"I'm scared, not of them, but of myself."

Terry Anderson writes in his book Den of Lions that in March 1987 a state department bureaucrat named Michael Mahoney told Terry's sister, Peg Say, that the hostages were being "devalued." Can you imagine being told that about your loved one? The kidnappers escalated; they began making death threats. A message was sent from Washington to the kidnappers that if a hostage were killed, America would definitely strike. A U.S. Navy task force hovered off Beirut. "The threats died off."

Senator Patrick Moynihan of New York vowed (and made sure it did) that Anderson's name would appear in the Congressional Record every day until he was free. "In Beirut, Lebanese television carried a videotape of Anderson's two-year-old daughter, Sulome, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. "Our hearts are broken. Where is Daddy," she asked, waving a picture of her father. The Lebanese announcer came back on the screen wiping tears from his eyes. "Madeleine wrote, "It is not easy to be helpless when you know the one you love is suffering."

Terry had thought he was doing well, but one day his emotions just roared to the surface, and he began banging his head against the wall. He had just about stopped asking God for freedom. Now he was asking for strength, patience and acceptance. But this episode of frustration scared him, and he realized that he "might not be able to make it." "I'm scared, not of them, but of myself." The young guards were not often vicious, but always "stupid, lazy, and indifferent."

You know how much I love the sky, if you are one who has put up with my blog photos so frequently. In his seven years in captivity Terry was not allowed to look at the sky after one five minute opportunity in 1985. I cannot imagine.