Wounds That Bear Fruit

What starts as a bizarre Afghanistan story involving a bag of heroin and a chained-up monkey quickly turns into a raw conversation about combat, grief, and the wounds that follow veterans home. In this episode, Brody and Gar Bozeman unpack PTSD, moral injury, leadership loss, childhood trauma, and why healing requires more than time—it requires community, honest conversations, and a biblical view of suffering and hope. Whether you've worn the uniform or love someone who has, this episode is a powerful reminder that trauma doesn't have to write the final chapter.

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Transcript

Welcome And A Wild Question

SPEAKER_04 0:08

Welcome to No Sanity Required, from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

Trading Gear For Heroin

SPEAKER_00 0:18

All right, so I want to start this off with a question. If you're in country, like say you're in the mountains of Afghanistan and uh and and you're in the bartering system, what what can you buy for some cold weather gear and a case of ammo? I've heard you can buy a block of heroin and anything you want. Anything you want.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Anything you want. Yeah. So that story, we were uh yeah, we were in we're pretty close to the Pakistan border uh at an outpost up there. And we got stationed. We noticed there was like this outpost on top of the hill that we knew some Afghan army guys were staying in and figured they didn't have a lot of contact, so we were gonna go up on there and see if we could connect with them. And so me, uh me and another buddy, Barry, me and Barry went up to check in on those guys. And it's just this little wooden hut sitting on top of the ridge. So we're kind of like military crest halfway down the ridge. They're up on top of the ridge, so they can see the other side. So these guys are supposed to be our overwatch, like to make sure we don't get overrun when we're sleeping at night. So that's the kind of guy you want to have a good relationship with. Also, you don't want to piss them off because they're the guys that have the high ground and you don't want them shooting at you at the middle of the night, which they're prone to do anyways. So we went up there to check on them, and there's snow on the ground, it's cold outside. First thing that we noticed when we walked up is chained up outside this little shack is one of those big, hairy, like Himalayan monkeys. Like this thing's the size of a Rottweiler, it's enormous. And I was like, why not never seen one of those things in real life? Underestimated the size of them. They're huge. But how do these guys have that thing in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

It's only changed. It's like a guard dog.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, like it's by the door. Like this thing. Chain around its neck. Yeah. Yeah, chained around its neck. So this is the thing that's going to keep you out of their hut at night. And so, so already it was a bar bizarre scene, anyways. Even more bizarre, we go inside, and these guys, they're all high. They're strung out, and they're sitting around this little charcoal fire in a wood building, which of course makes a lot of sense. And so we start trying to talk with them, like, what is going on up here? And they talked about how they'd been up there for 18 months. The army had posted them up there. They didn't have rations, they didn't have supplies, they're just kind of living on their own. Nobody comes, checks in on them. They all the gear they don't have, there's snow on the ground, they don't have cold weather gear, so they're just trying to survive up there. And so we're like, man, like what can we do to help you? And like, we don't have cold weather gear, we don't have training. And as we were walking in, rewinding just a little bit, as we were walking in, Barry had seen that monkey. Barry's Barry was a little bit wild, anyways. Barry had saw that monkey, and he's like, I want that monkey. And I was like, Yeah, I'm sure you do, man. Like, we're gonna we're gonna and so we go inside and we're talking, and we look up on the shelf, and there is a bag of black tar heroin up there. Like these guys for the past year have done nothing but just living on heroin living on heroin, sitting around a charcoal fire, shooting up, getting high, like completely dysfunctional. And so, kind of got this idea of like, we're gonna make it our mission to turn these guys around. You know, we're gonna get them off the drugs, get them clean, you know, teach them to fight, really turn them into soldiers. So we're talking to these guys, like, listen, if we get you guys some cold weather gear and we get you guys some ammo and we start training you, we'll do it, but you got to give that up. And they're like, Okay, all right, all right, we'll do it. And I was like, great. And like, as I'm going to get the heroin off the shelf, Barry goes, and the monkey.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

It's and so this guy, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

And so the guy's like, What did he say? And then interpreter, he's like, uh, he wants the monkey too. He goes, Oh, it's not, it's it's not mine. Like, it's not not my monkey. He's like, No, no, that's part of the deal. And so this guy hands this monkey over. Don't know why he did it either way. So we're going, we're going, leaving. The monkey's like on a leash. Monkey's on a leash. So we unclimped the leash. We're walking down the mountain. We're walking away. I said, Barry, what just happened? Like, I said, we we went in there thinking we're gonna go help these guys out, train these guys. I said, we just traded some cold weather gear and a couple boxes of ammo for a bag of heroin and a monkey. He's like, I know that was epic, right? So that monkey became the fob, uh, like like became the mascot. It did. It became the fob mascot for um for about two months until there was an incident.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

There was an incident, yeah, which we we will not discuss here. We'll tell JB off the air.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

And the monkey is no more. And the monkey was no more after that. Yeah. There was a reason it was on the chain. That's all. I don't know if I've ever heard stories about Barry. I've probably heard stories about Barry, hadn't I?

Barry’s Raid And The Aftermath

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Probably so. So he was the guy, we same deployment. It was it was a little after this. We had gotten a call that a French omelet team, it's like a military liaison team, there's a French team on the ground that was close by. The French team had gotten into an ambush, and we were going to respond to it. And I don't think we really knew kind of the gravity of the incident on the way out there. And as we're pulling into it, there's still a little bit of a gunfight going on, and people are just standing around, and it doesn't seem like there's really any command and control. There's no initiative, like nobody's returning fire. It's just it's a show. And so we had rolled up. Well, what had happened is this liaison team, they had put their commander, their first sergeant, their interpreter all in the same vehicle. And that was the vehicle that got hit. So their whole command and control was taken out in one explosion. And they didn't have body bags for the bodies. Some bodies are missing, and so um, anyways, after this happens, we found the guy responsible and we're kind of tracking his movement. And he had gone to Pakistan and then he'd come back into Afghanistan. When we got word he was back in Afghanistan, he was in kind of in our neighborhood, and we knew where he was at, so we were gonna go go raid it that night. And so we hooked up with some Romanian guys. We went and made the raid that night, and it's pretty standard. Like you don't break out on your own, you know, like you're you're always working in pairs, and everything that you do. Well, that guy squirted out the back of the objective, and Barry just took off after him. And so this guy gets in a Wadi, you know, like a little canal ditch there, and he takes off running down that Wadi, and there's a gunship overhead, and that gunship starts, you know, putting some rounds on him, and he gets clipped by a fragment on the side of the head and goes down. So like 40 mic mics. Yeah, like 40 mic mics. So big stuff. Yep. Yep. So he gets clipped by a fragment and goes down, and as Barry's chasing him, he trips going in the Wadi and smashes his face on his rifle, and his bottom teeth go through his bottom lip completely. Barry's Barry's teeth, yep. So Barry's teeth go through his bottom lip all the way, and he's got a big beard, you know, like special operations guy. He's got a big beard, but teeth go all the way through his bottom lip. Um, doesn't matter, jumps on him, staples his head.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Staple so the the guy got clipped by some frag, so his scalp's hanging off.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

