In our last entry I addressed what service members and family members sacrifice when the service member is called upon to deploy.  As if these were not enough, we learn that they experience even more when they return home.  Most Americans logically think that they are back and now it is easy.  Here is why that may simply be a myth for the military family.

1. Immediately upon the return of the service member if a family is really going to include the service member things will need to be re-negotiated.  If you have ever had to travel for work, or step into a different role at home because of the loss of a job, an illness, etc. then you may know what I mean by re-negotiating.  How does the service member fit back into day to day routines?  Who nurtures?  Who disciplines?  Who transports?  On top of this negotiation there may also be some limitations. What if the service member is now afraid to drive?  What if trash alongside the road creates anxiety that there might be an IED (improvised explosive device)?  What if…?
2. The feeling of chaos is intensified when a service member returns.  Joking around or laughing in the car may seem incredibly loud or irritating.  The variety of things that a family is involved with may feel overwhelming.  So jumping back in is fraught with difficulty.
3. Not only does a service member need to adjust to her/his new environment at home but they also most readapt at work.  Unlike active duty personnel who return to a military base for their next military job assignment with folks just like them, National Guard members and Reservists return to the private sector for employment.  If they are lucky, their company is still operating (because of so many tough, economic questions).  If they are fortunate to have a job (as a company is required by law to hold a position for them) it may or may not be the job they did before.  So they may have to train in order to function well at work.  If the job changed there may also be less satisfaction with the current job.  Regardless, learning a new job is stressful thus compounding the stress for the service member.
4. The service member will spend the next several months and years deciphering the triggers that lead to greater anxiety.  For some it will be the sound of fireworks or a car backfiring that elicit raw emotions.  For others it will be a sound in the factory where they work that they may not even be able to delineate but their demeanor shifts every time they leave the comforts of their office and come out on the floor.  For most, don’t sneak up behind them.  Their reaction time is also intensified.  I remember an incident from my own life after coming home from the first Gulf War.  I was cleaning vegetables in the kitchen when my husband came up behind me.  He was not intending to surprise me but did all the same.  I turned rapidly, knife in hand, and just went under his chin with little clearance.  I did not even have time to consider that I was in my kitchen only that someone was coming up behind me.
5. On top of all of this is the broken communication.  Each making assumptions about what can and cannot be understood.  Each feeling like life is out of order and each seeking the ability to process and understand their experiences.  The difficulty here is that it is hard to look beyond oneself.  It is easy to be consumed thinking that “I had it worse than you,” which only creates more division, separation and brokenness.

This is certainly not the end of the list but it is a large portion of the kinds of things that transpire when a family is reunited.  Most of us are fortunate to never navigate this kind of event.  Service members today would consider themselves fortunate if they only had to traverse it once.  However, most have had multiple tours of duty in war torn regions.  Just as one starts to figure it out, respond more positively, and find some comfort in being home, BAM!!! It is time to report for duty again.  This war requires multiple tours.  Could your family do it?

Is healing hard?  You bet.  Is it worth it?  Certainly!  Is it easy?  Never.  Do we owe it to them to help them heal?  Without a doubt.  The brokenness exists for them so that you and I have our freedoms.  The ability to come and go as we please, to say what we please, to go to work, care for our families, and provide a decent life for our families.  Military families desire the same only they have an incredible service mindset and value this nation in a way that others do not even understand.  Their commitment to serve gives us everything.  Could you give to Compass so that your gratitude takes action and helps them heal?  Absolutely.  Please donate and make a world of difference for military families.

Thank you military families.  You have blessed me and my family.  We will not look the other way.

Blessings,
Lisa Dunster

Part I.  Sacrifices When Called to Protect

Sacrifice is defined:  “To surrender or give up, or permit injury, or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.” I have thought about this a lot during this past week in relation to our military service members and their families.  You see each member of the family and the service member herself/himself sacrifice (separate in time and space, some get injured, most have hidden injuries, and others face amazing disadvantages just by the absence of someone important to their life). All of this happens so that you and I can have freedom.  I am pretty certain that most of us have not spent much time thinking about what this means. It is important for us to take a few minutes today to consider it so I hope you will give of your time (sacrifice) to understand what we ask of military families.

Compass Retreat Center works primarily with National Guard and Reservists so let’s start here.  How do these men, women and their families sacrifice for us?

