Broken . . .Crushed . . .Qualified?

This is from Bringing Back Brotherhood Ministries:

Broken..Crushed…and now we are Qualified?

Has the world fallen down around you? 

Is the pressure of the world becoming too much to bear? 

Does every move that you make forward seem to be canceled out by adversity and obstacles?

Have you come to the place of brokenness?

“The breaking of the outward man is the basic experience of all those who serve God. This must be accomplished before He can use us in an effectual way” (Watchman Nee).

The painful and hard moments that push us past our limits are not destroying us. If we choose to look upon these experience through a different perspective we may see that the tool of trouble is not destroying us but shaping us. Each moment of adversity that we overcome builds a new found strength. Each trial that we overcome develops our character. Each experience equips us with a resource of wisdom earned through tribulation.

Only then after suffering great loss does one have the heart to come along side another who suffers the same. Only one who has been through pain will be welcomed into the painful moments of another’s crisis. Only after experiencing all of these things can we truly see our need for God as our true source of strength and hope.

We, the broken, stand firm upon a foundation that is unshakable and unbreakable because it is not made by human hands. We the sinners, can reach out to others not because we are worthy but because we have been forgiven. 

We the scarred post traumatic souls can share our burdens with others thereby lifting their spirits. We, who were once lost, can help seek out our brothers and sisters in solitude and truly identify with their hearts.

We, through pain and brokenness, have become qualified in such a way that no one else with degrees or certifications can compare. For we can learn more from those who have faced calamity, suffered great loss, battled addictions, and dealt with difficulties than pious who have never walked a mile in our shoes.

We can truly “not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7)

For we have been there, in brokenness, but we reside there no longer and we are equipped to journey into another’s pain without being destroyed by it. We have the peace of God that passes all understanding. So when others don’t understand your pain, seek out those have been there and who have the peace that passes all understanding.

We have a comforter like no other, for God has brought us through our trials with His comfort, and providing those who comforted us during our pain. Now our trial, our pain, and our difficulty have made us qualified to help others in a way that no one else can. For when we look in their eyes and say “I know how you feel”; you can honestly say that you do…

God bless the broken heart spirits who take the time to lift up others who are going through the same struggle. 

Andy Starnes 

A Conversation with a Vietnam Veteran

Back in November 2001 through August 2002, I hitchhiked in and out of St. John, Kansas quite a bit. St. John was my home base during that time. I would stay at one of a few places, do odd jobs and then I would hit the road.

A couple of people that I would stay with were a man and his wife. He was in his late fifties and she was in her early sixties. I don't remember their names, but let's call him Frank.

Frank was a Vietnam Vet who served in the U.S. Army in 1965-1966. He was exposed to Agent Orange and was on full medical disability. Frank was on his second marriage.

One day Frank and I were in the kitchen--I was sitting at the table and he was standing at the counter. I told him some of the things that I had experienced in my past: I went through a lot of rejection from family, friends and church people because of my Christian faith. 

Dad put me in mental hospitals, had me pay $5000.00 worth in hospital bills and then later told me that he paid for everything. My dad had absolutely no integrity whatsoever. 

Frank then turned around and stared at me. He said, rather forcefully, "You're suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)!"

I replied, "No way! You're crazy! I never was in the military and I never was in combat!"

Frank said, "You don't have to be in combat to have PTSD."

I said something like, "How can I have PTSD? There is no way I have PTSD." I was dumbfounded.

Then Frank got really angry and said, "I was in Vietnam. I saw many guys who were in serious firefights and you have the same symptoms as they do."

I didn't know what to think. The Lord puts people in your path for a reason. Maybe I was meant to hear what he had to say.

Eventually, I quit hitchhiking through St. John, Kansas and started hitchhiking in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana more often.

In the spring and summer of 2008, I passed through St. John, Kansas and tried to look up the people that I knew back in 2002; most of them had moved away.

I sometimes think back on that conversation. There may have been some truth to what Frank had said. I do know that through Jesus is great redemption. Repentance from sin and forgiveness for other people's trespasses are very powerful.

The moral of the story:

Don't call a Vietnam Vet crazy and. . .

. . . Sometimes a blind man doesn't know he is blind until someone tells him that he is blind.