And Barry just staples him up.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Staples his head, drags him up, like just hold still.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just staples him.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Yep. Staples his shut, load him up, we're heading back to base. You know, so we we roll back. We've got a fairly, fairly young lieutenant with us that's over this team, and he's not happy with the fact that you know Barry just took off. And so he comes up to him hot after, like we just got back, like we're doing the debrief. He comes up to him hot. He says, You ever do anything like that again? I'll have you out of here so fast. Barry stone cold stares at him, pulls his Copenhagen out of his side pocket, mashes it into his bottom lip, which is completely open because of that wound where his teeth went through, squeezes as hard as he can and squeezes that Copenhagen juice out through that open wound to onto his beard and says, You ever talk to me like that again? I'll kill you. The next morning, Barry was packing a bag and was back. That guy didn't want anything to do with him. Barry was packing his bag. I said, You going back to base? He's good, yep. I was like, Yeah, I figured. I want that monkey. I think the monkey was gone already at this point. Barry lasted about as long as the monkey did out there. Dang. Yeah, he was wild, man. So dude, crazy story. Uh you kind of get a feel for his personality, anyways. I reached out to him about two months ago and I was like, hey man, I said, just thinking about you, wanted to check in on you. Remember that time we you know we went up there and traded that ammo and cold weather gear for a bag of heroin and manke? And he goes, ha, sounds like something I'd do. I was like, bro, if if that is not the craziest thing you've done in your life, and it's just like, oh yeah, that sounds like something I would do. He didn't remember. What else have you been into? Wow.

Two Paths After Combat Stress

SPEAKER_02 9:35

So we were talking, and he said, uh, he sent me a certificate. He's like, man, I just thought you'd like to know this. He is working on his MDiv at Southeastern right now. Lord got a hold of him, radically changed his life. He's you know, he's got Spanish language skills because of his time in special forces. And so he's like part of the mission's pastoral team at his at his local church. Like the Lord changed him.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

It's such a cool story. That's that's ultimately, I mean, that's where we're headed in this conversation is when you're dealing with the stress of combat and the and the trauma that you got to process afterwards. The guys that do well with that are the guys that develop a a biblical worldview and a high view of the sovereignty of God. And those guys do fine. That's your story, which we'll get into. But um, you know, we were talking offline about another guy. I don't know if we can say his name or like I'm cool with whatever. Um, I'm gonna be sensitive to you on that. But and and it's the opposite. Yeah, he didn't find the Lord and operating at a high level, operating, I think you said Silver Star.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yeah, operating really high level. I you know, I I want to be sensitive to him, so I I won't use his name. But he was one of these guys that was extremely gifted at his job. Like he was the guy you wanted next to you in a gunfight because you knew you could count on him. But he was a high performer, but a low trust guy. Like he's the guy you want beside you in in a gunfight, but in uh any other aspect of your life, he's probably a guy that's gonna get you in trouble. And with him, a lot of that a lot of that baggage that he had started way before his his military career happened. But when whenever we lost our team sergeant on that deployment, a switch flipped right away and it became extremely dysfunctional, extremely fast, and he just never bounced back from it. You know, I I believe all those cumulative traumatic experiences, like they just they pile up, and it gets to a point where you have to reframe, you have to do something to to reassess your worldview. If not, you're stuck on this loop that you have no idea how to process. And if you can't process it, you're gonna find other ways to cope with it. And his way of coping was violence, aggression, um, substance abuse. And that's the trajectory he went on, and he never bounced back from it. I mean, even when he got out of Afghanistan, got back to his home unit, had a really good opportunity to take some uh some pretty coveted positions in the special operations community and to make rank and to really proceed, and he squandered all of it because it was almost just like self-sabotage. You know, he I think he felt so responsible for not being able to have an effect on the loss uh of our team sergeant that whenever he went back, that that grief, that shame, that became his identity. And so he lived out of that position and as far as I know has continued to live out of that position the rest of his life. And you know, everything that I see from what he posts on social media, it's just the same pattern, you know, alcohol, drugs, women, cycle will break. He'll be remorseful and regretful and say things need to change in his life, and that'll last for a short season, and then the cycle starts over again. You know, it's it's almost like the book of Judges. Like it's just this constant spiraling downward fall of I'm I'm recognizing the pattern, but I have complete inability to pull myself out of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Whereas Barry is born again, gives his life to the Lord, and is on a completely different trajectory, but haven't had similar or shared experiences. And I think that's that's the big difference. Could you talk a little bit about that op George was the sergeant's name? We're okay to say that.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Losing George And Losing The Glue

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Could you talk a little bit about just that deployment, that team, George's death?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Yeah. Yeah. So that was uh you know, that was Afghanistan 2013, and George was, man, the most complete leader that I ever worked for. Phenomenal guy. You know, he's he was at the end of his career, um, was so close to retirement. And man, he was just, he was a man's man for one. Um, but even in the teams, like he he had this calm, quiet leadership presence about everything that he did. Uh he demanded a lot of his guy of his guys, but he invested in them so deeply. They would do anything, do anything for him. And and he was so good at even like the little details. Like everything mattered to him. Whenever I got to that team, you know, we on Sundays we would do, we would do com checks and redo our crypto and things like that. And I think I wasn't feeling good one day. I got up kind of late and I had I was late for that crypto check-in. And he pulled me aside and he's like, Hey man, I really like you. I just want you to be you, but I need you to be a better version of you. Dude, that stuck with me because you know, it's that moment where you realize other people are depending on you, even in the little things. And and something as simple as punctuality is about not just respect for yourself, but it's about respect for your team and respect for other people's time. And whenever you're you show up a little bit late for something, what you're communicating is man, I I don't fully respect you. I don't fully respect your time. And it erodes trust within a team. And he had such a tight grip on what trust should look like in high-performing teams in that environment, even little things like that, he didn't let slip through the cracks. So he was really the glue that that held that team together. And so uh, you know, pushing into the valley. I won't I won't go into complete specifics of that, but he's the first one over the ridgetop. And when them when the fire opens up, he's the first one that that's hit. And so so George was killed and packed up all of his stuff and cleaned up all of his gear and got it out of there. Three days later, we were back out in the field again. The war doesn't stop because you're grieving. And so that was it was wildly unique because you got to see some guys really suppress and and just try to power through. Some guys were grieving through it. Um and that came out in came out in the way that they spoke to one another, came out in violence and aggression and and a lot of these other things. But what I saw was just when you take that leadership presence out, how quickly a team can begin to fall apart. And I'm not saying like we never fell apart internally. We always loved each other, we were always gonna take care of each other. And you continue to operate and we continued to operate at a very high level, like we were still extremely successful, but all of the little things, all of that is what you began to see. Comprises started being being made. Um, the attention to detail stuff was was kind of left out, and there at the end, man, it just kind of started feeling a little bit like the Wild West. And so um we still had we still had great leaders on that team, but it was such a huge void that that he left behind.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Um we just never really got back. Y'all are in a position, you've got high ground. Okay, if if I remember, y'all were on high ground and he's he's just looking down, like y'all in position to to fire on a y'all are trying to fire on a position.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah, we were we were really just going in for reconnaissance. Okay, so it's a recce thing. Yeah, yeah, we it was a short patrol, really just reconnaissance, is all it was. We were um it's basically one ridge over from where we were at. And so it was come up, there's another village kind of down in the valley on the other side. Um get up, take a look down in there, see what's going on, see if we can get eyes on movement or anything, and then maybe even just patrol down into it, pass through, show our presence, and then come back out. Just kind of a way of of establishing boundaries and and keeping, you know, Taliban guys at a distance. And yeah, they obviously they had an emplacement already. They they knew we were coming. And so whenever he crested the hill, looked down in there, got opened up with a PKM machine gun from uh from a compound there and hit him in the first burst. So yeah, it was one round. I mean, it was it was kind of a kind of a freak thing, but man, just it just shows you how fragile life is, man. It there and gone.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