1. The service member receives orders with roughly 6-12 months to get their affairs in order before they are deployed for an avg. of a year.  This means, notifying an employer in some cases and in others it means making arrangements for his/ her own business to run without him/her.  It is true that many own their own small businesses.
2. Service Members also have to make arrangements for the care of their children.  This may involve arranging childcare (often with less income), making transportation arrangements so that kids can get to their activities, school, etc.  And most importantly, leaving reminders around so that they will not be forgotten.  Mom or dad may desire to leave some video letters to their children, hidden notes or messages for special occasions etc.   All of these things take time and planning.
3. The service member needs to find a way to say good-bye without saying good-bye.  What I mean is they need to have things in order and leave with the internal knowledge that they may not return and hopefully without leaving important things unsaid.  This is tricky for just as they are cognitively aware of their own mortality they are consciously trying to shove that back deeper so that they can focus on their desire to come home; an ability to thrive and fight to survive.
4. Most families miss celebrations such as birthdays, holidays, and sometimes marked events such as graduation, funerals, or the birth of a child.
5. All members of the family change.  Think about your own family.  Look at pictures from last year.  You may have been fortunate to witness these changes first hand but often a service member witnesses them via technology, a photograph, Skype, email or letter.  We all know how quickly things change but we are not as conscious of it until we are not present to experience it firsthand.  Not only are there physical changes but there are emotional, psychological and spiritual changes as well.  Compound that with other relationships and you know it is often hard to navigate even when you are present for it all.
6. Everyone has had experiences without the other.  Some of those experiences will be shared intentionally and many will go unspoken.  The unspoken ones occur for a variety of reasons.  For the service member it is a feeling that family members cannot understand what they had to do.  Having been in hostile environments myself, I know this to be true.  Similarly, there is a fear that, “my spouse may not love the person I have become.”  This fear probably goes both ways, but for the service member who spent so much time away it feels amplified.

Unfortunately this is not where the sacrifice ends.  In fact it is only the tip of the changes that this military family will be asked to endure.  Why?  So, that we have freedom.

In my entry on Friday I will explain what happens when the service member returns and how the difficulties are compounded.  Coming Home is no simple task.  As Americans we should understand the cost of our expectations and our freedom.  Please join me again on Friday.

God Bless You til we meet again.
Lisa

Update written by Laura Shoemake

In While They’re At War, Kristin Henderson sites the analogy that “military readiness is like a three-legged stool.  The first leg is training, the second, equipment.  The third leg is the family.  If any of these three legs snaps, the stool tips over and America is unprepared to defend herself”.

This really struck a chord with me, and hopefully for you as well.  Despite the cold winter weather of a December retreat, you made a commitment for healing for your family and we applaud that.  And reaching out for help doesn’t always come easy for military families, especially in a culture that often wants to deny the emotional toil of war on our military.  But the truth is, the stronger person does ask for the needed help and is better because of it.  We are making intentional time for a reunited family.  These efforts will help prevent the total “snapping” of the stool leg because we are genuinely strengthening our families and equipping ourselves for what lies ahead.

Motivational thought for the day:

Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.   ~author unknown

If you have time, allow yourself to add this to your journal and write about the risks of change and the risks of not changing.  Change is not easy but I have found that it is almost always worth it!!

This post is shared by Laura one of our amazing staff members.  She is a tremendous asset to our team.  Her understanding of  military spouses comes from her personal experiences and a ton of research.   Her husband is headed home from Afghanistan now.  Please pray for their family as they will be reuniting in the coming weeks.

During our retreat, Lisa shared how she received “the gift of time” in which to build the concepts for Compass.  Every day, each of us receives gifts, if we can open our minds to that concept.  In April, my family received the news of another combat deployment.  I immediately shifted into recognizing the separation as a gift to cherish my children like never before.   Gone were the days of, “No, honey, mommy’s too busy to _______ (fill in the blank) because of _______ (fill in the blank again, like a million household chores).”   It is so hard to imagine how hard it is for our loved ones to just walk away from family life and then casually step back in a year later…It’s not that simple.

