Anger

My pastor took a well-deserved week of vacation the week after Easter and asked me to fill in for him while he was gone. As soon as I arrived at the church office on Monday morning a gentleman was waiting for me. He wanted my help. His brother had just called that he was being denied help at the local Vets Hospital. The gentlemen wanted my assistance for his deeply in need brother.

The story: This Afghanistan War vet was having terrible headaches. He could not keep food down. He was disorientated. He could not get assistance at the Vet Hospital. “Go to the local emergency room!” he was told by the admissions staff. There was very little that I could do for him, but the good news is that the vet was finally admitted.

After those processes were completed and his record pulled up more of the story emerged. He had indeed needed treatment for a brain injury. A doctor had made a previous recommendation for treatment, but then “the system somehow lost the diagnosis and he had never been treated.”

I get angry when I continue to hear stories about our vets who do not get appropriate treatment, especially for post traumatic stress syndrome. The soldier in this case was next to his best friend when that friend took a bullet and was killed. He filed a report and was immediately sent back on duty. No one ever offered him any counseling. Now he is finding it very difficult to cope and even more difficult to get assistance for his own wounds, physical and psychological.

This afternoon I called on the eldest member of our congregation, one of the most gentle of men that I have ever met. But he was agitated. He had just learned of one of his friends (also an Afghanistan vet) who had given up on getting medical treatment due him as a vet. He’d had to finally secure his own private health insurance in an effort to get the assistance he needs and deserves.

That’s why I am angry. We ask our young military people to make incredible sacrifices for us and then, when they need our assistance to get back to some kind of a normal life, we fail them.

This brings me to Wheat Ridge Ministries, which provides resources particularly to churches who want to support returning service personnel. Especially helpful are the recommendations in the book “Welcome Them Home Help Them Heal”. If more individuals and organizations will follow the great processes outlined in this booklet it will do much more than reduce my anger. It will give those who need and deserve our support both assistance and healing.