And y'all are all there, just kind of everybody's kind of coming to look over this ridge.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah, so for me, for me, I had I'd gotten giardia. So I'd lost probably 30 pounds. I had parasites, I was super sick. A lot of our guys had gotten it from uh the well water uh there on our on our compound. And so I was struggling, and that morning I was I wasn't feeling great. And it's literally a 300-yard patrol. I mean, it we're not far away at all. And so I'm laying, I'm laying back, and last thing George told me on the way out, and he's like, hey man, you're good. Chill, we'll get you on, we'll get you on the next one. And he said, We'll be in and out. I was like, okay, cool. So I lay back down, I close my eyes, and then I hear, it's you know, 15 minutes later, I hear gunfire kind of perk up, and then the door busts open, and they say, Get your kid on, we're in a fight. And so then we all load up and we take off, and we we head that direction. And by the time we get there, I mean, Georgia's on the ground, helicopter's inbound. And so it was it was not the big planned operation that you know you just think this is when it's gonna happen. It was it's it was the routine, you know, the the pretty mundane. It was literally just kind of like, you know, an early morning, we're gonna get in, get in, get out, we'll be back for lunch. So and I think sometimes those are those are even harder to process because you're not yeah, it's weird. You're not okay, yeah. You're not in your mind's not in that state, you know. You think about the progression of kind of how the mind works in in combat or even how it copes with stress, you know, any guys that have talked about you know concealed carry or or the alertness stuff, you know, you talk about color phases of you know white and yellow and red and black, and you know, if you're kind of always in a state of yellow of being alert, then whenever something does pop off, you know, your heart rate, your your you know, your nervous system, all that'll go to red, you'll function at a high level, but it'll never become overwhelming. But if you start off in in white, where you don't have any alertness, when it when you uh you're not taking it all in, something pops off, your nervous system goes into overdrive, bypasses yellow and red, immediately goes into black, and that's when people begin to freeze. It's when the mind shuts down, you don't have the ability to make decisions. Um and so it was almost kind of like that in a way, psychologically, where it wasn't the day that you really expected something like that to happen. And so, because of that, the shock was just that much, that much greater.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Talk about could you compare that to say an op where you go in? I mean, you're turned on and tuned up the second you you start out on that operation, and then you do get into some sort of a major firefight. Uh could you could you talk about a situation like that?

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Yeah, so actually um less than a week after that incident, we we did a major operation uh in a valley over in the the Tangy Valley on the other side. Uh that's pretty well known because you know uh two years prior to that, uh a Chinook full of seals was shot down right there in that same valley. Extortion 17. Yeah, extortion 17. Yeah, right there in that same valley. And where we were at, you could you could see the crash site where it would have been at from that point. And so that was one of those places every time you went there, you knew it was going to be a fight. Every time you went there, you knew you were gonna expect it. And so going into that one, you know, we went in, we went in there less than a week later, and that gunfight rolled on and off for 48 hours. I mean, guys are just trying to stay up, taking shifts, you know, throughout the day. You're just kind of in and out. The the hardest part, I think, was, you know, we we had one really heavy initial fight that lasted for a couple hours and then intermittent throughout the night, and then it kind of tapered off over the over the next day as we gained the advantage. But you go into something like that and you're expecting casualties, you've got a plan, you know how you're getting people out, you know how you're getting them getting the medevact. Like everything's everything's synced up and in order, and you got a contingency for all of that. Um, but when you go in another situation like what happened there, whenever it pops off, it all it's almost like mentally and emotionally, you're trying to play catch up.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, that's that's the a really good way to word that. That makes sense in my mind. Mentally and emotionally, you're trying to play catch up because um, you know, Hank was a NASCAR driver, right? And you know, when a guy gets killed in a in a NASCAR race, it's shocking, but you're like, uh, we're driving 210 miles an hour, six inches apart, right? You know, okay. Whereas when you get the news that someone you know was just tragically killed in a car wreck on their way home from the grocery store, it has a different effect. You're yeah, that that language emotionally trying to catch up, psychologically trying to catch up with just what just happened. And I would imagine once, like when George got killed, like you said, everything goes back to normal, and now we're just back to work. We're operating. And so you just kind of compress it, set it aside, I'll deal with that later. And the more times you do that, the more you got to deal with later. But later is when you're with your wife and your kids and you're back home, and you're and the more of those, I'll deal with it later.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Like, is that I mean, yeah, that's yeah, that's tracking. And and so that's I think that's where a lot of the the helplessness and the hopelessness and post-traumatic stress, guys that have struggled with with those, where it comes up because whenever it surfaces, it doesn't surface in a combat environment. It surfaces when you're at home playing with your kids or you're out with your wife, and something that you can't put your finger on in that moment triggers it, and man, you snap and you go somewhere else mentally, and you don't know why you're there. And then it's am I broken and am I dysfunctional? Is it am I gonna be like this the rest of my life? Am I gonna destroy my relationships? Maybe they're better off without me. And you start going down that spiral, and it's just so hard to pull yourself out from it. But it comes down to you've never had time to process it, and it just so happens that now, psychologically and emotionally, I think you're trying to unpack this stuff at an inopportune time. And because we're not great at structuring that and giving people the ability to do that, we put them at a deficit right off the bat. I mean, you you go back to the old testament

Catching Up Emotionally To Shock

SPEAKER_02 26:21

and look at the. I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah, go back to the old testament.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Yeah, you you look at the way, look at the way Israel comes back into the camp, you know, post-combat. Guys go out, they fight, they come back. It's like, okay, if you've drawn blood, if you killed, you're gonna go outside the camp, and then we're gonna do ritual cleansing of the weapons that were used and ritual cleansings of yourself, and you guys are gonna have time to debrief and discuss what what you've experienced and what you're going through. And then the nation comes out to meet the people as they're brought back in and they rejoice and they mourn with them at the same time. It's almost like they're saying, collectively, we understand that that our decisions and our brokenness required you to be a part of this, and so we're gonna help carry that weight. And so the integration is communal. They they have that tribe with them, and so because of that community, they're collectively carrying the burdens. Because of technology today, guys go out, they fight for six months, they fight for 12 months, they get on a plane, they get kicked off in Germany for a couple of days. Most of them just mask beer, yeah, drink beer and mask whatever they're dealing with for a few days. Then they get off a plane and they're back at home with their kids within three days. They have zero time to process what they've experienced, and they don't also don't have the community that comes alongside of them to help carry that burden. Instead, what they go is, why do you act this way? Why, why are you struggling? Why are you broken? Like, do you not realize the impact that that's having on us? And so now it just compounds that I'm a burden, I'm I'm no longer fit, I can't perform. And for guys that have performed at such a high level for their entire lives and have lived so sacrificially to walk back in and believe that now they're not sacrificing for somebody, but other people are having to sacrifice for them, man, they they just can't deal with that.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

That that makes sense. Um, do you mind telling me about the first time you shot at or shot someone? Yeah. Um, because I'd like to compare, I'd like to talk about that. And here's where I want to go with this. First time you you you fired your weapon in combat and killed somebody. And then at what point after that did that feel normal or did you compartmentalize it? Not saying that it ever became normal, but did you did you put that in a compartment where now