[Originally published by Digihitch.com]

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Good Will Hunting:  It's Not Your Fault
The Jerry Shey Family
Dream:  Escape from the Shey Farm
Gaslighting
Emotional Abuse

Dostoyevsky on Cruelty of Man

The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless

Feeling Overwhelmed:  it's a PTSD thing

The Walking Wounded - PTSD from Greece to Afghanistan

Book Review:  The Walking Wounded:  The Path from Brokenness to Wholeness

"His mind is broken. We broke it." - The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

PTSD isn't only for Soldiers - John McPhee

"Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate … the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible."

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."

--Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl M.D., Ph.D., World War II Holocaust Survivor

_____

FIRST BLOOD - Sylvester Stallone

My commentary on the film FIRST BLOOD (1982):

Sylvester Stallone does a great job of portraying someone who is suffering from some serious battlefield trauma and the effects of torture. Look at his thousand-yard stare: classic PTSD. He serves his country in an unpopular war and comes home where people spit at him and call him “baby killer”. He goes through hell in Vietnam and is rejected by so many in his own country.

The last scene with Colonel Trautman at the sheriff’s office where he is weeping before being taken into custody: a very powerful and moving scene. The war is not over for John Rambo. Painful memories persist. All of his friends are gone. A stranger in a strange land. I don’t know why Stallone did not get nominated for an Academy Award.

“As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

–Richard Grenier

The Jerry Shey Family

Satanic Stronghold

Dreams from the LORD 2003-2006
9 November 2006

I believe it was late this summer when I had a dream, but I have waited till now to write it in my journal. In the dream I was with a woman whom I knew back in my parents’ hometown in Iowa. She was a year older than me in school. Her dad was a dentist and their family were friends with the Shey family. She looked at me and said that her dad hated my guts.

I believe I had this dream because a year ago I sent copies of my Dreams from the Lord and Journal to at least two or three people in my parents’ hometown back in Iowa. If those people read some or all of my Dreams, then they probably passed it around to some other people in town. If anybody reads Dreams, they will see that it does not flatter Jerry [D.J.] Shey or the Shey family [Shey Family Foundation]; it exposes some of the wickedness that I experienced in that family. Jerry Shey is an unsaved Catholic; the dentist in the preceding dream, who hated my guts, is an unsaved Catholic; that dentist’s older brother (Fr. Tom Nash) used to be a priest at my parents’ parish (St. Cecelia’s Catholic Church) back in the 1980s—I believe he died around ten years ago. 

When I was around twenty-two years old, I told that priest that my dad put me in a mental hospital (in Mason City, Iowa) and had me pay the bill [around $1200.00]. That priest smiled at me and laughed: he wasn’t going to rebuke my dad for stabbing me in the back. Time and time again—before he put me in that mental hospital—dad would tell me that they would help me when it came to my depression. According to the Shey family, helping me is putting me in an institution and having me pay the bill. Such generosity and integrity. My dad was one of the biggest donors to that parish (my dad is considered to be a wealthy and successful businessman). At least that priest wasn’t stupid: he wasn’t going to bite the hand that fed him. That priest was also big into peace and social justice issues; he didn’t like President Ronald Reagan or the military, either; I doubt very much if that priest had a relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, that priest was absolutely worthless. Now he has his eternal reward.

Just for the record: I later, at the age of twenty-four and twenty-five, spent some time in two mental hospitals in Washington, D.C. and one mental hospital in Cherokee, Iowa. I didn’t pay all of those bills, but it did wipe out my hard-earned life savings [around $4000.00]. Jerry Shey later told me (August 1989) that he paid for all of the hospital bills. Jerry Shey is a thief and a liar: I can see why he was such a good friend with that dentist and that Catholic priest. Demons of a feather flock together.

[Back in 1978, 1979 and 1983, Jerry Shey took money out of my savings account and used it to pay for my college tuition.

From May of 1981 till February of 1982 I lived in Ireland.  I took my hard-earned money to fly to Ireland and live there:  I wrote a novella, worked on some farms and traveled around Ireland.  Jerry Shey took credit for paying for that trip.]

Another Dream with General George S. Patton
Road to Perdition  

"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it.  Let it loose; it will defend itself."

--Augustine of Hippo

_____

Matthew 10:36:  "A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household."

Luke 11: 11-12:  "If a son shall ask of bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?"

