The Online Chaplain

Reintegration Tip #3 Try Some Vitameatavegamin. It’s good for you.

My favorite episode of "I Love Lucy" was the one with Vitameatavegamin.  It was the cure all for everything.  Just think if you went to the doctor and found out you were pregnant.  The doctor says, "Don’t worry, I have just the thing.  Vitameatavegimin."  Then later you go to the doctor with a broken arm, "Don’t worry, I have just the thing.  Vitameatavegimin."  Awhile late you get the flu, "Don’t worry, I have just the thing.  Vitameatavegimin."  It won’t be long and you will be looking for a new doctor.  The answers he gives are to easy, to prescribed, to casebook.

There is all kinds of loss in life.  The loss of expectation.  The loss of relationship.  Time. Everything in life can be evaluated in terms of loss.  After twenty years of listening to stories of loss I  can say with assurance I have learned one thing for sure.  All loss is unique.  Each person brings a unique recipe to loss.  So, two people who have the same type of loss experience it completely different.  You can not go to the medicine cabinet and get your Vitameatavegamin out and apply it to every wound and injury.

Soldiers, and those who love them are unique too.  You can not go to your standard, prescribed, easy to follow instruction book on how to help a soldier.  The soldier and the environment of war is to dynamic to classify.  There is no recipe to follow.  One soldier saw constant change in his environment, and his personality.  Yet, another guarded a two acre RRP in the middle of nowhere and the only change he saw was the passing of time.  There is no recipe.  So, here is how you can help soldiers…

God gave you two ears and one mouth in the hopes that you would do the math.  Listen before you prescribe.  Listen long, listen hard, listen till your ears hurt, listen until you are trusted.  On the Mount of Transfiguration the Apostle Peter wouldn’t keep his big mouth shut and finally God said, "This is my beloved son, listen to him."  America is about to receive four thousand of it’s beloved sons and daughters home again.  Many more to come and many have gone before us.  I wonder if it has the patience to listen? 

Thank You

Dear Friends,

My duty station will be changing soon.  I want to thank all of the things you have sent in the past months to help take care of soldiers.  When I know the name of my replacement I will post and give you the name and address.  Until then God bless.

ChapB

Reintegration Tip #2 Messed Up Beyond All Repair

There is an army acronym that chaplain’s aren’t ever suppose to say, so I will just allude to it.  It means messed up beyond all repair.  If you have been around army folk for more than about a day, I am sure you have heard it.  On the phone a couple of days ago my wife said to me, "You aren’t coming home that way are you?" 

I laughed at her and asked her if she had been watching too much news again.  We get the news here.  I know the general population is hearing in a variety of ways that soldiers are coming home from Iraq screwed up, messed up and generally changed in a negative way.  I know the vast majority of people evaluate hardship by the standard of depreciation.  I got it.  What did it cost me?  How have I changed?  What are the negative impacts on my life?  What Line of Duty injuries did I suffer?  This being the primary metaphor for thinking about loss leads us to only one conclusion….that of diminishing returns.

If you are in a military family, waiting at home for your soldier, or a soldier about to return home, let me give you some advice.  Turn your bullcrap meter on and leave it on for a while.  There are a lot of "voices of diminishing return."  Do yourself a favor and challenge their logic, their opinion, their historical perspective and their knowledge about you.  The outcome of this deployment is not predetermined in your life.  Judge for your self what it’s impact is one you, you are the only subject matter expert on YOU! 

Think about your life, the life of your parents, the life of your grandparents and our nation.  When we have gone through tough times in the past was the effect always negative?  Has the "law of diminishing returns" been a historical fact in your life, or in the life of our nation?  No, it has not.  Rather, with adversity comes strength.  Trouble yields the path to triumph and heartache gives way to hallelujahs.  This has been true since time begin.  It is true today.  And it will be true tomorrow.

So dearest wife, "No, I am not coming home messed up beyond all repair, neither are the people I serve with.  I am coming home the same way I left.  I am coming home ready to transform into what ever life demand of me.  I am coming home to serve you, my family, my nation, my God.  But, most importantly I am coming home to continue mission."  And mission is this, "Love the Lord your God with all your might, and your neighbor as your self."  Rather than the "law of diminishing returns" try this one on for size.  It is the "law of love." 

Reintegration Tip #1

There was this guy who had spent his whole life in the desert. He decides to visit a friend. On his way he is walking on the railroad tracks.  He'd never seen a train before or the tracks they run on.  He hears this whistle, but has no idea what it is. So he just stands there. And sure enough the train hits him. Luckily, it was only a glancing blow. The guy was throw,head over heals to the side of the tracks.

After about a week in the hospital recovering, he's at his friend's house one evening. While in the kitchen, he suddenly hears the teakettle whistling. He grabs a baseball bat from the nearby closet and proceeds to batter and bash the teakettle into an unrecognizable lump of metal. His friend rushes into the kitchen, sees what's happened and asks the man: "Why'd you ruin my good tea kettle?"  The guy who had grown up in the desert replied: "Man, you gotta kill these things while they're still small. Their nasty when they get big."

In this simple joke there is a good lesson as we prepare to go home.  The lesson: take care of issues when they are small, because they are nasty when they get big.  It is not a bad lesson for those heading back to civilian life after being gone for two years, or for those who are about to receive them.  Jesus said, "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much…"  I believe this is true.  If you are faithful in taking care of the little things you will be blessed with much.  Much hope in the future.  Much peace!  Much! 

Writer’s Block

WRITERS BLOCK.  I never knew what this means until recently.  Now, I got it.  In fact, when you look it up in the dictionary it probably has a picture of me.  I can not count how many times I have sat down to write something and after an eternity of mental hoops sat back and said, "Got Nothing."  So, instead of sitting here whining about how I am letting my blog readers down I decided to write about it. 

The "writers block" hasn’t been completely unfruitful.  I have heard from readers on four continents to date.  "Chaplain, you OK?"  I didn’t know there were so many people paying attention.  Made me feel good.

To answer the question, "Yeah, I am OK?"  In fact, I am better than Ok.  We are in the bottom of the ninth inning and my team here in Iraq is hitting the ball consistently.  I have the had the joy of watching leaders mature and temper their God-given strength with compassion, understanding and charity.  We are bringing America a gift when we return.  Young soldiers, battle hardened, tough, capable with a deep understanding of self-sacrifice.  I am proud to have been a part of it.

But, the fact remains I have now been deployed for 561 days.  Most of those days have been in combat.   My get up and go has "gotten up and left."  I am now officially tired "from the inside out."   It is showing up in "writers block."  There are other symptoms too.  I have "stupid crap block".  When I see "stupid crap" I want to "knock the crap" out of some "stupid crap."  Thus, "stupid crap block."   

I have spent the month analyzing this phenomenon.  Here is what I have come up with.  This is familiar ground.  I hear about it all the time.  The mother in Minnesota who has spent the last 21 months giving birth to her third child, caring for her toddler, and getting her five year old ready for kindergarten, what does she have?  Diaper block?  Or, how about the person who every day gets up and goes and faithfully does the job they hate.  What do they have?  Employment block?

Not only do I hear about it all the time.  I have been here many times before.  I remember enough about the past twenty years to remember this.  I have been tired before.  I know what happens, now.  It has happened every single time, without fail in my life.  It is one of the constants. It’s coming and I can see it on the horizon.  REST

I am not the only one who needs to rest, and I refuse to internalize the symptoms of war, compassion fatigue, or think that my "give a crap" o-meter is somehow eternally misaligned.  Bottom line is simple: I’m tired.  Perhaps, you are too.  So, hear the word of the Lord in simple, straight up terms.  It is neither, difficult or complicated.  It is simple.  "Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

As I write this it is 2200 (10:00PM) the sun has set one more time and I am sitting on my deck smoking a cigar.  And I feel better than I did an hour ago.  Guess what I feel?  REST!  I pray you do too.  If not now, soon!  It will come.  Trust the promise.