Old Testament Model For Reintegration

SPEAKER_00 28:45

you're coping with it? I'm gonna go out and kill people. I'm coping with it. Because you recommended a book to me years ago. I ended up reading both this guy's books, Grossman's Books. Yeah, Grossman's books, yeah. On killing and on combat. And and that was part, we were having a conversation like this, and that book was very helpful for me in understanding how to deal with veterans. But yeah, if you could talk about first time, and then how did you then begin to compartmentalize it? And at what point was it like, yes, just what we do? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

So the the first time I fired my weapon in combat, and the first time I I took a life, we're not the same incident. Uh one thing I I did learn from that was we leading up to my first deployment, this was you know, 2006, going into our Iraq. The way that we had trained growing in that going in there was, you know, we had qualified on all of our weapons, and then they would put us in these scenarios and they'd put us up there with these Ivan targets, you know, the the paper, paper guy with the AK, and you stand there and they would have you have you face to the left, and then go contact right, and you would turn and you would raise your rifle, two to the chest, one to the head, safety on, lower your rifle. And then you'd face the other way. And they'd go contact left and you'd do it again, and you'd do it again. And that's all you drilled. And so that evening, it was, you know, one or two in the morning, it was late night. We had gotten gotten called out to respond to an IED that was uh down around the city center, and we went down and it was it was a setup, it was a staged ambush, and there's a graveyard kind of off to the right that's got those designs cut into the walls, and so it's this mosaic is there. And some guy sticks an AK through that cutout and just starts spraying left to right into our formation. And I hear that AK go off to my right, and it's you know, less than 15 yards away. I mean, he's right there. And I turned around, picked up my rifle, three shots, bang, bang, bang, safety on, and I put it down. I was like, big drift. What are you what are you doing? What are you doing? And it seemed like an eternity before I got my rifle back up, but you know, got it back up, returned fire, suppressed it. We we moved on. That just drilled in my head. Oh my gosh, the way you train is so important. Because if you're not training for reality, as good as that may look on paper and as may, as good as it may look when you're you're going through these drills, it's not reality. That's not how combat works. You fire until the threat's eliminated. You don't fire three shots and put your put your weapon down. And so I was like, okay, think about the the way that you're going to train your guys moving forward because the habits that you build now is exactly what they're going to do whenever the situation's heavy. But later on, later on that deployment, we got dropped off, uh dropped off one night, just a four-man team. Um, it was part of a part of an operation we still can't really talk

First Shots In Combat And Training

SPEAKER_02 31:35

a lot about, but we had to maneuver across this uh this graveyard and then a palm orchard. And we our game plan was is if we were to get in contact and we were to get separated, that we would make our way to the Euphrates um and then go hide in the river and wait till morning, and then somebody'd come pick you up. And so we went in um trying to be, you know, as cool as we could. The guys that dropped us off is uh and conventional army army team, three trucks, they rolled in, kicked us out, and they kept moving. And we'd kind of given the direction listen, if you guys take fire, just keep rolling. Like, unless you're just overwhelmed, don't return fire. Like, we don't need everybody in this city waking up. Well, they drop us off, they don't make it 50 yards, and some dude in the alleyway sees them, sees the outline of a humbee, and just opens up with an AK, you know, just a burst, you know. In Iraq in those days, an AK burst, that's nothing. Like people aren't, they're not waking up. It's white noise to them at that point. That guy fires a quick burst. The gunner on that church truck swings a 50 cal around and just like, oh, everybody's awake now. So everybody that was asleep on the roof wakes up, and within seconds, we've got RPK and PKM fire just raining down on us, and we're huddled up behind you know, piles of rubble and gravestones, just eating rounds. And the guy, the guy on the rooftop above us, he stops to reload. And so we bolt for for the palm, palm grove right next to it to try to get some cover and return fire, and that's where we kind of spread out. And we're doing all this in NVGs, and you know, we're starting to lose track of each other. But I was in that palm grove and we were taking fire, and there was a row of houses that were kind of wrapped around it on this canal, and I saw a porch light come on on the outside of this house, and then saw a guy in a window, comes up to the window, kind of takes a knee, sticks his AK on the window, fires a burst out in the palm grove. He can't really see us, but he's just spraying. Because you are wearing night vision.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, he's obviously not. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Yeah, so he pops up, he sprays a burst, and then he ducks back down, and then he pops up the second time, sprays a burst and kind of lingers and then drops back down. And so I put my red dot on that window. I was like, man, he sticks his head up there again. I'm gonna shoot him. And yeah, he he popped back up, squeezed one round off, he dropped, never, never got back up again. And I like I still remember that very vividly. Like I I can see it in my head, and it was just I don't think I could process it in the time. We just had too much, too much going on. Um, we eventually got picked up and and got out of there and made it back. But I think later on when I when I got home is probably when I first started like, okay. Home from the deployment. Home from the deployment, yeah. That was the first time I was like, okay, that that happened. That was real. Everything else, the rest of that deployment, there were there were more gunfights that followed, and there were you know more instances of of taking life and shooting people. Um it just didn't have the same intimacy. Like that all the gunfights that followed that, it was guys shooting around corners and in buildings, and you're shooting through walls and and things like that. And it just wasn't that defined, you know. It wasn't that clear. So that was the moment, the moment that really stuck out. But it's once you you got back home and start processing it, it's almost like, okay, like you trained for that, that's what happened. In those moments, it was justified. So I don't think I carried, like I didn't carry a whole lot of whole lot of guilt or shame about that one. Um, just because it was just so clear, you know, it it it felt just so justified. Later on, there were things that happened that just became less clear, and the waters got muddied, and then that's when I really, really started to struggle.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Um and did does that coincide with back to what I was kind of alluding to earlier, those muddier, cloudier, less defined situations, is that kind of starting to happen at the same time where you're kind of like, oh yeah, we just throw the safety off and we go to work. And so you're not thinking about it as much. It becomes sort of