Ephesians 5: 11:  "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them."  

_____

A Conversation with a Vietnam Veteran
Obedience:  The Bondage Breaker
Clint Eastwood's film High Plains Drifter (1973)
Dream:  Escape from the Shey Farm
Dream:  Everything Was Falling Apart

II Samuel 12: 1-6:   "And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.   The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:   But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.  And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.   And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:  And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity."

 “A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”

―from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What Can't Kill You Will Only Make You Stronger
Evil does in fact die
The Sermon

“The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”

–Augustine of Hippo

_____

FIRST BLOOD - Sylvester Stallone

My commentary on the film FIRST BLOOD (1982):

Sylvester Stallone does a great job of portraying someone who is suffering from some serious battlefield trauma and the effects of torture. Look at his thousand-yard stare: classic PTSD. He serves his country in an unpopular war and comes home where people spit at him and call him “baby killer”. He goes through hell in Vietnam and is rejected by so many in his own country.

The last scene with Colonel Trautman at the sheriff’s office where he is weeping before being taken into custody: a very powerful and moving scene. The war is not over for John Rambo. Painful memories persist. All of his friends are gone. A stranger in a strange land. I don’t know why Stallone did not get nominated for an Academy Award.

“As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

–Richard Grenier

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Dreams from the LORD 2007-2010
8 November 2009

"I am a vet of the new 'War on Terror'. I came home in 2003. I was in 10th mountain division. We would kick down doors and secure bagdad. We interviewed over 3000 prisoners in northern Afghanistan. Which by the way for the record 45% of those I interviewed I deemed a non-combatant. But each one was taken as if they were Al-Qaeda. We were in 40+ firefights and I and my brothers killed hundreds of combatants. I still cry for each and every one of them. I served as a marksman and was constantly deployed on missions with a spotter to scout ahead of my group by a days travel. We were sitting tight in a hole that we dug behind a ruined structure (pre-war damage) and we were very well covered. At around 2100 we recieved word that a group of mortars and 15 or so combatants were rallied inside the small village we were watching. While we were aware of the combatants wandering around the town earlier we didn't not know about the mortar team. Around 2130 a UAV flew overhead at around 1500 feet which is rediculously low for standard flight. Later we would learn that supposedly the craft was having trouble with its throttle/speed controler. Well needless to say it brought some attention to the skies and excited the people in the village. We figure they must have figured they were surrounded and being attacked because of the unfriendly craft. They immediately began to pound the skies with bullets trying to hit the craft as it passed overhead. They also began to randomly fire mortars to evoke a reaction from a hidden enemy that wasn't there... except me and Chris in our hole. at around 2215 The mortars started getting a touch close to our position and we radioed for clearance to relocate. No such movement was allowed as it would endanger the suprise of our quickly advancing column of tanks and humvees and loose infantry. well we held tight as best we can but it wasn't tight enough... We were terrified... We knew that at any minute a mortar was going to hit close by or right on us and that would be it. The column was still 45 minutes out. I was at one end of our 4dx3wx5l hole and Chris was at the other watching our right flank. All of a sudden a loud WHOOP hit and I could feel the heat of the blast but I was dizzy with the concussive blow I just suffered... The WHOOP was a mortar that had hit the ruined building in front of us and muffled the explosion. I was blasted by small bits of concrete and sand. I turned to grab the radio and call in our dilemma to command but to my horror I found Chris sllumped forward at the edge of the hole. I scurried over our equipment to him and pulled him back to me to see if he was just unconcious or worse. It was worse... He had evidently been hit square in the face by a chuck of concrete with rebar in it. The concrete had hit him and a piece of rebar had punctured his head from just below the temple. It was still bleeding when I held him in my arms watching his life leave him. I cried, I screamed internally knowing out loud would get me killed. I was terrified and alone. I have to admit that I had bowel problems that night... It was more than terrifying. I got back to most post breathing heavily after crying out to command for help and an answer. The column didn't arrive for 3 hours because of a fake IED. It was me and the body of my partner alone thousands of miles away from home. If I got hit we would perish in the rubble potentially never to be found by troops. In that desert there's no where to run even if I could. I had no options but to be as strong as I could and hold the vigil down until help arrived. Because of the column being stuck and all air support having been shifted far to the west I couldn't even get an evac and because it was blind fire command felt we weren't in enough danger. Hold your posisiton and wait for Battle group sigma to arrive. I was brought back to the greenzone debriefed and sent to the field hospital for evaluation. I couldn't stop shaking and I cried every moment I was reminded of what happened. Eventually they classified me as having PTSD. I was ordered to take some stupid scripts (that they still haven't covered) for the depression and PTSD. I often times am caught staring off into space oblivious of whats around me because I am lost in dreamlike memories. I once in a while see flashbacks of our battles like dreams overlaid on reality of what Im seeing right then. I don't wig out or go crazy... I sometimes will shed a tear for no apparent reason or tend to sign deeply a lot. It still feels like a part of me was ripped out and so I think my sighing is a bit of depression or from the sense of loss... I dunno...But if you speak to anyone who has served as a marksman or even as infantry your spotter and you squadmates are your brothers... closer than anyone could possibly be. We knew eachother down to the craziest details... what color crayola I prefferd for instance... He was closer to me than any woman has ever been... And don't even give any brokeback BS... it wasn't like that... He was my brother... an extention of me... He held my head when I got hit by flying debris back in Afghanistan. I had a concussion for 3 days and he spent every meal break he had those three days to come sit with me and talk and make sure I recovered. I miss him more than most people Ive ever known. Im sure that my brotherhood with him is quite akin to what it must be like for two travelers on the rails or roads. I have never stopped truly blaming myself for not switching posts when we were supposed to. He was brought home and his family recieved a paltry sum of 5 grand to cover the burial... He was cremated because his parents couldn't afford a burial plot or head stone and wanted to keep him with them safe rather than bury him in an unfamiliar plot away from his family. His mother says she will be buried with him that way his family is close together the way it should be. It should have been me... But it wasn't and I owe it to him to live a life thats more than sitting in an office. If he wasnt sitting there where he was I would have most likely taken the hit. I live today and he paid for my right to live today. He was well traveled and loved his homestate of Texas. I owe it to him to do what he can't.

"He used to talk for hours about riding his motorcycle for days through Utah and Nevada and South dakota... He loved to camp and he could party with the best of them. He was always kind to everyone he met even our enemies over there. He respected and appreciated the cop that would pull him over... He got a ticket but his outlook was that if he got it then maybe the next guy would miss the cop... I know that if he and my grandfather were alive today me him and my grandfather would have already been hanging around with you guys out an about the world... So when you meet me out there and I'm a bit sullen at times or I shed a tear in the most beautiful of moments just remember its just me visiting with ghosts who couldn't physically be there. But to that same reasoning.... When you meet me... you'll be meeting me and the memory of two others who would have loved the travel life and I'm gonna share their compassion and appreciation of travel with all you whome I meet (that aren't dangerous)."

"I've rambled on long enough... if you've read it this far... thank's for the time to listen... be well and I'll see you sometime soon and we'll have a drink."

--30 November 2007
Author: flysouth (Digihitch.com)

(The preceding passage was published on Digihitch.com)

Tears of a Warrior
Freedom to Bear Arms

_____

flysouth is an American hero. I am grateful for the great work of U.S. Military personnel in fighting Muslim terrorists (the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes you have to kill a lot of bad guys to free the slaves of Muslim extremism. God bless President George W. Bush and the U.S. Military.

_____

The Jerry Shey Family
A Conversation with a Vietnam Veteran
Obedience: The Bondage Breaker
Mental Cases

"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."

--Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl M.D., Ph.D., World War 2 Holocaust Survivor

_____

FIRST BLOOD - Sylvester Stallone

My commentary on the film FIRST BLOOD (1982):

Sylvester Stallone does a great job of portraying someone who is suffering from some serious battlefield trauma and the effects of torture. Look at his thousand-yard stare: classic PTSD. He serves his country in an unpopular war and comes home where people spit at him and call him “baby killer”. He goes through hell in Vietnam and is rejected by so many in his own country.

The last scene with Colonel Trautman at the sheriff’s office where he is weeping before being taken into custody: a very powerful and moving scene. The war is not over for John Rambo. Painful memories persist. All of his friends are gone. A stranger in a strange land. I don’t know why Stallone did not get nominated for an Academy Award.

“As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

–Richard Grenier