Okay, before I get into this one, I want to recognize that y'all probably never asked to know this much about me. Don't worry. This is just a 4-part story, so it's almost over. Also, while this part doesn't discuss my transition directly, I can assure you this is a vital part of my transition story. My final year and a half in the Army were rough. I was in immense physical pain. It was a physical pain that nearly rivaled my decades-long psychological pain. It started at Thanksgiving in 2008. I remember sitting on the couch with my grandmother and being hit by excruciating pain in my foot. “What the hell is going on?!” We went to the ER. Something had to be wrong. Surely my foot was broken. But how? I was just sitting there. After an x-ray, I was told it wasn’t a break, but was likely due to a back issue. My lower back had given out. Perhaps it was the years of jumping out of airplanes, or carrying 100 lb combat loads. Maybe it would have happened regardless. All I know is that for the next year, the pain became unbearable. In the Army, there’s only a few acceptable ways to deal with pain. You can rub dirt on it, drink water, or numb the pain with pills…I went “all in” on the third option. Unfortunately, that carried me down the dark path towards addiction. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. I was prescribed the strongest Percocet made, Gabapentin, Zanaflex, 3 different anti-depressants, and Ambien. I’d get enough Percocet to cover me for a month, and near the end, I’d burn through that supply within a couple weeks. I was a strung out mess. The suicidal ideation I’d struggled with my entire life also kicked into overdrive when mixed with a cocktail of pain, narcotics, PTSD, and depression. I was angry. Distant. Addicted. It was tearing my family apart, and everyone who loved me lived in constant fear of receiving that phone call. I even remember my brothers discussing whether or not they should take me to the hospital, as I drooled and began to shake in the back seat of a car…AT MY GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL.
That call almost had to be made one night. I don’t remember much of my daughter’s first year of life due to being strung out on pills, but I do vividly remember the night that my addiction came closer than ever to dragging me into the grave. I was lying in a bathtub in Phenix City, AL. I was in tears. In my right hand...a loaded pistol. I was slamming the back of my head against the tile surrounding the tub. I was screaming. My wife came in and clearly had enough. She told me we were done. Not our marriage, but our addiction. I say “our” because my addiction didn’t just belong to me. It is a vicious disease that spreads to those whom love you most. My wife, whom I often refer to as evidence of God’s grace in my life, reached into the drawer, grabbed my pills, and threw them out. There would be no weaning. It was over. That night saved my life. Heather saved my life. The cold grip of addiction and death began to loosen. Back surgery followed shortly thereafter, and the Army told me that my services were no longer needed. On October 7, 2010, I bid farewell to the life I had known for the last 6 years. I was officially medically retired from the Army and was on to the next phase of my life.
Seven days after being discharged, I started a new job in Houston. I remember when I was first contacted about this role. It was for an HR Generalist position. I had no idea what that even meant, but I knew that my past certainly didn’t signal a career in HR. Heck, while working on my MBA, I had only received one ‘B’, and that was for Human Resource Management. It was too “touchy-feely” for my taste. Even my family laughed when they heard I was going into HR. It was my experience in the Army that got me the job. The man who hired me made that very clear. He needed someone who was organized, and he assumed military experience = organization. Having to provide for a family, I figured beggars can’t be choosers, so I took the job. I quickly realized that I actually enjoyed HR. In fact, I fell in love with HR. I believe it’s a job that has helped make me a better person. It forced me to learn how to interact with people in a constructive, respectful, and meaningful way. It helped me grasp the importance of relationships. It also resulted in the purchase of a home. That single purchase changed everything.
At this point in our lives, we had been away from the church for about 8 years. I mean, if you asked me if I was a Christian, I’d had said “yes” but in reality I was more a “cultural Christian” than anything. Having never really dealt with the pain of my childhood, especially as it relates to my faith, the scars were still just so deep and raw. We bought a house though. It wasn’t so much the house, but the location. By dumb luck…or divine providence…there was a church directly across from our neighborhood. It also happened to be the same denomination my wife was raised in, so we decided to visit. In all honesty, we really only visited because we knew both of our parents would visit us, see the church, and ask if we visited it yet. We wanted to cut them off at the pass. That self-centered decision just so happened to change the course of our lives forever. We walked in and experienced something in a church that we had never experienced before. We felt love. We felt love from strangers. It wasn’t just superficial niceness. It was this unsettling, but weirdly comforting, love. We actually met Jesus there. I grew up in the church, yet it took 30 years to find Him. My wife and I became energized. We began a nightly routine of sitting in bed reading our Bibles. Not reading to memorize countless verses. I’ve never been good at that. We read to learn and question. We would pick each other’s brains. I felt we learned more about each other during these back-and-forths than during the previous 6 years of marriage. I began taking these questions to our preacher who, and he may not know this, became a spiritual mentor to me. My questions typically focused on those red letters…those words of Jesus. Specifically the words He said with regards to loving others, specifically my enemies (this will be key to my transition), and violence. We became consumed. We began searching out theologians and their writings. We read the early church writings. We reached the point where we just couldn’t see any other way than to reject all violence. And just like that, I was a Airborne Infantry Sergeant who had just become a pacifist. Part 1 Part 2 Part 4