When War Turns Murky And Moral Injury

SPEAKER_00 36:28

just extra combat rhythm of war.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah, it just becomes reactionary. You you can't you can't function, you can't function at that level without a certain level of dehumanization. You have to be able to separate that. People in those moments, as wild as it sounds, you know, to say it out loud, people, people aren't people. People are threats, people are targets, people are anything but a but a person, but a human being. And the moments that really resonated and shook you were the moments where you weren't, you didn't have the ability to do that. I mean, I think you know, you and I have talked about it before, but you know, we were going after a high-value guy in Iraq and we didn't know what house he was in. So we we dropped bombs on both houses, and culturally, the men will be in one home and the women and children will be in the other home. And we bombed both, and that other home was full of you know young girls kind of between the age of four and probably 14. And I remember taking those little girls and and putting them in body bags, and that's when I'm like, man, I don't like I thought we were the good guys. You know, this this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel just, it doesn't feel right. And if is this the cost, is this the cost of war, you know, that that just to take one that we would be willing to eat the collateral damage on this. And then the media after that celebrated celebrated the win and never said anything about the collateral. And so that's when you kind of realize, okay, like this is there's a lot of PR in this too. It's it's not about what's happening on the ground, it's about the story that we're telling and you know, support back home and keeping people on board. And so, you know, love this country, um, would fight for it again. I I think more than more than anything, it shook my worldview. And I didn't have an ability to reframe that. I didn't have the tools to kind of reframe that in real time. And so it's it sent me down it sent me down a hard path. Um, because and I was on that hamster wheel just replaying and reliving uh with zero context to process it in a biblical worldview and to make sense of it.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yeah, and I remember I remember when that happened and that that target was taken out. You're right, it was very celebrated in the news here. You know, and it was years later that you and I became friends, and I found out, oh, the day they were showing pictures of that guy on the news, hey, we got this guy, he's he's number whatever on the list, which is very high. Um I had no idea what had happened in that in that assault, you know, or that that attack on those two houses. And it does, it just changes your perspective. Even I realize even as a civilian state side who's patriotic, the the level of naivety for me to just, you know, think, yeah, I love my country, I'm patriotic, and so I I support what we're doing. But I think now so many of y'all are asking, asking those hard questions, like you're old enough now to to go back to the question you were asking yourself when you're loading that four-year-old into a body bag. Now you've raised a family and are in the process of raising a family, so you're asking those questions, but by God's grace, now you have a biblical and high view of the sovereignty of God. And so you've got, just like your buddy Barry, it's like there's a way forward. It goes back to what they did in the Old Testament that you alluded to. There's a way forward where we celebrate God's goodness and sparing us and and putting evil to the sword. We mourn the loss of both sides to some degree, because it's human life. Um, and then we entrust it to the sovereignty of God and we move forward. And somebody doesn't have that worldview, can't do that. So they either gotta stay at at war, but you can't do that forever. And so then you gotta be done and you gotta figure it out, and that's when guys turn to other things. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um so talk a little bit about uh what I like to do is just the way that that you're y'all are teaching and helping, because you talk a little bit about what you're doing now and kind of how you how like a big overview, I guess, or as detailed as you want to get, what's sort of the the method and methodology behind help how you're helping veterans that have been through these experiences. And then I'd like to talk about how that coping and and dealing would transition over into, say, people that have been sexually abused or the or you know the victims of other sort of trauma or abuse.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Um,

Reframing Trauma Into Growth And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 41:42

because there's a lot of hope in this.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, the cool opportunity that I have right now is um I work with a company called Rope Solutions. And what we do is we take special operations veterans and we find guys that they've gone through trials, they've gone through tribulations, they've come out the other side, and they have life lessons to pass on to other people. And we take these guys and we put them in mentorship roles in executive leadership, you know, doing executive leadership coaching, doing frontline leadership coaching. Uh, we started off primarily in the oil and gas industry and have branched out in construction and now getting ready to branch out into D1 athletics, which hopefully that'll be something next summer I can come on and tell that story. That'll be really cool. But, you know, part of the methodology of that is looking at, you know, how do we handle post-traumatic growth? And so we have to gu give guys the ability to reframe. You know, they they're gonna stay stuck in that broken worldview and until they gain something else. And so the way that it has to be reshaped is your worldview has to change. You have to accept things for what they are, both what has happened uh and the way that the world is, your role inside of that. Um, and then you have to reframe it in a positive light. You have to look at it. What are what are new opportunities that I have because of what has happened? What is uh how is this gonna change into closer relationships to the people that I love? What's important to me now that wasn't important to me before? You know, how has this changed my worldview for the better? And then what is you know, the spiritual and existential growth that's gonna come from this? How is this gonna draw me into a deeper relationship with the Lord? And all of those things become to be the refining moments. And I think that's another big part of it is we have to change the way that we talk about suffering. You know, so much of our culture talks about suffering in a victimhood mentality. If we look at scripture, suffering is a reality of life. Uh, and I believe in God's grace, instead of allowing us to suffer as a form of punishment, he uses suffering as a way to refine us into the image of his son. And so if we look at suffering. In that way, now I go, okay, yeah, this is happening to me, but the Lord is sovereign and the Lord is using this, and He has a purpose in this. And so for these guys that have gone through these, you know, horrible life experiences and traumatic events, now the way that they go is okay, what's the new opportunity in this? And I have appreciation for people that have gone through trauma in a way that I didn't before. I have an opportunity to speak into people's lives that I wouldn't have an audience with before. I have a deeper appreciation for the relationships in my life because I know how finite life is and how fragile it is. I now have the desire and the ability to invest deeply in other people because I realize that relationships matter more than anything else. And also because I've seen life taken and I've taken life, I know that I'm not created for this world. I'm created for eternity. And the only thing that's going to matter is what do I do with Jesus? And so now a new appreciation for life changes. And I think it gives guys a sense of urgency that they didn't have before. So now they take that urgency and they push it into these other dimensions and they start to mentor people with the same battles. And, you know, one of the things that we say a lot is, hey, we we don't compare trauma because I think that's what a lot of veterans do. It's a it's a way to mask, it's a way to people keep people at arm's distance and go, oh, well, because you haven't experienced the trauma that I've experienced, you don't get to speak into my life. My trauma is unique to me. No, it's it's really not. Trauma is trauma. Yeah, there's people that have not been where you've been, they haven't taken life, they haven't seen their friends, you know, killed and mutilated and all of those things. At the same time, you don't know what it's like to be a young girl who's been sexually abused and objectified. You don't know what it's like to grow up in a home like that. You how much more equipped are you as an adult to handle those than she is as a child? Like if you begin, if you begin to compare trauma, you're gonna find really quickly there's somebody who's gone through something a lot worse than than you have. What you need to recognize is to have the humility to go, man, there's people that have experienced things in life, and there are people that have wisdom that that may have never gone through anything like I have. But I need those people to speak into my life. I need those people to give me wisdom and discernment because obviously, clearly, right now, I can't see things clearly or as the Lord wants me to. And so I'm gonna have to invest in those relationships and allow other people to invest in me. And that's the community piece that I believe that that so many people lack is they I think if we look at if we look at life, God has given us all four domains of leadership. We have the ability to lead ourselves, the ability to lead our family, lead in community and lead in our vocation, whatever our work is. Go in go in any airport, you're gonna find a dozen best-selling books on leadership. And it's all gonna be about corporate America and leading in the workplace and all these things. And I think, especially in when it comes to men, they will build these pretty high walls and these around their work and look at how beautiful I am and look at how together I am, look at how well I lead in corporate America and lead in the workplace and how successful I am and all of these things. And what it is, is it's a big wall to keep people from peering over into how they're leading their family, leading themselves and leading in community. The reality is, is if you don't have the ability to lead yourself, lead your family, and then have a community of people that speak, speak into your life, and you have the ability to speak into theirs, without those three, you don't have the right to speak in anybody else's life. If you can't lead yourself, lead your family, and have the humility to let somebody else mentor you, you don't have the right to lead anybody else. And ultimately what's gonna happen is people are gonna find out that you're a fraud. They're gonna find out what's really going on. And it doesn't matter how good you lead in the workplace, when when people realize that you don't have the ability to lead yourself or your family's falling apart because you're not showing up for them, it's gonna create trust issues within your organization and they're gonna know pretty quick, I can only fire that follow

