Don't just sit there, cry

Don't just sit there, cry

by
Chaplain Kathie

Living in the lightening capital of the country, the sky fills with dark clouds and you know what's coming. Soon the sky grows darker taking over the light of the Florida sun. It gets darker and darker. Then comes the rolling thunder as rain comes down so hard it feels as if your skin is on fire. Lightening strikes so fierce you cannot look away. Everyone for miles around cannot escape the fact the storm is here. They see it. They hear it. They feel it. They fear it.

We can all understand the power of the storms but what we cannot understand is what is left behind unless it happens to us. There are homes set on fire by lightening strikes but it doesn't happen all the time, doesn't happen to every home and doesn't change every life, so it's hard to know what it feels like to someone else.

Some storms are so powerful they take out electricity in neighborhoods. Since most of these storms come when air conditioners are essential, there is no way to cool off as heat penetrates the walls making it unbearable. With no way to know where the storm is, where it is going as communication ends, we don't know if it will get worse or how long it will last or when our suffering will end. We wait listening to the rain and thunder putting our lives on hold. Should the storms come at night, we light candles trying to break up some of the darkness we are surrounded by but the candles are not enough to light every part of our homes and we need to walk around with candles so that we don't trip and fall.

Then the rain stops pounding turning into a soft shower. The dark clouds move on to someone else's neighborhood. We hear the distant thunder knowing the danger has passed over us. The sky slowly turns clear again and then we know it's going to return to normal soon. The power comes back on and we get on with our lives.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a lot like thunderstorms. Everyone in the area suffers pretty much the same way but some suffer more from the same event. Some lose power for longer periods of time, so as one neighborhood returns to life as normal, another is still suffering until it is their turn to get their power back on. While most homes are spared a direct hit of lightening, some will end up seeing this storm was just too much for them and their lives were sent into turmoil. It will take a lot out of them and take much longer for them to get over this storm everyone else has moved on from.

My job is to make the journey from darkness easier to get through, to help other neighbors understand that there are people who did not see the clouds clear and their lives return back to where they were before but above all, it is to make people cry.

It may sound heartless but I am delighted when a Vietnam veteran emails me because I made them cry. It has been far too long they felt as if they couldn't. I get emails from Gulf War veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and from families. Now and then I'll hear from a cop or a spouse, a firefighter and then from members of the National Guards with a blended life of being deployed into combat and then facing traumatic events right here back home as a cop or firefighter.

If I can touch a veteran and make them cry, it is because I got them to understand that what they have been feeling is not so impossible for someone else to understand and see. They don't feel so alone. It is almost as if a sledgehammer has begun to take down the wall they have been living trapped behind. If I make a spouse cry, it is because they can finally understand what someone they love has been living with and then understand why their own lives have been filled with thunderstorms.

These comments were left when I had my videos up on YouTube.

comment on em PTSD Not God's Judgment
my faith was gone...i'm in tears and want to say thanks

comment on A Homeless Veteran's Day
This brought me to tears. Damn good job with the video. It's abominable that we treat our vets like that... and the way some treat these people is even more so.

There are a lot more I save to keep me going when I want to stop. When veterans email me, most of the time they write about crying. I am happy when this happens because it means the walls around their soul are coming down. It means that the pain they had trapped is leaving them so that good feelings can enter in.

This email pretty much says it all.

PTSD and cops - my husband


The other morning around 4 am, my husband (XXXXX Police for 17 years, 3 shootings, all lethal, and a million horrible experiences later because he worked in the worst part of XXXXX for 10 years) woke me after he had only had about 1 1/2 hrs of sleep to watch your video. I believe God led him to it because he doesn't like computers and for him to even find it was a miracle. We've been married for 19 years.

He's been in treatment for PTSD for about 6 months now, and you need to know that your video mirrored our life. He doesn't feel so alone now, and I'm not so angry when he takes off for a few hours, not even knowing what triggered the event (he rarely even remembers much anyway).

He's beginning EMDR therapy, and although it will be hard, after watching your video he understands that he has to keep going to his appointments faithfully to get better. He's had suicidal thoughts and before we even knew what was happening he ended up on a mountainside with a gun in his mouth, not able to go to work. He barely even remembers it. He had to take FMLA leave, and thankfully his doctors were able to word everything correctly as to not "rubber gun" him (make him not able to use his weapon, which would basically put you somewhere in nowheresville being a policeman).

I just want to thank you for your video and if you know how I can volunteer somehow to help veterans or anyone effected by PTSD (a shelter?), I want to make a difference, as you have. I especially want the world to know that cops can be affected by this, and it is so often shoved under the table with police. I know that it is real and my husband and I have both discussed the fact that if I had ever left him, he would have quit his job and quite possibly be homeless. I am believing that someday, after therapy, through prayer and through my precious Lord Jesus Christ, our life will have some normalcy again.

Thank you so much for giving us hope.

Emails like these keep reminding me that this is the way the military and the VA need to go. They need to let everyone know what it feels like to be subjected to a thunderstorm of trauma touching everyone's life but allowing some to just go back to "normal" while changing the lives of others to different levels of darkness.

We need everyone in the neighborhood of the USA to see the clouds move in as darkness takes over. Hear the thunder rolling across the sky and feel the rain of grief. Too many are suffering needlessly, feeling alone, believing the power to get back to "normal" will not be turned back on for them and others find all they had is gone. None of what they are going through has to happen if they all understand why they should cry and begin to heal. As with thunderstorms the hard rain (hard cry) soon turns into a soft shower and then the darkness moves on allowing the sun to shine again lighting their lives.

While my videos are hard to watch they are intended to make you cry and to understand that the darkness can move away from your life. So dont' just sit there suffering. Cry and begin to heal.


The rest of my videos are on the sidebar of this blog.

But it is not just men who suffer in darkness. It is women too.



This was sent from the man who wrote the lyrics to this beautiful song. It shows that after all these years, his message is still reaching out to so many people in need and so is he.

last night I watched the "Hardest Times" video. I am honoured that the lyrics I wrote so long ago are still being used to bless others in a manner such as you describe with these women - may the Lord bless them abundantly for everything they endure in serving their country. And may He bless you as well, Chaplain Kathie, for all you do in your service to Him and to your country.

For the last three years I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel, volunteering with a ministry that helps feed the poor and homeless of the city (regardless of ethnicity). As a lay chaplain myself, and as a follower of Jesus Christ, the Scripture I use as a "signature", both in the addictions ministry I worked for six years in Canada and now here in feeding the poor, is Galatians 6:9 NIV, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Those last six words are indicative of a diligence with which you seem to have been blessed.

I may not have known it at the time, but I now believe with all my heart that while it might have been me who held the pen when I wrote those lyrics, the words that fell on the page were inspired by the Holy Spirit himself. The darkness of the "hardest times" you are so faithfully trying to expose to the Light is not the first time Wildflower has been a blessing to others - and it is my sincere prayer that it won't be the last.

It is also my prayer that the Lord will go before you in this venture, and that your heartfelt efforts will help to set captives free (Isaiah 61).

Blessings again, in Christ Jesus...

Dave Richardson

We can get the storms to pass if we all do what we can when we can, no matter how small we think the effort is. No one has to be in the darkness when there are so many ready and willing to light the candles.