When Andrea Westfall came home in May 2003 from her nine-month deployment to Kuwait and Iraq as a flight medic, she knew something had changed within her.
“I reacted to loud noises,” she remembered. “I no longer felt safe and always watched doors. I didn’t like to be around people large crowds were awful for me. I thought I was going crazy, but it wasn’t until a year after I got home that it was bad enough to get help. I was self-medicating, getting drunk every night. I was miserable, and I wanted to feel anything different than the hell I was in.”
Westfall was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and went to the nearby VA Center for treatment, but she knew that wouldn’t solve everything. For her nagging questions about God, she turned to a local church.
“Spiritually, we are the most vulnerable when we come home,” she said. “We’ve been immersed in seeing death and destruction. There’s a lot of woundedness.”
Church services weren’t easy for Westfall, either.
“How are you doing?” someone would ask.
“Actually, I can’t sleep, I’m really struggling,” Westfall would state.
“But you’re seeing someone about that right? There’s a book you really need to read.”
No one seemed to understand that Westfall needed more than a pat answer or a best-selling book she needed the body of Christ. “I didn’t need a church with a full-blown military ministry,” said Westfall. “But little things would have made a difference like someone coming over and mowing my lawn or fixing what was broken.”
One day at work she was having a hard time dealing with a situation anxiety was high. “What’s your problem? You made it home alive,” her boss told her.
Yeah, Westfall thought, but I wish I’d died over there.
It wasn’t until the local newspaper ran an article about Westfall that the extent of her struggle with PTSD was fully told. The day after the story ran, a woman came sobbing to Westfall’s mother: “I prayed for Andi every day when she was gone,” she said. “When she came home I stopped praying because I thought she was safe. But that’s when her war really started.”
Those words travelled near and far, including up to the Pentagon chaplain.
Finally, somebody gets it, thought Westfall.
Lord, open my eyes to the hurting people around me; show me how to lift them up with your strength.
“My spirit is broken.” (Job 17:1a)