Standards Psychological Safety And Conflict

SPEAKER_02 48:10

this guy so far.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

Man, that makes sense. Makes so much sense. And there's such a right now, there's so much. Like in this, in this arena that we're in right now, podcasting and social media, so many dudes that are like combat veterans who are doing leadership or they're doing economics or they're doing geopolitical culture, you know, current events, they're speaking into there's so much noise. That what I appreciate about what you're saying is you can just set all that aside and focus on gospel biblical principles, which all those four tiers you're talking about, I surrender myself to the Lord, that's self-leadership. It's submission versus autonomy, and then family, community, vocation, all of that, I become a better leader in those areas because I'm submitting in that first area. What my leadership of myself looks like is really connected to my surrender to the Lord. And as I surrender to Him, then in those other areas I become a more effective leader because I'm gonna have the proper balance of empathy and sympathy, but also demand a lot out of people. I had a conversation recently with you know some of the most effective people in our organization here, and they dropped the ball. They fumbled, they had we call them fumbles, but in one day, as we're recording this, this was literally yesterday. Now, when this drops, it'll be several days from now, I'm sure. But had a couple pretty, you know, a couple of drops or fumbles, and they weren't big things technically. And what what I got pretty excited about in a negative way, pretty fired up about, is I go to these people and I say, hey, this is not acceptable. I need you to be better. And that I felt like it was sort of brushed aside as, well, this is not a big thing, it's just a small thing nobody even realizes. And I think now they we had some words and they responded well. Like, no, little things are big things. What you do back to, you know, when you showed up a few minutes late to a meeting and George pulled you aside. I think good leaders, that kind of stuff drives good leaders crazy. When we're when we're running an eight o'clock meeting in the morning and guys walk in at 8 01, I lo I mean, I lose my mind over that because I'm like, okay, here's your ceiling. You're at your ceiling right now. Like literally, what what's happened is you've hit the ceiling. So you're gonna have to back off of that and and figure out a different way to approach life and ministry and work and but go back to those four things when you humble yourself before the Lord and recognize your dependency on Him is critical to your survival as a human, but also is absolutely critical to you thriving as a human. Because so many guys and and gals, people that are dealing with past trauma, they're they're focused on surviving. They're not even thinking about flourishing, thriving, or you know, really living productive, healthy lives where they're investing in others and moving forward. It's just like they're in survival mode, which is why alcohol becomes a huge part, drugs becomes a huge part, sex becomes a huge part, addiction. And when when you self-govern and self-lead by surrendering to the Lord now, and this goes for anybody, now I can lead my family effectively. I can lead my community in my community, I can lead at work, I can follow. And I don't know that follows the right word, but if I'm gonna be a good leader, I've got to be submitting to the authority God's put in my life in a in an effective way. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Yeah, because what happens a lot of times is I've seen this in the military community and I've I've seen it in other people that have experienced childhood trauma and things like that. They typically surround themselves with people that are enablers. They don't surround themselves with people that are gonna hold them accountable. They sign, they they find people that are gonna feed into that victim mentality, people that are gonna give them the desires that they want, that are gonna coddle them and tell them it's okay. We all know that you've been through this. It's understandable that you are the way you are and why these things happen to you. And so, because of that, there is no standard, there's nothing there. And so, you know, I heard a pastor one time say it, don't know where, but you know, it's something that we we've used and we say it inside of our team all the time. Surround yourself with people that love you and aren't impressed by you. That's the safest place to be. People that care deeply enough about you to tell you hard things. Buzzword in in corporate America right now is psychological safety. Like, oh, you know, we want to we want to create an environment that's psychologically safe. Okay, well, the way that gets translated is let's create an environment where everybody's nice to each other. Let's create an environment where everybody's happy and there's no conflict. The most effective teams, there's a lot of confrontation on those teams. What psychological safety really is, is you and I have the ability to have a hard conversation. Yeah. And I have the ability to hold you to a standard, and you understand, hey, there's not going to be any reprisal or any punishment or pushback because of this conversation. There's just going to be an expectation that you're going to respond. And if you respond to the standard, we're good. And everything is good. Highly effective teams, that's what psychological safety is. It's not the removal of conflict, it's the ability to have hard conversations and stick to a standard. I was with a with a D1 coach this past week, and it was awesome because we were taking a tour of their facilities, and he's, you know, kind of looking at the previous administration stuff, and he's like, you see all these walls that talk about culture and family and all this stuff. I want it all down. I don't want to hear those those words in our office. I never want to hear culture. I never want to hear family. All I want to hear is standards. Because without standards, we don't have a culture. And I was like, man, that's actually it sounds harsh, but it's actually a really cool perspective because your culture is built on the standards that you keep. And if you don't have standards, then really what are you holding anybody to? You know, what what are your core values? Even when you're looking at, you know, whether you hire somebody, fire somebody, it should all be based off of our core values. How do they excel at these things? Do they really hold true to our identity? And if they don't, then we need to have a serious conversation about their future with this organization.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Man, that's so good. Yeah, I was talking to so one of the things I love about Snowbird, the way we work and operate, is we have hard conversations. I mean, we're gonna we're gonna deal with conflict. Conflict resolution is very important. Um and and it's because we love each other and we love the ministry and the call that God's given us. And I was talking to Tuck about that one day, and he said, man, he said, I'm so thankful I was raised in a family and a house where conflict is is dealt with, and I saw it dealt with, you know, through my work and ministry. He he saw how we he's very close to the the way we operate at Snowbird. And then several instances where he was at school or, you know, on teams in high at the high school level, where I helped him, I coached and navigated him through dealing with some conflict where he learned early on people don't know how to deal with it, they don't want to deal with it, they're lazy. They'll give you lip service to your face, say one thing, and then not mean it. And it's it's it's a lack of sincerity. And he said, Man, I'm so glad because when I got to the Division I level where guys, you know, millions of dollars are being moved around. I think their NIL for just their team last year was $17 million being distributed between 85 players. And and he said, he said, when that kind of money is being pushed around and egos, everybody's an alpha kind of person, and the egos are huge. And he's like, people don't even know how to deal with conflict. But but good programs, you know, like like this coach you're talking about, that's one of the things they're gonna do. They're gonna say, no, we're gonna deal with conflict. And so part of dealing with conflict and and conflict resolution and working through problems, and and sometimes you work through a problem and you realize, I don't think, I still think we don't agree on this, but we've gotten to a good place where together we can move forward. Yeah um, and so conflict resolution doesn't mean that we always get to a point of total agreement. It means we work to move the mission or the organization or the family or the church forward. And when it comes to dealing with people in the world that you're talking about where trauma, whether that's traumatic trauma, post-traumatic stress or combat trauma or abuse of a of a kid that is now trying to process that as a teenager or a young adult, or somebody's older and they've never dealt with it, if they don't have the mechanism in place for dealing with conflict, then they take all that trauma that's surfacing up and they don't deal with it. When it's like, no, this is conflict that I've got to internally address and deal with. And we do that with in in terms of our reconciliation and that relationship we have with God and then with people that are going to speak into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:36

Um Yeah, and that's why I think it's so important, you know, for you know, using Tucken's example, so important for them to see it at a young age and to see it consistently throughout their life, because if it's not modeled for you, then you don't have a framework whenever you get older to deal that with something that's really, I mean, I think really cool. And I'm not a clinical psychologist or or anything close to that. I just read a lot. But you look at some of some of these reports now about adverse childhood experiences.