I made it a priority to capture those cherished family moments, those intentional memories of scrapbooking, swimming, rollerskating, talent shows, bike riding, gymnastics, crafts, etc. into digital photos to send to him.  This allowed us to intentionally include him in our daily lives, hoping it was helpful and uplifting for him.  Showing the girls the importance of family, writing Daddy, sending him photos and artwork and care packages, getting involved in various military support efforts – these gestures are crucial values that show the love, respect, and honor we have for our troops.  After all, they are sacrificing their gift of time, and many sacrifice so much more.

The mission of Compass encourages families to spend “intentional” time together.  Life’s busy-ness can steal the gift of time, and sometimes, it can’t be recaptured in the same way.   Lessons learned from the first deployment of staying up and mopping at midnight, I am now recognizing what to triage and how to best manage my time for my family’s sake.  So giving myself permission to stop doing chores and read a book has provided just the opportunity to savor a wonderful story that supports this notion of intentional time.

In his book, Raising Kids for True Greatness, Dr. Kimmel shares a family vignette. “[The parents] prove that you don’t need a lot of time to make a difference in your kids’ life; you just have to be deliberate.  But when you extend that deliberateness throughout an entire childhood, there is no stopping the potential that you can harness in your children.”  Take to heart this lesson: extend deliberateness in all your relationships and use your gift of time to your advantage.  Together, we are so much stronger, stable, and the possibilities are endless.

As the weekend approaches I wanted to share with you a simple but often forgotten part of our plans, our family.  Yes, winter often leads us indoors, but it also takes us away to individual activities and isolation if we let it.  I want to challenge you today to  try something different this weekend -  Quality Family Time or some good old QFT.  You see, even when we have opportunities sometimes we neglect to take advantage of them.  Trust me, we will always find things to occupy our time.  But, these same things may not be valuable uses of our time.  So, this weekend Compass wants you to navigate some QFT into your weekend.   We won’t expect something crazy like a whole day together, but if you would start with an intentional hour where you set aside time without answering your phone (home or cell), texting, or checking your blackberry or email you might find that it surprises the ones you love.

We are expecting snow here in southern Ohio so I am anticipating a couple hours of sledding and tubing with our kids.  Will it be cold?… Of course, but will it create some great laughter and happy memories?  … Absolutely (and hopefully we will avoid the emergency room)!  Yes, I could be getting some work done or cleaning the house but you know what?  I will have years of an empty clean house but I will not have the laughter of my children filling the hallways as much as I do now.  Believe me, you just might find the laughter within yourself too.

My friend and mentor, Mario gave me a great book by Dr. Tim Kimmel called Raising Kids for True Greatness. Dr. Kimmel works to show us a different paradigm for success.  He calls it greatness.  It is not the same as the world’s definition of success.  In it Kimmel lists Ten Ways to Be a Great Member of the Family. One of the recommendations is, “Be upbeat, positive, and encouraging” (9).  How many times do we allow the negative perspective to enter the dialogue with our most valued and important relationships?  If we simply turn that around with intention this week it will have ripple effects far beyond the weekend.  A second piece of advice Kimmel offers is, “Have a lot of fun, just not at the expense of anyone else” (9).   Sometimes when the weekend comes many working parents feel as if they are spent.  Well, we better tap the reserves for our family because they deserve more from us than that.  If you fulfill Kimmel’s first step than you will find that you can get refueled simply by being positive and having fun with your children and/or your spouse .  Give it a try this weekend.  You have nothing to lose but everything to gain.  An investment in fun with your family is worth every moment.  Start with an hour.

Love big!
Work hard!
Forgive gladly!
Repent quickly!
Encourage graciously!
Speak humbly!
Play enthusiastically!
Think abundantly!
And … never stop dancing!
~Dr. Tim Kimmel

I hope that you can create an hour of fun this weekend and that the feeling it ignites becomes contagious!

Peace and Joy,
Lisa

Jon Gordon an author and motivational speaker has been a tremendous propellor in my life.  I would refer to him as a propellor because not only did he inspire me to get this program moving but he also taught me how to do it with a positive attitude.  He helped me realize the lesson his character Joy from The Energy Bus so aptly taught, “Sometimes we have to see what we don’t want, to know what we do want.”

