Leap of faith into Satan's foot

When tragedy strikes or trauma hits, there are two ways to deal with it. One is to offer thanks to God for taking care of you, making sure you got out alive and survived it. You feel as if you were saved for a reason, that your "mission" on earth is not done yet. You can look for signs of miracles. A cup and saucer from a beloved set that was not smashed after a tornado destroyed everything else you had. An icon of Christ untouched by mold from the floods of Katrina while everything else you owned was covered in it. A tree that fell inches from your child's head. We find miracles in the tiniest of things and in the most monumental of events, leaving us to think someone is watching over us, protecting us.

The other way is to feel that you were abandoned by God. That God judged you for something you did in your past and found you worthy of torture. He was not watching over you but attacking you instead. You will look back in your mind for the stories in the Bible you read remembering the judgement of God and the wrath. While your logical mind will confirm your innocence the same way Job defended his own, your spirit will be looking for the sins you committed that caused God's anger. A battle rages within you while the other type of person is joyously on their way to a new beginning.

The traumas of combat strike deeper than anything known to regular people. While other causes, from natural disasters, to crimes committed against us, to being an emergency responder or firefighter, we are not participants in creating the trauma. Law enforcement, from police to DEA agents, they are participants in creating the trauma. They are necessary but they do have to kill as they face being killed. They are involved in high speed chases and they are involved in gun fights. The trauma striking them hits harder than others are hit. They are also involved in traumatic events multiple times. Combat forces deployed face them on a daily basis no matter if a traumatic event occurs directly involving them or if they are simply on edge knowing it could, they are facing trauma everyday they are deployed. They are also participants combined with the rescuer rushing to help, recover the wounded and collect the dead.

One of the most frequent problems veterans face is that of the above, feeling abandoned by God. You cannot witness the carnage of what man does to man and think there is a God involved in any of it. You see evil in all of it while you, as well as your comrades, are forces of good battling against that evil, at the same time you know your actions are creating the same in return. It twists in your brain between logic and spirit. It becomes nearly impossible to make sense out of any of it. You know you have a job to do and this is part of your job. It's what you were trained to do, but no one trained you to deal with what comes after.

We all take a leap of faith, trusting that if our intension is good and honorable, we will be rewarded. The problem is, Satan's foot. When we are about our daily lives, sooner or later you come up against his foot making you stumble, fall, breaking your kneecaps as well as your will. Doubt enters in any hole it can find. While one of Satan's feet are busy tripping you up, his other foot gets into the act kicking things into your way. First it's little things and as you overcome them, they get bigger and bigger. Then we wonder how the leap of faith left us flat on our face.

Soldiers do their duty knowing they could die any day. They believe their intension's are good, honorable and needed. They enter into the military believing their willingness to sacrifice their lives are vital to the security of their nation. Yet once they see what they've been trained to do coming into real life in real time, they also come up against Satan's foot. The things he kicks at soldiers are doubt, sadness, grief, torment, and then he kicks in the smell, the dirty feeling that will not be washed away, the images you've seen and the residue of all of it seeping into your bones. Then it all comes crashing down on you.

PTSD rates are one out of three. It doesn't matter what caused it. A traumatic even will hit one out of three exposed to the same event. This does not necessarily mean the full blown development of PTSD but it is when it begins. Combat forces face traumatic events over and over and over again. This is why so many come out with wounded minds.

While some claim they "got over it" usually it is not the case. For most of them, PTSD has just fallen asleep ready to be awaken by another traumatic event. This is why there are so many Vietnam veterans all these years later coming to terms they brought the war back home with them. Dormant PTSD is the worst. It's almost as if it has been storing up energy while you got on with your life. The secondary stressor Satan kicks in hits you so hard you don't have control over anything anymore.

For my husband, it was the miscarriage of the twins I was carrying. His mild PTSD, along with the nightmares, flashbacks and twitches, were no longer "quirks" of a man who could still get up and go to work everyday, drink casually and cope, but he became a man out of control of his life. It happened so fast, the night I lost the twins, I had to beg him to come back to the hospital to be with me. He couldn't understand what had happened to him and he tried to find excuses for all of it.

I had an inkling of what I was dealing with because of the research into PTSD but I couldn't get him to face any of it. Even then I wanted to "cure" him expecting that I could reverse what damage had been done to him. I couldn't and he got worse until I finally convinced him to go for help.

It is a shock when PTSD awakens because making the connection between traumatic events in your life and the latest kick from Satan is difficult to make. Too often the connection is never made. Even though the flashbacks will be about the event bringing PTSD into their lives, they fail to see the relevance of any of it. This is where the families are vital to all of it. We can see when something is not right about those we love. We can see the changes in them and we witness the stuff Satan is kicking into their lives. It's up to us to either kick Satan in the ass and get them into help or be a barrier until we can.

Put yourself into their place. Remember a time in your life when you too did what you thought was right with the best intension only to find that you had to suffer for doing it. This is what they deal with as well. Most will take the flashbacks as a price they had to pay for doing what they had to do. For most of us, our lives were not on the line when we faced our own problems but for them, it is not just their lives or the lives of their friends, but also the lives of the people they had a part in killing. Multiply the feelings you had at the time by a thousand and you're close, but then you have to multiply that by every time they were exposed to trauma.

If your serviceman or woman comes home fine then take that as the same as the people who walk away from other traumatic events thanking God believing God was watching over them. If they do not then you better look for Satan's foot trying to take them down. You can't help them unless you are aware of what is being kicked at them. Learn the signs and know what to be on watch for. Remember the way they were before they left and how they came back. If you get them to go for help and you were wrong about if they needed it, you lost nothing and they gained some insight to help their friends if they should need it. If you are right in your suspicions you just kicked Satan in his ass.









Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington