Sometimes, life blind-sides us…

… and we don’t see “the hit” coming. Hence the term “blind-side.”

But let’s be real about blind-sides…

👇

💥 Sometimes the collision occurs and takes US TOTALL by surprise… it’s truly something we couldn’t have seen.

💥 Other times, it’s because we’re not looking. We’re not paying attention…

💥 And then there are the things we stumble upon, things which just linger and leave us wondering…

In life, there are always layers and layers and layers…

🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖🪖

In this episode we continue Trent’s story…

This is part 3 of 4, and we discuss that transition from military life BACK to civilian life, noting some of the blind-sides that happened.

Note:

This “hits” are coming…

… how we respond to them really matters.

____________

The Shepherds Fold program = www.ShepherdsFold.org/program 

Amplify = www.AmplifyOnline.info/0 

GY6, Soul and Spirit Hurts eBook + audio = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

Adverse Childhood Experiences Q&A = www.GY6.online/ACE 

What is Moral Injury = https://www.gy6.online/blog/ten 

Episode one of The Fold, Trent’s podcast = https://www.shepherdsfold.org/podcasts/the-fold/episodes/2149204992 

Where you stand depends on where you sleep.

That might sound strange, but think about it this way…

👇

We’re all raised with a certain set of circumstances that all seem NORMAL to us. To others, they might not be normal at all.

Toss us into a different environment, and what we think of as routine behaviors (and even “rules”) might not work at all.

🤷‍♂️

This is important.

The “rules” of the past that you’re operating on, even if they don’t work where you currently are…

They aren’t necessarily bad.

In fact, they might have served you well during a different chapter of your life.

Or they might be the EXACT rules you would need in a different time and place…

But, sometimes, we need to adjust— especially when those rules no longer serve us.

✔️

And that occurs more often than you might think…

👉 This is part 2of a 4-part series with Trent Redwine, the Executive Director of Shepherds Fold.

We talk about “reading the present in light of the past.”

In extreme cases it looks like PTSD… when trauma is involved.

But, we can ALL do it at ANY TIME. And, when new life-situations are involved, it’s important that we take stock of where we are, who will be impacted by our actions, and respond accordingly…

_________________

The Shepherds Fold program = www.ShepherdsFold.org/program 

Amplify = www.AmplifyOnline.info/0 

GY6, Soul and Spirit Hurts eBook + audio = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

Adverse Childhood Experiences Q&A = www.GY6.online/ACE 

Referenced episode = The Barking Spider = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149196514 

Episode one of The Fold, Trent’s podcast = https://www.shepherdsfold.org/podcasts/the-fold/ 

Our present circumstances are the accumulated conglomeration of our past experiences, our interactions, what we’ve learned…

… and, well…

Yes, that’s a bit simplistic, perhaps, but you get the idea. We don’t just “exist” in the present in a vacuum.

We all got here somehow…

🙏

Some of the experiences of the past are good, others are negative.

Some of the experiences need healing, others don’t.

⭐️

What do we need to do?

Well…

1️⃣ Take stock of the past.

Heal what needs to be healed, then turn and help others in any way we can— with whatever we glean…

2️⃣ Live fully present, you continue passing on the lessons you’ve learned from that past…

And, as we do…

3️⃣ Think bigger and broader than ourselves, serving the grand purpose that God had in mind when He designed each of us…

… and build something bigger and better than “just us.”

‼️ This is part 1 of a 4-part series with Trent Redwine, the Executive Director of Shepherds Fold.

In this episode he talks about growing up in “random places” and, eventually, enlisting in the U.S. Army.

We discuss compounding chaos and how we all, really, want order…

_________________

 
The Shepherds Fold program = www.ShepherdsFold.org/program 

The Shepherds Fold podcast = https://www.shepherdsfold.org/podcasts/the-fold 

Amplify = www.AmplifyOnline.info/0 

GY6, Soul and Spirit Hurts eBook + audio = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

Adverse Childhood Experiences Q&A = www.GY6.online/ACE 

Referenced episode = The Barking Spider = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149196514 

Cancel culture is the non-faith response to Moral Injury— Moral Injury being a spirit wound (re: the conscience).

