Recognize I am Not Alone

The military categorizes those unable to deal "normally" with the results of deployments as having PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). It is generally acknowledged that all personnel are effected to some extent, though the actual point where PTSD requires treatment depends on the person subjected to the stress and person conducting the diagnosis. Military training is designed to prepare the individual to deal with a variety of possible environments in which they might have to survive. The rigors of military training, often taken to extremes, are generally forgiven due to drastic differences between the civilian environment of Any Place, USA, and Specific Battlefield, Deployed. However, I’d like to propose that any such “change factor” can be traumatic, either in experience or effect, to any person, not just someone in the military, and these effects are magnified by the duration they eclipse. Just as it is expected that certain experiences on the battlefield or during a deployment are outside of the individual’s ability to assimilate, so it is that experiences can (and generally do) happen, even while “just walking down the street,” that can startle, stress, shock, or traumatize because there is no “device” that will fit a particular event within a “normal” framework. Using this reasoning, Joshua's two week experience at camp could be of greater impact to his life than a year of deployment might be to my life—it just depends on how dramatic the difference between the environment one is used to and calls “normal” vice the environment that is or provides the vehicle of change.

My conclusion, then, is to acknowledge that all of us are natives in the land of stress, and I find this an encouragement. First, it puts me and my year long deployment in a category of experience not far removed from each person—lest I give myself a little bit too much room to tarry in the “Woe is me” place. Secondly, since stress is such a universal experience, those with whom I share my life will not consider me an alien should I discuss my experience of stress in a controlled setting. Thirdly, I have a Savior whose Mercy and Grace sustained me throughout, Who is certainly intimately familiar with every moment of my life, and Who eternally invites me to permit the incremental sanctification of my life to His Way.

Semper Fi, JarHedJon