ACE Scores And Trauma Before Combat

SPEAKER_02 58:07

Adverse childhood experiences basically just a 10-question summary of what was what was it like growing up in your home? And it goes into physical abuse, sexual abuse, uh, verbal or emotional abuse. Did you feel unloved, unwanted, or abandoned? Uh, was there drug use in the home? Was there uh instances of incarceration? Was there poverty or inaccessibility to food? And so 10 questions like that. And then you score on that, you know, maybe you were exposed to two of those or three of those, whatever the case was. So they did a study and found that veterans, people that enlisted in the military, 80% of them answered to at least two of those 10 questions. 40% of them answered yes to four or more of those questions. So yes to four or more, physical abuse, verbal emotional abuse, abandonment, drug abuse, incarceration, things like that happening inside of their home. The reason I think that's statistically important is because if you take another independent study about how these ACE scores, these adverse childhood experiences play into mental stability and resiliency, once you cross that threshold of answering yes to four or more, you're seven times more likely to deal with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. So if you really want to get into maybe the suicide epidemic in veterans, let's get to the heart of the issue, which is pre-combat. Pre-combat, yeah. So I got I got a buddy Steve, and he he kind of words it this way, and I think it's phenomenal. He goes, We we've got this wrong idea that you join the military and they they're gonna make you a spear. He goes, No, no, your childhood experience has already made you a spear. They're just finding a way to put an edge on that thing.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

Man, that's that makes me think of a story. I've never told this story on here, I don't think. I told it to a group of guys about two weeks ago sitting around the fire. I think some of our guys, guys that have been on here, I think Joseph Wainwright was there, Adam Garner was there, I don't remember who else, but uh there was it's the early snowbird days, it was just me and Little living here. Her parents were still in Atlanta, they would come up and back and forth we were working, or when we'd have a small group come in. Well, I'd gone and shared at a church sort of the vision for snowbird. And a guy was at that church, I didn't meet him that day, but he called me later. His name was Tim. Tim Arrowwood. And Tim Arrowwood was a Vietnam veteran, he was 75th Ranger Regiment guy. 75th, that's right, isn't it? Yep. And so um Tim had had been to combat and he had some things he was dealing with. He he ended up he ended up coming and living at Snowbird. I mean, we had nothing. We had a cabin, one or two tents, just hardly anything. And we built him. I don't know if you know down by the tractor shed, there's a little building called the House of Tim. I did not know that. That's what we called it for years. I think now only the old guys call it that. Yeah. Now there's a different name. It's down there in a mechanic shop. But we built him, we've I just I remember going in there, we had a big pole shed that we that we kept equipment under, the few little pieces of equipment we had. We had an old farm tractor, a church had given a guy to church had given us. And we built, we framed in one bay of that little pole shed, just made a little OSB floor, threw a bunk bed in there. And this this guy Tim, who was on full disability, he he he moved in. He was in his 50s. Because this was in the 90s, and he was uh he had been in Vietnam in the late 60s, so he was a 50-year-old guy, 48, 50. But he looked and moved like he was about 75. He was pretty broke down from drugs and alcohol. And so he comes over, he had made a profession of faith, and he comes over and he he spent a ye almost a year here with us. It's been about, I think about seven months. Stayed in that little bit. He's he lived out of his car until we got that thing framed up. Took us three or four days to frame his thing up. So Tim uh Tim just kind of piddled and did odd jobs with me and Little around around camp. And he he would he would talk about his combat experience, and one night he was struggling, and I and and we sat down and had a conversation, and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm tw- I don't know even how to talk about something like that. I'm 2 I was 26 years old, and I'm trying to help this guy, and he tells a story, he tells two stories from his time in Vietnam, and they're both not even something I want to repeat here. But one involved, similar to the story you told earlier, involved the death, the rape and death of a about a 12-year-old girl. Messed him up really bad. He he did not partake in that. It wasn't, but he saw some things happen there, and and um and then one other situation. And it and he just kind of unloaded all this that night, and and I'm just like, you know, how do I help this guy? Well, a few months later, one night I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to just walk down and check on Tim. It was about midnight. And I just walked down through the woods across the creek. We had a foot log across the creek. We were in the old cabin, me and Little, and he was staying down there by the tractor shed for people that have been to Snowbird. If you haven't been there, he's he's he's staying about 150 yards from me, maybe. So I walked down through the woods, foot log over the creek, I go and I knock on his door. It's midnight. And he says, Come in, and I and I walk in, he's sitting there holding a pistol. This happened to me twice in my life where I walked in on somebody. I know the Lord led me to that person as they're about to take their own life. And he had bought a pistol up here at Ronnie Mason's store. I'd went with him to get it. He bought a handgun just to have for self-defense. And he's sitting there contemplating shooting himself. And we sat and talked that night, and he said, I gotta tell you something. He said, for the last 30 years, everybody thinks that my issues in life with drugs and alcohol and PTSD is all associated with my two tours in Vietnam. And he then began to explain his childhood, physical abuse, his dad broke his nose with a stick of firewood, would would beat him. Um when he was 10 or 11, he got groomed by a teacher at school who then sexually abused him and several others. That guy got caught, somebody blew the whistle on him. This would have been in the 60s. Yeah. And and my mom and and my mom remembered this story, and my granddad was living at the time, and he remembered this was in Waynesville, North Carolina, where I grew up, hour from here. And that guy was sitting in his car in the Ingalls parking lot in Waynesville, and somebody pulled up and shot him in the head. And everybody all, my granddad said everybody always assumed it was the father of a kid he had abused, because in the 60s you didn't hear about it. Yeah, child abuse, sex abuse, stuff like that. So this, so this guy's explaining to me, when I was a kid, my dad physically abused me. I found solace with his school teacher who then sexually abused me, but I had this weird relationship of codependency with this guy who was controlling me. Then he gets shot and killed because it's starting to go public that he's abused these boys. He said, So as soon as I get out of the house, I enlisted, I didn't get drafted, I went in the army. Bingo, just what you just described.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

Yep. So many of them, and I think that's part of the numbers. You know, why is it 80% of them are answering, you know, to at least two of these, 40% of them are answering yes to four or more of these. Well, if you're in an abusive situation and you want to get out, where are you gonna go? Yep. It's just that easy. Yep. And if if combat severity is the number one predictor to post traumatic stress, adverse childhood experience is number two. I mean, it it's right there. And I think the reason. So many people have a hard time putting their finger on it is physiologically what's happening is we all have a fight or flight response, right? Like God designed that in us. So, you know, we're going elk hunting up in Montana or something, and I run across a grizzly on the path, I'm gonna have a fight or flight response. Either I'm gonna kill that bear or I'm gonna run from that bear, but but it's gonna happen. And I'm gonna have this cortisol response and this adrenal response, and this is gonna happen. Okay, somebody's sexually or physically abused. What happens when that bear comes home every night and it walks through the door? Now I'm having that same cortisol response, that same adrenal response. Yeah. And it absolutely destroys you physiologically and psychologically. And so people have these experiences, and then they come back home, and because maybe the combat is the most forward thing in their mind, they start to have these fight or flight responses, and they're like, man, I like why do I feel this way now? Well, it's because the bear's coming home. There's other things at play that you're having to deal with. And you follow this, follow this track, you know, over a period of a lifetime, what does that what does that impact does that have on your body? I mean, you're gonna start having blood pressure issues, heart issues, anxiety. There's even studies in in athletes that have had adverse childhood experiences where you they have to be clinically treated differently after an ACL tear or uh after an injury because their body doesn't, the inflammation response is differently, the cortisol response is different. So they don't heal as fast as athletes who have grown up in stable homes. So all of these things, I mean, it just kind of continues to stack. I think that's one of the things that, you know, if we look at what are some great things that we can reframe this with, what are some great things that we can take away from this because of what so many people have endured through the past 20 years of combat through Iraq and Afghanistan, we have learned so much about the human body and how it responds to trauma and how it responds to stress. And if we can translate some of these things into children, you know, that are coming out of abusive situations and how we we connect with them and help them walk through these growth issues, whether it's through you know, grief counseling or trauma counseling, we have the ability to really take some steps forward, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