Many of our military service members, particularly those who have served in war, come home having a clear picture of what they don’t want.  Unfortunately, without strong support, love, and intention often they do not know how to propel themselves in the direction of what they do want.  Life just feels out of order and messy.  The difficult piece is that there is really no one to blame.  Experiences have landed you in this place and this messiness is a part of each family member’s life.  Not one family member is exempt from recognizing the changes.  A husband or wife, son or daughter, mom or dad, sister or brother, aunt or uncle has walked back into life at home and time has passed.  All of you have experienced different things some traumatic, some life changing, some mundane, some necessary, etc.  The one common factor is that change has happened to each of you.  Now it is necessary to reach out and embrace one another.  You see it has been my experience that it is so much better to move forward with the people you love.  It is not always easy as a matter of fact some days it feels nearly impossible.  But, remember to start with what you have in common.  Rebuild the things that you loved.  Be intentional, spending time together.  Find an activity to share that you all love and add one thing at a time.  Realizing that it will be a process, you must attack it like a marathon.  Start slowly, know that it will take much time, effort, and that you will get tired along the way.  Remember that there will come a point where it will feel easier to quit than to move forward.  However, keep moving, don’t stop.  Remember how great the celebration is at the finish line.  Embrace each other.  Link arms and propel yourself toward a healthy relationship with one another.

Jon Gordon writes, “Every crisis offers an opportunity to grow stronger and wiser to reach deep within and discover a better you that will create a better outcome.” It is my hope that you don’t stop striving for a better relationship with one another.

Wow, what a remarkable weekend and thanks so much for being a part of it.  We had six families arrive on Thursday evening for the weekend and what an amazing group for this, our first retreat.

Friday morning began with a fantastic breakfast and then off we went. We held a session for veterans, a session for spouses, and the kids began their programming. Kids had intentional time with one of our staff member’s horses – Cherokee and Thunder – on both Friday and Saturday.  It was AWESOME!  The most amazing part was when a four year old with special needs met one of the horses nose to nose.  We captured the introduction on video and I have tears in my eyes every time I see it.  The younger kids worked to process some of their experiences with having a parent deployed and then the changes since the return. The older kids did tons of team building and all of them participated in the low ropes course.

Kids are resilient but it was great to introduce some new tools to pack in their toolbox that could help the communication at home. So off the kids went, hunting in the woods for the perfect stick to make “talking sticks”, a Native American tradition. They adorned them with feathers, leather roping, beads, etc.  They were fabulous.  It’s a perfect, simple way to let other family members know that you have something you’d like to talk about and deserves attention. Our family is going to use this tradition now too. To see kids laugh, smile, and interact was awesome but it was also great to see kids open up about the stress of the separation and to understand what makes it so difficult for them.

The adults also had a lot going on. In the veterans group we learned about the difficulties in seeking and receiving counseling and care as well as other issues they face.  Although we knew about these things, to hear their individual stories had some heartbreaking moments. They were also surprised to discover that we had small group encounters specifically for them.  One of the guys said, “I thought we were coming to have family time but I did not know that we would get opportunities to talk and learn from each other too. This is great!”

We spent a lot of time talking about how to find ways to let the stories out.  We worked to help them repack their family toolbox with communication techniques, and did high adventure team building and trust-building activities to strengthen family bonds.

Spouses worked on understanding the ways family roles have changed and understanding how to renegotiate those roles. It was fantastic to see the bond develop between them as they learned from one another too. The understandings that came from hearing their stories, concerns, and hopes helped us gain deeper understanding of the difficulties that deployment creates here at home.

Teaching spouses and veterans alike to look at the compass as a tool for helping your family navigate their way was terrific.  They each learned how every direction holds new adventures and learnings for them individually as well as a family.

The weekend was packed full but when it was time to wrap it up we got the best feedback ever, “Can we do this again?”  The desire to meet again and get back together is powerful.  I loved that we all took so much away from the weekend. Now we are working to begin the follow-up.

We had an amazing group of volunteers staffing this weekend including a remarkable set of  people from SpringHill.  The strengths and gifts here were amazing.  The food, adventure courses, and location was perfect.  SImilarly, the cold weather didn’t deter us.  Families smiling, laughing, and playing together was awesome!  One of the therapists that was with us this weekend said, “It was truly a Healing Community.”  I couldn’t have hoped for a better compliment.

Thanks for your prayers, love, encouragement and support. We look forward to more opportunities in 2010.  Please continue to pray for Compass and for these six families. Thank you so very much for the strength you have given us.

Blessings,
Lisa