Follow along with me here…

Moral Injury occurs when we violate our conscience— either by doing something wrong, omitting something right, or a whole bunch of other causes…

(See the video at www.GY6.online/blog/ten for an overview of the potential causes w/ examples.)

👇

The result of Moral Injury is guilt (“I did something”) and/or shame (“I am something wrong”).

Furthermore, the cure for Moral Injury— how you heal it— is that the impacted person is pulled in close by someone they believe has the authority / spiritual clout to absolve them.

(See the video at https://www.gy6.online/blog/forgiveness for an overview.)

💥

Here’s the problem with cancel culture…

It doesn’t pull people in close, it pushes them away…

And it pushes them away based on artificial metrics that have been “group-thinked” and outsourced as to what’s “right” and what’s “wrong.”

And those metrics change all the time— when they aren’t tethered to the image of God and the stamp of the Divine that’s placed in each of us from the beginning.

🤷‍♂️

So…

People in culture ARE impacted by right and wrong (true right and wrong, legit standards— that God has “made known” to them— per Romans 1:19-20).

But they “give up” the moral compass He places inside them— in favor of “group think.”

Which leads to…

STILL being injured by things we do, things we don’t do, things done to us, etc…

BUT, we deny it… and push away the standard…

ALL WHILE STILL feeling the tension…

And that causes one of two positions…

👇

1️⃣ Position one = over-react (legalists / the “far right”) does this.

2️⃣ Position two = under-react (i.e., “anything goes, love is love, etc, etc., etc…)

😳

The irony?

Both the extreme right AND the far left find themselves in the same place.

 They elevate THEIR “new” standard

 They get offended when people even disagree with their position (and take it SO personally)

 They equate disagreement as a personal assault

 They “cancel”people who don’t measure up

🤯

Yes, the right and the left are much alike.

Or, to say it another way, the “right wing” and the “left wing” are parts of the same bird…

… a bird of chaos and cancel flying straight into a tornado of ever-increasing dysfunction.

🦜

The solution?

Love people well.

Pull them in close.

We’ve all got work to do…

__________

Links you need to know about =

😳 Previous episode with Michael Belton / Serve Ministries = It is PTSD or Moral Injury, episode 41 = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149187869 

⭐️ Video = ten causes of Moral Injury = www.GY6.online/blog/ten 

❤️‍🩹 Video = how to heal Moral Injury = https://www.gy6.online/blog/forgiveness 

📓 Soul & Spirit Health + Healing = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events 

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best  (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

Where you are isn’t who you are.

It’s just the present location in which you find yourself.

📍

I love Myra’s stories about Carl…

… he blind husband.

(Myra has helped blind Veterans for 30+ years and started a nonprofit, Rewind for the Blind) that elevates this mission…

🚀🚀🚀

“He was going to do whatever he wanted to do,” she said, speaking of Carl.

… “even if it took a little patience and figuring.”

You see?

Where you are is NOT who you are.

Nor is it where you must remain.

But it is where you must begin…

⭐️

Carl notably said, “Light is overrated.”

It tracks with Charlie Boswell’s statement that “Blindness is an inconvenience— not a handicap.”

It’s quite a perspective…

✔️

And that leads me to this…

Meet people where they are. Blind. Sighted.

Whatever. We all carry untapped superpowers and we all have areas that might be— according others— seen as odd, unique, weak, different…

Meet people where they are.

And then move forward together…

🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌

__________

Links you need to know about =

⛳️ Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org 

⭐️ Donation link for Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org/donate/ 

______________

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events 

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best  (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

How do blind golfers actually golf?

And, then…

… to make it more applicable for all of us…

… what can we take away from that and apply to all of life…?

🤷‍♂️

I’ll let you in on it.

I found three things that make the magic work…

⛳️⛳️⛳️

1️⃣ = The swing.

That is, you must have the correct mechanics. (That’s true whether it’s golf or anything else.)

2️⃣ = The goal.

You’ve got to know where the hole is…

How far is it away from you know?

