“Combat Trauma and PTSD are not just psychological conditions. They are spiritual as well.”
This wisdom comes from Cru Military, a Christian ministry with a dual focus: 1) helping the military community, and 2) training, equipping, and supporting individuals, churches, and ministries seeking to minister to the military in their midst.
Cru Military has resources to help individuals and churches come alongside service men and women with Combat Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, to help these wounded souls “take the steps of courage necessary to find the peace, the calm, the healing that God can bring.”
Lord, we thank you for Cru’s vision to partner with local churches and reach out to the “military in our midst” with the love of Christ. Bring healing to hurting souls, in Jesus’ name.
One thing that is vital in dealing with PTSD is that to a large degree it’s not a ‘wounding’; it’s a fulfillment. There’s a poster that says, ‘PTSD is knowing you’ll never be this awesome again’, and that is VERY true.
Combat hones body, mind and soul for things that are, by and large, simply not part of civilian life, and their absence makes life in The World flat and a bit silly. A surprisingly large number of men who returned from tours in Viet Nam volunteered to go back, not because Viet Nam was so wonderful, but that The World was so much LESS, in every respect.
Thus, it’s not always correct to assume the combat veteran has ‘lost’ something; he or she is carrying a pearl of great price, in a land where pearls are unknown.
Kipling addressed this in the penultimate stanza of “The Return”
“So ‘ath it come to me–not pride,
Nor yet conceit, but on the ‘ole
(If such a term may be applied),
The makin’s of a bloomin’ soul.
But now, discharged, I fall away
To do with little things again….
Gawd, ‘oo knows all I cannot say,
Look after me in Thamesfontein!”
And perhaps Tennyson touched on this in “Ulysses”:
“This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. ”
Ulysses’ experiences have so set him apart that he’s glad to be quit of the duties of a king in peace-time, leaving the realm in the hands of his gentle son.
“There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Please pardon the long comment. It’s an important issue for me, because it IS me.
Thank you, Andrew. Your words bring to mind the words of Christ in John 17: “they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”
Shirlee, that’s exactly right.
We’re not of the world, not any more. We are the shepherds who will die protecting the flock.
It’s our sole purpose, and we would accept no other.