal. More people were ringing out. My manager, Mr. Kyles, was the major for another company (Maine) and he came over to me at this point and asked how I was doing, and I had to respond correctly (whoo-yah, Major, etc.), but then he said, "Keep going strong, girl. I know you can make it. If anyone can make it, you can make it." And then he walked away. I hadn't cried at all in ESOAL yet. I hadn't felt any emotion, I was just doing it. But at that point, Mr. Kyles' words made me miss my Dad more than anything. I cried silently for a couple of minutes then, but I had to stop fast, because the facilitators pick on you more if you're crying, because they think you're close to ringing out. I just missed my Daddy! It had hardly anything to do with ESOAL! I probably looked miserable, with a muddy, sunburned face, and tears streaking trails in the dirt. It makes me laugh at myself now. I didn't cry again, though.

Then they marched us up to the auditorium to watch a movie. Okay, this movie was long and boring. It was about these two guys climbing a mountain in Peru, and how one of them broke his leg coming down the mountain, and his friend left him for dead, but he made it all the rest of the way down on his own. Kind of like a National Geographic documentary. Not horribly boring, but nothing I would choose to watch for very long. But the catch was, you couldn't fall asleep. And if you started to, they would send you to the back of the room to dunk your head in a bucket of ice water to wake you up. And there was a test at the end. Before the movie started, though, Mr. Kyles came up to me and handed me half of a banana, and then later he tossed a little bunch of grapes at me! It was so nice! I shared them with my platoon, and they were all like, "where did you get that?! How do you know Mr. Kyles?" It was kind of funny, but it was really nice to know that someone was looking out for me.

After the test, which I passed, we were taken out to the hill again. And we got to roll it twice. And I threw up. After hopping back to the top the second time, we stood at attention for about half an hour, and I was swaying because I was so dizzy and tired. I came so close to passing out. At that point, I knew that my body couldn't take it anymore. I was talking to another guy in my platoon, and I was like, "Kyle, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to collapse if I keep doing this," and he was going through the same thing, so we both went to our lieutenant together to tell her we were going to ring out. And then we walked down the hill to ring the bell.

There were about fifteen of us waiting to ring the bell. General Hasz has to ring out each person. He came down and we got in line to ring out. It was my turn and he came up to me and asked, "Did you give it 100%?" "Yes, sir." "Do you have any regrets?" "No, sir." Then he paused, and he asked me something that he hadn't asked anyone else from what I heard, and he goes, "Are you full of joy?" I paused, and I realized that I was! After all of the awful things I had gone through, the only emotion that I felt was joy! So I smiled really big, and I said, "Yes, sir! I am!" And he said, "Okay, I'm very proud of you, go ring the bell." And he shook my hand, and I rang out. Then I put down my helmet among all of the others that were laid out, and it was over. My ESOAL was over.

I took a quick rinse-off shower in the ESOAL showers, and by the time I had hobbled back to my dorm, it was almost 2am. When I rang out, I had thought it was 10pm! I had lasted 29 hours of ESOAL!

Here's what I said about BAR before I left:
The purpose is for us to achieve BAR: Burial and Resurrection. To die to ourselves. To get to the point where we no longer care what happens to us, because we have reached the point where no emotion, anger, frustration, self-pity, etc. is there. At that point, we can ring the bell to end "our" ESOAL, or you can stay in till the end of the five days. I want to stay in and FINISH finish ESOAL. Each person finishes when they reach BAR, but FINISH finishing is going to the end.  ESOAL is optional. I chose it because I want to die to myself. And I don't want to...because it won't be fun, but I know I need to be stretched...so that's why I signed up. And you are allowed to ring out whenever you want to, but I want to go to the end, so I will have no regrets.
Thinking back, I was going through BAR the entire time I was at ESOAL. My emotional ESOAL started on September 5th. Some of you know why. I've been dying to myself ever since. ESOAL took the physical strength out of me, and it brought me to a point of self-sacrifice. In realizing that I had no emotion during the entire 29 hours – no anger, no self-pity, nothing like that, I knew that I had been going through BAR the whole 29 hours. I was scared, but that was because that was what they evoked through what they were saying to us, and how they were talking to us. I wanted to go to the end. My heart wanted to, but my body couldn't keep doing it. So I have no regrets because I physically could NOT go on anymore, but I'm a little bit annoyed with my body for holding me back. That's the only regret that I have. But I think that if I had stayed in, and if I had finished, I think I would have had to deal with a lot of pride issues afterwards. I don't know. There's not enough time in life to dwell on the what-ifs.

ESOAL is still going. They ate the nasty stuff for lunch yesterday – pig intestines and ice cream with live worms in it and cow tongue and stuff like that. Last night they marched for an hour – jogged, actually – to "thin out" a bunch of people. Most of my friends rang out before me, but a few come back at random times of the day or night. They stagger into the dorms, take a shower, and collapse into bed for hours and hours. Since ESOAL ended for me, I have slept a total of 24 hours. I slept from 3am Friday to 3pm Friday, then I slept 10 hours the next night, until this morning, and then I took a 2 hour nap after breakfast today. I've never been so sore in my life. It hurts to move. It's funny to watch people stagger up the stairs in the cafeteria, knowing that we all look just as funny.

ESOAL ends completely tomorrow at 3pm, I'm told. Tomorrow morning they have a "Glory March" at 4am, where they will be marching around the dorms. We who have rung out are allowed to come out and give them food and juice and stuff. Believe me, I'll be out there. My entire platoon, 7 people, have all rung out, except one; my friend Tim, and you can bet we'll all be out there cheering them on!

So it's over. And for all of you who were worried, I'm not injured, just sore. Even after writing this whole thing (it's a little over 8 pages in a Word Document, sorry, everybody!) I still don't feel like I've really given the feel for it, but I guess it takes experiencing ESOAL to really know what it's like. I'm excited, because HA alumni can come back for ESOAL if they want to. They don't have to be at the HA for a second year to come back for that ESOAL. So maybe I'll do it next year even if I'm home. And I've heard we can bring family members and friends to do it, if they want to, too. So any takers? Believe me, you'll be stretched and totally changed, and you'll come out wishing you'd stayed in.

Friday, September 29, 2006