How long does it reasonably, actually take to get there…

(In life, a lot of people flounder out too soon b/c they didn’t actually prep to go the distance.)

3️⃣ = The direction.

This one is about alignment.

Doesn’t matter if you have the right mechanics (i.e., the right kind of swing— on golf or anything else) or the ability to go the distance (i.e., endure) IF you’re moving in the wrong direction…

Enduring in the wrong direction?

Just means you move further off course…

Doing with the right mechanics?

Just means you’ll be more efficient at the chaos….

🚌

Oh, and a pro tip…

You’ll find it FAR easier if you do it WITH the right people.

Connection and community matter.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Yeah, this was about golf…

… and now about golf.

It works in every area of life.

__________

Links you need to know about =

⛳️ Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org 

⭐️ Donation link for Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org/donate/ 

______________

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events 

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best  (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

The problem you’re facing may be the very platform God will use to facilitate your purpose and serve others at a higher level…

Sounds strange, for sure. We often want to run FROM struggles…

🤷‍♂️

Charlie Boswell expected to become a pro baseball player.

But then something happened. A draft delayed the contract.

And then that got punted forever when he was injured in combat…

💥

In time, he adapted the skills he learned from the past…

… placed them INTO the struggle he was facing…

… and lived a life exponentially greater than anything he might have imagined.

⭐️

Doesn’t mean it was easy.

In fact, it was harder…

✔️

But, this is where GRACE kicks in…

When we’re weak, God moves in even stronger (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Or, to say it another way, grace moves towards weakness….

💪

Now…

The details of your story are likely very different than Charlie Boswell’s.

But the story…

… it can be the story of all of us.

That’s how redemption works.

__________

Links you need to know about =

⛳️ Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org

⭐️ Donation link for Rewind for the Blind = https://rewindfortheblind.org/donate/

______________

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

I sat down with my friend Duffy to record a story— one of his personal stories— for the GY6 project. There’s a section in the workshop where we walk about Moral injury and the multi-faceted ways in which it can “happen” to any of us…

(For clarity, I think Moral Injury is a much bigger issue than PTSD, AND I think a lot of people confuse it with PTSD since we don’t talk a lot about it— see the links below for more clarification.)

Here’s what happened…

👇

I asked Duffy about a shooting he was involved in (as an officer who fired his weapon)…

… that was the story he shared in the previous episode, where he thought he was responding to a flipped car on the wrong side of the highway…

💥

Amidst that story— which we originally met to record, he told me about the incident that opened the entire podcast episode, the time when they arrested a drug dealer and the neighborhood who was reeling from the effects of those drugs bowed up and stood against the officers— 100 civilians threatening 5 officers.

Of course, we got into the story about the internal affairs investigation, the homicide inquiry (all standard procedure with officer involved shootings)…

… losing his gun and badge for a week…

… and his ex-wife cheating and leaving him, taking the kids out of state…

… and the threat of Jesse Jackson coming to town to protest against him and the other officers…

And then he starts talking about trauma related to the coast guard.

A helicopter going down…

After a fellow coastie drowning during a training incident.

And that lead to a discussion on an officer he knew— Justin Billa— who was killed while responding to a domestic just two days after they worked together…

And that lead to a story about Sean Tuder, who was also killed in the line of duty…

… both of these being men Duffy knew and worked with.

All of that…

… from talking about one story.



We didn’t go fishing for any of this. It just came up.

It was AFTER the fact, after he told me these stories, that I went back, found the videos online, and began stitching them together in the narrative form you now hear.

But it was all there.

He pulled one thread… and things just flowed.

😳

Why do I tell you that?

Because that’s what trauma is often like.

You start dealing with it, and you suddenly realize, “I’ve got more there, more to deal with.”

And, that’s good.

It would be LESS normal to NOT be impacted by these things that it is to be impacted.

In the same way you can’t walk outside in the rain without an umbrella and not get wet, you can’t walk through life— especially in some of these professions— and not take multiple hits to the spirit, the soul, and sometimes even the body…

👇

As my friend Beau might say— I interviewed him back in episodes 44-46, “You’re not broken. You’ve just been through a lot. And, as a result, you adapted.”

