Chaplains Need to Change Back To Basic Healing

A veteran got defensive with me a few years ago saying "What the hell do you know? You were never in combat!" To that I replied, "I don't have to understand combat do understand what it did to you. You don't have to understand what almost killed me to be able to understand what it did to me."

I grew up with a violent alcoholic Dad. He stopped drinking and joined AA when I was 13. Traumatic? Hell yes but then again, not the first time I faced trauma. I almost died when I was 4 and a kid decided to shove me down a slide but pushed too hard on my right side sending me over the edge. Then there was a car accident, a few health emergencies and oh, my ex-husband came home from work one night and tried to kill me.

The veteran didn't have to experience all that to understand what all those things put me through and he was able to understand what got me through all of them. He finally understood that I not only studied PTSD, I was living proof that trauma doesn't have to win and no one is stuck suffering as they are. Healing is possible and living a better quality of life is always possible with the right kind of help and willingness to work at it.

When I became a Chaplain in 2008 with the IFOC I did it for several reasons. The first one was that searching for reasons why I didn't have PTSD after many life threatening events, it became first hand knowledge that talking about it helped me recover from it over and over again. The shock wasn't allowed to take hold and my family let me talk for as long as I needed to. They gave lousy advice but I knew I was loved and they cared about what the event did to me. The other inspiration was my faith. Both mattered equally.

People of some kind of faith walk away after trauma one of two ways. God did it to them or God spared them. There are three parts of a human hit by trauma. Mind, body and spirit, with each part requiring treatment to heal the whole person. When you add in the moral torment, PTSD takes on a different battle to fight. That is when the ministry of presence is needed. We are not to be judge but we are to be comforter and healer.

My other response to healing is with Point Man International Ministries acting as bridge between veterans and families. Point Man started in 1984 working with veterans and their families. I know what it is like to be a spouse of a veteran more than I understand what it is like to be a veteran but in a unique position due to over 30 years of study and helping veterans heal. After all, my first teacher is a Vietnam veteran. We've been married for 30 years.

PMIM is a service organization with an evangelical purpose. Keeping Jesus Christ the focal point PMIM acts as a referral service to connect hurting veterans and their families to our Outpost and Home Front system for continued support and fellowship. These support groups are available at no charge, and utilize the gospel of Jesus Christ and Biblical principles to facilitate healing and restoration.

PMIM participates in national conferences and international publishing, radio and television as well as other forms of media to help educate and raise awareness of the needs of veterans around the world. We provide evangelistic materials, leadership training seminars, restoration conferences and support outreaches as missionaries to a target group (active duty soldiers, veterans and their families).

PMIM is an interdenominational mission-oriented ministry. We embrace any Christian denomination that agrees with the basic evangelical statement of faith established by the Corporate Board of Directors of PMIM.

I don't turn anyone away especially when most of the veterans I talk to believe in God and most of the time they believe Christ was sent by God, but haven't attended church in years and even those who say they don't believe at all. My job isn't to get them into a church pew, it is to help them heal no matter where they are coming from spiritually.

Chaplains have to change but not the way many think. It it going back to the way it was back in the beginning. Ministering to those in need much like the 72 others Christ sent out to the people.

Eugene Kapaun, left, and Bishop Eugene Gerber look at the statue honoring Chaplain Emil Kapaun at its 2001 unveiling at St. John Nepomucene Church in Pilson, Kan. Kapaun served in the Korean War and died in a prisoner of war camp on May 23, 1951. Soldiers who knew him never forgot the plain-spoken chaplain who urged them to keep their spirits up and is credited with saving hundreds of soldiers during the Korean War. On April 11, 2013, President Obama will award Kapaun the Medal of Honor posthumously.
(Dave Williams / The Wichita Eagle via AP)

The changing role of a military chaplain
Desert News
Mark A Kellner
May 9, 2015

According to that poll, nearly 20 percent of service members identified themselves as having either no religious affiliation or as being atheistic or agnostic.

Some 240 years after the Continental Congress authorized the presence of chaplains in the colonist's revolutionary forces, do clergy in the military still have a prayer?

Critics of chaplaincy decry any attempt to proselytize, saying those clergy who insist on fidelity to their own doctrines should resign. And as the makeup of the U.S. armed forces changes, the spiritual needs of service members is evolving as well.

All that's a lot to handle for a chaplain, even one wearing the same camouflage uniform as the soldiers they serve.

"The growing diversity of the military population has meant focusing on really listening and hearing, rather than coming at them from our own theological backgrounds," said U.S. Army Capt. Prathima Dharm, who is based in Silver Spring, Maryland. She said a soldier's spirituality is often "fluid," something Dharm herself experienced. Joining the Army in 2006 as a Christian chaplain, Dharm returned to her family's religious roots during her service, eventually becoming the Army's first Hindu chaplain.

"As an interfaith and Hindu chaplain, I saw a lot more commonality of needs between the soldiers of diverse population than differences," said Dharm, who left the military in the autumn of 2014.

U.S. Marine Corps Chaplain Lt. Cdr. Gary Thornton, regimental chaplain for the Wounded Warrior Regiment at Virginia's Marine Corps Base Quantico, said chaplains provide the proper atmosphere to help fighters handle such issues.

"When someone is conflicted like that, it allows them to ask those hard questions to someone who — as a chaplain — has given some thought and consideration to those questions, such as where was God, what was he doing, how do I handle or deal with these feelings and questions that I am wrestling with," Thornton said. "It allows people to ask those questions in that safe, confidential and caring environment and walk through that with a chaplain who should be versed and ready to engage in those things."
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