I remember the anger

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go share at a church founded around people who were in recovery from alcohol and drugs. I abused substances strongly when I was a high school teenager going into 20-year-old, so my story fit into what they were doing. As a modern “hip” evangelical community, they had their tattooed, t-shirt-wearing, blue-jeans-wearing, under-40 young pastor, and the overhead monitor with songs and videos, etc.

And, there I was in a black clerical collar shirt, black pants, and introducing myself as Fr. Ernesto. I actually fit in well and was most definitely quite accepted after the members realized that I was just like them, except a few years down the line. I say that because the congregation all looked to be about the age of our children. Of course, that may be nothing more than an indication that a 67-year-old always sees most everyone as young, LOL.

Because of my being a Viet Nam veteran, a couple of the men came up to me outside afterward to talk to me. They were Middle East veterans. One of them had been a First Responder like I had been. He had been a combat medic, and while I was never sent into combat, I have worked ambulance duty. It is a nasty business, as any EMT, emergency room nurse, emergency physician, etc., can tell you. You see them before they are cleaned up and in a hospital bed. You see them bleeding, screaming, crying for help, unconscious, comatose, etc., etc.

After a while, the other medic and I began to share “war stories.” After a bit, I realized that all the stories he and I were sharing were anger stories. We never actually talked about the patients. We talked about the times we felt like cold-cocking a physician, or throwing something against a wall, or screaming out in anger. We talked about new partners who were still learning the ropes, about bullets flying, about lucky escapes. We referred to the patients as “the gunshot in the back”, the S-shaped compound fracture, etc.

There was another person fighting addiction next to us and listening. He had become very quiet. I think a couple of times he turned a little bit green. I think both I and the other medic realized that we needed to tone down the stories. But, it was so helpful to share stories with someone else who knew what I was talking about. We both left laughing and commenting that we wanted to meet each other again for a cup of coffee or something like that. The third person in the group also said goodbye, but in a more subdued fashion.

Later, my training came back to me. I realized that I still have anger when I think of some of those stories. But, I also realize that the anger I can still sometimes experience is my substitute for the fear I felt, for the pain I felt at seeing human beings in such pain, for the inadequacy I felt when I could not make them live. Yes, of course I intellectually know that I was not inadequate and that I am not God. But, that does not stop the feelings.

For some that has led to drug addiction, homelessness, mental breakdowns, PTSD, Moral Injury, etc. There is nothing like war and/or being a First Responder to quickly teach you that when the 10 Commandments say that we should not kill that it does not simply mean murder. Yes, I realize that the commandment is specifically talking about murder. But, I also realize that both Jesus and the Church Fathers commented that killing itself is not a good thing, and neither is death and suffering.

Because we are so often trying to justify war (Just War Theory), we tend to forget that no matter how often we justify war, war was never meant to be. We were created in the image of God, who does not wish any to perish. As a result, when we are involved in death and suffering, we often experience the repercussions of having to behave in a way in which God did not originally want us to behave. While God may not punish us, we often punish ourselves because we know that we were not created to do such or to experience such.

Please keep our veterans and First Responders in prayer. A lot of us are still full of pain and anger.