Of course he would say it more articulately than that, but you get the idea…

__________

Links you need to know about =

🚔 🚒 🪖After Action Project = https://www.afteractionproject.org/

😳 It is PTSD or Moral Injury, episode 41 = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149187869 

📓 Soul & Spirit Health + Healing = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events 

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

I sat down with my friend Duffy to record a story— one of his personal stories— for the GY6 project. There’s a section in the workshop where we walk about Moral injury and the multi-faceted ways in which it can “happen” to any of us…

(For clarity, I think Moral Injury is a much bigger issue than PTSD, AND I think a lot of people confuse it with PTSD since we don’t talk a lot about it— see the links below for more clarification.)

Here’s what happened…

👇

I asked Duffy about a shooting he was involved in (as an officer who fired his weapon)…

… that was the story he shared in the previous episode, where he thought he was responding to a flipped car on the wrong side of the highway…

💥

Amidst that story— which we originally met to record, he told me about the incident that opened the entire podcast episode, the time when they arrested a drug dealer and the neighborhood who was reeling from the effects of those drugs bowed up and stood against the officers— 100 civilians threatening 5 officers.

Of course, we got into the story about the internal affairs investigation, the homicide inquiry (all standard procedure with officer involved shootings)…

… losing his gun and badge for a week…

… and his ex-wife cheating and leaving him, taking the kids out of state…

… and the threat of Jesse Jackson coming to town to protest against him and the other officers…

And then he starts talking about trauma related to the coast guard.

A helicopter going down…

After a fellow coastie drowning during a training incident.

And that lead to a discussion on an officer he knew— Justin Billa— who was killed while responding to a domestic just two days after they worked together…

And that lead to a story about Sean Tuder, who was also killed in the line of duty…

… both of these being men Duffy knew and worked with.

All of that…

… from talking about one story.



We didn’t go fishing for any of this. It just came up.

It was AFTER the fact, after he told me these stories, that I went back, found the videos online, and began stitching them together in the narrative form you now hear.

But it was all there.

He pulled one thread… and things just flowed.

😳

Why do I tell you that?

Because that’s what trauma is often like.

You start dealing with it, and you suddenly realize, “I’ve got more there, more to deal with.”

And, that’s good.

It would be LESS normal to NOT be impacted by these things that it is to be impacted.

In the same way you can’t walk outside in the rain without an umbrella and not get wet, you can’t walk through life— especially in some of these professions— and not take multiple hits to the spirit, the soul, and sometimes even the body…

👇

As my friend Beau might say— I interviewed him back in episodes 44-46, “You’re not broken. You’ve just been through a lot. And, as a result, you adapted.”

Of course he would say it more articulately than that, but you get the idea…

__________

Links you need to know about =

🚔 🚒 🪖After Action Project = https://www.afteractionproject.org/

😳 It is PTSD or Moral Injury, episode 41 = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149187869 

📓 Soul & Spirit Health + Healing = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

🎙️ GY6 events = www.GY6.online/events 

📳 The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best  (free audio course)

🔗 One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

Every time a “marking event” occurs, your subconscious memory—

🗄️ Stores it

⭕️ Stamps it— with all the accompanying sites, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures.

This is how God designed us, and it works well for our survival AND our thriving in numerous ways.

But, when trauma gets involved (note: we weren’t created for trauma), some of this goes wonky…

… and, we read the present in light of the past in hurtful / harmful ways rather than helpful / healthy ways.

_________________

Suggested next steps

The Field Guide / GY6 book = www.GY6.online/FG 

Soul & Spirit Health + Healing = www.GY6.online/SSHH 

GY6 workshop / upcoming events = www.GY6.online/events 

The “best of” Soul Wholeness audio = www.Jenkins.tv/best  (free audio course)

One-to-one personal coaching = https://www.jenkins.tv/PC 

Past episodes, related to this one

#16, “Soul Whole” = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149103023 

#4, “Belief-Expectation Flywheel” = https://www.jenkins.tv/podcasts/podcast-version-2-0/episodes/2149076797