Preserved by Purpose: Spiritual PTSD and Life After Warfare

Recent military conflicts in Israel, Iraq and Ukraine have shown that sometimes the hardest thing to deal with isn’t just the battle in a war but might be what happens afterwards. As a result, the news is full of stories of soldiers and their families who have struggled to transition back to normal life after the life changing trauma of war. Because of the impact of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), the military strives to provide more specialized services to current soldiers and veterans. These stories show that it’s not just enough to prepare soldiers for war battles, but there also has to be preparation for life after the battles.       But the question remains:  How do soldiers successfully readjust to the “usual” after unusual experiences that come from being a soldier in a war?  Pretending that things haven’t changed won’t work because things are not the same.  Psychologists who deal with veterans who struggle with PTSD say that one of the biggest issues is the readjustment from the chaos and uncertainty of war to the peace and consistency of normal life. Often, those suffering from PTSD struggle to honestly admit that things are different. Once they do so, they can then...