http://lifewithoutlimbs.org/about-nick-vujicic.php
I get excited when I see people turn negative things into something positive! I hope you do too. I wrote my book with the faith and the belief that everything I endured after having experienced my own traumatic events would in some way be of help to others who are for themselves experiencing some traumatic ordeal.Please check out the web link that I've attached. What an incredible message. Your personal struggles are significant, like Nick – and I dare say like myself – you too can be of help and encouragement to others.I hope you have a blessed and wonderful weekend.Daniel
Are you where you need to be today? I believe the Lord wants you to be at a specific place today. As for me, whether I understand it or not - I believe that I am right where I need to be at this time, for this moment. Personally and professionally, I don't think there is a better situation for me, that is with the exception that I wish I were back in Kansas City rather than deployed to a country that I had hoped to never again visit.
I read something that I'd like to share with you. It's something that I found pretty interesting. It's from "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. He writes, “A river is victoriously persistent, it overcomes all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, then it comes to an obstacle and for a while it is stopped, but it soon makes a pathway round the obstacle... Keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you round the obstacle or remove it.”
How true is that? True for those who believe in God. I really like that passage. It's talking about our path in life being like that of a river. At times we come to people or situations that keep up from going where we need to go. If we keep our focus on God, then those issues will either be resolved or removed from our path. I've seen God bless me many times this year, just like this passage talks about. He has helped me work through things and at times, He has taken obstacles (poor leaders and bad situation) out of my path.
I hope this finds you feeling blessed today.Daniel
“Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels… I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” Isaiah 47:8-11
Last week my pastor had a really interesting message; it set the tone for my week and my mindset for how I would respond to things that I experienced. My pastor said that experience reminds us of what’s real. He said two other things which I reflected on through the week as well. The first was, “There’s not much blessing without a battle.” The second, “The current around you moves you whether or not you realize it.”
What did that all mean to me? To begin with, the quote from Isaiah is something that I’ve been reflecting on for a couple of months now. I really love that passage as it represents a lot of what I’ve written about in my book. I believe that God uses people for his purposes.
With my book, I’ve had several opportunities to reach out to people already. I’m excited that God is using it and my past experiences to help other people. It’s a message that is already having a wide reach. It’s also a message that some people don’t want told.
I wrote in an earlier blog that, “I personally wrote to 98 of our 100 senators offering two objective reasons why the rate is so high and I offered a course of action to supplement the Army’s current suicide prevention efforts. I guess I should not be, but I am surprised that not even one of the senators expressed a desire to hear me out. Do they REALLY care about what is happening to the men and women of our Armed Forces and our families?” Well in fact, at least one of them does care and she reached out to me and offered to meet with me.
I was supposed to be traveling to the Pentagon to meet with the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army’s point of contact for the Suicide Prevention Task Force. On 14 July, I was supposed to brief BG McGuire on suicide prevention from the perspective of someone in the field. I have had many people stand up and work to keep that meeting from happening. Following my meeting with BG McGuire, I was invited to a meeting with Senator Landrieu’s office.
All the pieces were set in place for both meetings to happen. Then, out of the blue, while I was standing in line at our dining facility on Fort Riley, KS, my phone range. It was a call from the Department of the Army’s Office on Congressional Liaison. Fortunately, the person on the other end of the phone was an officer that I worked with when I was a young lieutenant and he was a major. Thankfully, he knew that I’m not an idiot and that what I was trying to do with these meetings was for the benefit of the military community, our families, and the civilian communities that support us.
Making a long story short, some people weren’t happy with my planned meetings – and now both of them have been cancelled. That sucks! But it’s not the end of the story. With your support, we can still get this message out to the community. Check out my other blogs and pick up a copy of my book – it’ll give you a better understanding of what Service Members endure and how we are often held down by our leadership.
Have a blessed 4th of July!
Daniel
Last year 143 Soldiers committed suicide. As of May 1, 2009, the Army reported that 91 Soldiers have already committed suicide this year. That terrible statistic puts the projected number of suicides at 270 by the end of the year.
I personally wrote to 98 of our 100 senators offering two objective reasons why the rate is so high and I offered a course of action to supplement the Army’s current suicide prevention efforts. I guess I should not be, but I am surprised that not even one of the senators expressed a desire to hear me out. Do they REALLY care about what is happening to the men and women of our Armed Forces and our families?
In a recent article by Mark Benjamin, he wrote, “The committee staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee have been advised of the reasons for increasing suicides over the last four years,” said Steve Robinson, a veterans advocate who has tried to alert the Senate of the problems while working for a number of advocacy groups. “They have had medical records delivered to them showing inappropriate care and cases of service members who have not received proper treatment,” he added. “When they say they are mystified as to why suicides occur, it mystifies me why they don't understand and refuse to talk about what is really happening,” he said. “This was not an honest assessment of why people are committing suicide.”
While attending the Department of the Army’s Annual Antiterrorism Conference, someone brought up the risks associated with allowing substance abusers to remain on active duty. Another person countered that drug and/or alcohol abusers are chaptered out (kicked out) of the service. I nearly choked on the water I was drinking when he said that.
Each year, the Army brings together its antiterrorism officers and subject matter experts to discuss the threats the service faces and how we can mitigate or eliminate them. Having spent the majority of my commission working in various Provost Marshal Offices around the world, I have enough experience to know that my counterpart surely didn’t have an objective base with which to make his assertion that the Army is chaptering out habitual drug offenders.
In the USA Today on Thursday, May 21, 2009, reporter Gregg Zoroya reported that “at one installation [there] were about a thousand Soldiers screened positive for substance more than once.” More than once? While working as the Operations Officer for the Fort Bliss PMO, we processed countless cases where Soldiers repetitively came up “hot” for cocaine, marijuana, or other illegal drugs. Frequently, we processed Soldiers for their third, fourth, or fifth offenses and yet, their unit commanders refused to process them out of the military.
Every Soldier is afforded the opportunity to seek professional treatment for substance abuse. They can seek help through self-referral or command-referral. Regardless of how the Soldier gets to the Army Substance Abuse Program, the help is there if the Soldier wants it. That is the one area where the military has made positive headway. So why do we still process Soldiers for multiple offences? Opinions are like bellybuttons, everyone has one. I would proffer the opinion that it’s all about retaining trigger pullers. We need bodies to send down range to fight the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army is on a pace this year to shatter the record suicide rate set among soldiers in 2008, according to data released by the Army. And the numbers, obtained a day after a patient at a combat stress clinic in Iraq killed five, suggest that combat stress may be contributing to the spike in suicides. That stress is a contributing factor to substance abuse and in turn substance abuse certainly is involved with some suicides. Add to combat stress the effects of poor leadership, cast mindsets against personnel getting help, and poor mentorship of our subordinates, and we have a recipe for disaster.