For those of you who like to read my posts because you are a military family or you have a friend who is deployed or otherwise find yourself personally touched by this awful endless war, I have posted, "How to Send Your Child to War Without Cracking Up, Part II" over at my regular blog, Blue Inkblots.

I've noticed my Part I installment has drawn quite a few hits, so I'm hoping this one might provide help and comfort as well. Here are the first few paragraphs:

In my first post on how to send your child to war without cracking up, I wrote about what a service mom or dad or the spouse of one who is deployed can do to keep sane while living with almost unimaginable fear and anxiety. 

But lately, my conversations with deployed families also tends to run more to, How can I help my child or loved one survive war without watching HIM (or her) crack up?

Helping a loved one deal with the aftermath of war has been the subject of many articles and books.  A new one is due out around the 4th of July, and I will post a summary of what it says when that book comes out.

But for now, I think I would rather come at the question from a spiritual perspective.  We pray for our loved ones to return safely.  We pray for their buddies.  And they don't all make it back.  Some come back, like my friend Jamie's son, brain-damaged beyond recognition.  Others come back so riddled with rage that we hardly recognize them.  Others are crippled by depression.

I think, in a situation like that, it is natural for the sufferer, and their family, to rage at God, to shake our fists to the heavens and say, How could a loving God allow this to happen?

A recent article in a newsmagazine, (I can't remember which so won't try to provide a link just now)--followed the progress of an army chaplain over a harrowing and bloody deployment in which he suffered a severe crises of faith.  He struggles with it still.  And his wife, frightened by the doubts and questioning of her minister-husband, doesn't know how to cope.

I think these kinds of questions echo because most attempts to answer or deal with them are just flat-out insufficient.  People rely on platitudes and cliches--people, I might add, who have never had anything worse happen to them than a bounced check.  They do not understand the depths of despair that can wash over someone who has crossed over into the netherworlds of a place so dark they can't find their way out of it.  They don't realize that, at a time like that, even favorite Bible verses don't seem to help.

This is because platitudes are invented for the comfort of the ones spouting them--not the person receiving such worn-out wisdom.  We don't know how to handle this strange new person in front of us and so we say these useless things to make ourselves feel better about our own inadequacy.

And in so doing, we make things infinitely worse for the sufferer.  This is why they so often refuse to speak to ANYONE about what they are feeling.

And it is this hopelessness and helplessness and powerlessness that is the foundation of so much of the rage felt, not just by the returning soldier or Marine but by their families. 

It's a desperate feeling of INADEQUACY in the towering face of evil.

Because war is evil.  What man does in the name of war is evil.  And what war DOES to man, in the face of it, is evil. 

Even worse, I think, is the curiosity so many feel when confronted with the aftermath of war.  Every single returning combat vet I know gets asked the two following questions:

 

1.  Did you kill anybody?

2.  What does it feel like to kill someone?

Again, such appalling insensitivity has absolutely nothing to do with the returning warrior and everything to do with the unseamly and sordid curiosity of those who have never confronted evil in their lives beyond the latest popcorn-thriller, and so ask the questions because they lack the imagination to think through how distressing that question is to someone who does not want to talk about it, least of all to idiots...

If you'd like to read more, or think this is the kind of thing that might help or comfort someone you know, you can find the rest at:

http://deaniemills.com

Thanks, guys.