Man, so let's let's wrap this by what what just tacking on to what you just said. Um what is what do you say to somebody that's listening to this that has a loved one and they won't they don't know how to help them, or that is themselves their self dealing with childhood trauma or trauma associated with combat or some adult experience like the loss of a spouse traumatically or a child? You know, I think someone who's lost their child. Um what are the steps what are the steps look like towards moving towards in the direction of healing and coping and conflict resolution and defeating anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal tendencies? What are the steps that get you moving in the right direction? Um, and then is there what are the resources you point people to?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:29

Yeah, so for the veterans, veteran side, um, well, let me address first, if if you if you are experiencing this or someone you love is experiencing this, the first thing that you need to know is you're not alone. Uh if you have somebody that you love that's going through this, let them know that that they're not alone in this. And and take heart that if you have experienced this, other other people have been through it as well. And there's light at the other end of the tunnel. If you submit this to the Lord, he can save, he can redeem, and he'll he'll have a purpose to this. Right? The only things that we suffer with in vain is is when we suffer outside of the sovereignty of God. If God's hands are in it and on it, he's going to use it and we're going to prosper from it. So I think knowing, leaning into that is is going to be key. Second thing is there are biblical resources for this. There are biblical counselors out there. There's grief counselors and trauma counselors that can help you see this from a biblical perspective. Uh, on the veteran side, I would say um one organization that I've passed through that I trust enormously is uh the Mighty Oaks Foundation. That's Chad Robo Show. Chad Robo Show's organization. Yep. Uh I know several guys inside of there and have gone through that program myself. Uh, and I went through that program after I'd already come to Christ, and it was still just extremely beneficial. Um, so that is number one, one of the best resources out there. Uh, another one is Warrior Path, that's through the Boulder Crest Foundation. And again, probably one of the best in the country. Uh that one is is pretty intensive. Uh, I think it's somewhere between five and seven days and like 52 modules that they grow through in that time period. Um, but man, I have heard nothing but great things about that. I know several guys uh who were part of that program and also guys who led and directed that program. So it's one that that I would definitely trust. Uh on the what was uh sorry, what was the follow-up on that one?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:35

The other one was just um non-combat related. Do you have thoughts? Um and it's okay if that's not kind of the water you're swimming in. I know a lot of it is crossover, and you've already spoken to that. Um, but is there someone that's dealing with past trauma um from childhood? Yeah, the ACE stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

Yeah, so on the non-combat side, what I would say is there's um I'll tell a tell a quick story.

Practical Steps And Trusted Resources

SPEAKER_02 1:12:03

There was a guy that I met um out in corporate America. The guy is he's upper mid-level manager, phenomenal at his job. Unquestionably one of the best. But whenever it comes to people and relationships, like that's where he's he's maxed out, where he's capped out. And as good as he was technically, he struggled to connect relationally. Sat down with that guy and we began to have a conversation, and he talked about uh being abandoned at a young age, foster care systems, 13 different schools before he turned to 18, emancipated when he was 14, basically abandoned and raised, raised himself. And I I said, Man, I don't I don't fully understand it. How is it that you seem you seem outgoing? I mean, you got a good sense of humor, you seem to be able to engage with people, but you struggle to advance and you struggle to connect. And he said, Well man, that's all that's always been my mask. That's how I've always just kind of kept people at a distance, and I don't I don't know how to not do that. And so what I what I see is that for people that have experienced trauma at a young age, almost all of them suffer in what we call emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is self-awareness and self-regulation, and then social awareness and social regulation. Yes. When they experience that at a young age, it's almost like an arrested development. Yes. And they have a complete inability to process why they feel the way they do, and then regulate their responses or their, I'm sorry, their reactions to that. And then socially, they can't read other people and they don't know how to regulate themselves in social environments, and they they just constantly feel off balance because of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

Yeah. That's what we we've dealt with that in our home a good bit. Cause and effect, consequences, a a warped sense of justice. I didn't do that, so I shouldn't be in trouble for this. I um yeah, that that what you just described, I've seen that.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

And so so what do you, you know, what you then have to get into is being able to get

Emotional Intelligence After Childhood Trauma

SPEAKER_02 1:14:30

them to a place where you can give them not just tools, but give them principles to live by where they begin to not react, but learn how to properly respond. You know, everything isn't this is how I feel, so this is what I do. It's what is true and how do I respond accurately out of that. You know, as far as predictors with guys that we bring into our organization that we take out, and the guys that are the most successful, we thought, oh man, we maybe we need this type of personality. We need guys that are really, you know, they can connect with people, they're really outgoing, you know, they're doers, they do all these things. We found personality wasn't the number one predictor of success. So we're like, okay, what is it then? What it really came down to is motivations and emotional intelligence. If they're if their motivations are not based off return on investment, but they're altruistic people, they care about people, they love people, they want to invest in them. They're in a season in their life where they're not looking to receive, but they're actively wanting to give themselves sacrificially. And then they have the emotional intelligence to know this is why I feel the way I feel, and this is how I regulate myself. But I also have the ability to read that in other people and then speak into that. Those guys are phenomenal at what they do. And so thou, that's that's what we look for. I'm not I'm not trying to build a bunch of cookie cutters of guys that all have the same personality. What I'm looking for, do they have the right motivations and do they understand themselves and understand people? That's so good.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:59

All right. Uh,

Church Plant Update And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:16:00

last thing. Um, you pastor a church. If anybody's moving to the Sullivan, Gwen, Alabama area, we would recommend Anchored Hope. Uh, how's that going? Yeah, Anchored Hope Church. Uh, it's awesome. Five, five kids, uh, full-time job working with combat traumatized people. Um, so let's plan a church. Yeah, why not? What's one more thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:23

Yeah, five kids, bivocational pastor. Um, oldest son is a snowbird guy. Oldest son's a snowbird guy, just joined our institute for the year. Daughters on element, daughters serving element. I do appreciate you taking Brooks, though. My grocery bill has dropped significantly. We'll feed him good. We'll feed him good. We'll continue to feed him good. But Anchored Hope has been it's been awesome. You know, we the Lord gave us a vision to plant that church, you know, around 2022, 2023, but really just didn't know how we were going to get it off the ground. And then shortly after that, he sent us a couple, um, Alec and Heather Reese. They've been up here a few times. They they left their home in Winfield, uh built a place over in Sulligent to be to be close to us. Uh, Heather leads in worship. Alec um, you know, serves as as an elder in the church, and man, absolutely couldn't do it without them. It's just people that understand the calling of God and are willing to make sacrifices in their lives to be a part of it. I mean, where they were at, they could have stayed in a good school system and a good subdivision, and life would have been would have been easy, and they chose to do something really hard to come be a part of that. So, man, church planning is not easy and it's I mean for sissies, it is not not for everyone, but man, so much fruit. Um, we've I I guess in the past two years, I I can't tell you how many people we've baptized. Um first generation believers, families coming to Christ through that. We've got 15 students here this week this week. Yeah. Um, and it's just as hard as it is, it's so worth it. Thank you. Man, it is it is so worth it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:08

Thanks, man. I appreciate you. Yeah, love it, man. We'll just enjoy it. Love you, and we'll just keep doing it every time you're back. Love it. Cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:16

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