The Invisible Sign

Returning To The Present Past:

If You Want Out, You’re Out!

The hospitalized me without giving me a diagnosis. I was placed in the psych ward at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, where I was drugged and put to bed. Weeks passed, or months; I’m not certain. My squadron redeployed to the Mediterranean without me.

Late one afternoon, as I sat at a table, biding my time with a paint-by-numbers kit, a commander/doctor approached me. Laying a document on the table in front of me, he said:

“If you want to go home, just sign this, and we’ll have you out of here this week.”

Completely taken by surprise, I assumed that he meant home to my wife and children, and back to work.

“How do I get back to my squadron?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “When you sign this, it means that you’re out of the Navy.”

“Why?” “Why can’t I complete my enlistment?”

Although it may have been an answer to a prayer, this was not how I wanted to leave the Navy. My original thinking was to apply as a conscientious objector; what I thought would be a bold stand for God and righteousness.

The Commander snatched the papers from my hand and walked to the door. He paused, looking at me like I was vomit on the floor, and said:

“Suit yourself but you need to think it over carefully. If you stay in, you are going to complete your enlistment (two years) in Bethesda Naval Hospital without your family, and then be discharged.That’s the best I can offer.”

Ultimatum

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “Ultimatum is a final proposition, condition, or demand, especially one whose rejection will end negotiations and cause a resort to force, or other direct, and possibly undesirable, action.”

So, how do I respond? Was that an offer or a threat?

Was My Brain Broken (Or Just Slightly Bent)

In 1974/75, PTSD was yet to be heard of, and the military (as it remains to this day) is less than willing to take responsibility for any negative reactions to high-stress situations, trauma, debilitation, or otherwise.

Accepting their gracious offer, and with my mental condition in shambles, they were congenial enough to ship our family and belongings back to Pennsylvania to the same dirty little city it helped us to escape.

Life too often goes in circles.

Having nowhere to live, no job, no insurance, and no way to seek medical help, my older brother and his partner, who at the time were caring for Mom, took in the four of us.

In the meantime, how do I heal this mental torment?

With the Church of Christ negated and no evident, effective medical treatment, the answer to this torment lay strictly with God. With no other recourse, I turned to Jehovah’s Witnesses, for whose doctrine I’d thrown away all previous learning.

Putting myself at the mercy of a group whose leaders refer to themselves as The Anointed, and having seen that their doctrine seemed to withstand religious scrutiny, I subjected myself and my family to their minions, called ‘elders’ and ‘ministerial servants,’ whose duty it was to “assist the weak.”

The Truth Will Set You Free!

Unaware of the fact that, by seeking help from “God’s people,” I had sparked a heated discussion among the minions about my “condition,” About which I would learn in the coming years that nobody was willing to mentor me.

Why? Because they had no idea of what to do with a mental case!

They were nothing more than men from everyday life with no special training, and no social work skills. Just men appointed by other men to “oversee” the congregation.

So, up stepped an elder named Henry (Heinze) Jelinek, an old German Jew who had escaped Hitler’s Nazi Germany and who, out of a sense of duty to God, accepted the task.

Knowing Heinze, as I came to know him, he expected God (whom he called Jehovah) to assist. That was all of the training he needed, and with absolutely no concept of PTSD, he took me under his strict, German wing.

He said he would find out whether I was “a sheep” or “a goat.”

Clearing Out the Demonic Presence!

According to Heinz (Henry), to be healed by God, I had to renounce my service to the Navy, rid myself of all military certificates and medals, throw away my chess sets (because they symbolize war), and reject modern music, movies, and anything that “showed a love for the world.”

The ‘Watchtower’ and ‘Awake’ magazines became a daily habit.

For a solid year, I studied “The Truth Book” over and over to “qualify” for baptism, and before I could do so, I was subjected to a lengthy verbal quiz.

Everybody is required to do the same.

My “study” began in October of 1974, and in November of 1975, I was baptised at the Assembly Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, in Harrisburg, PA.

A Witness of God With PTSD…I Wasn’t Alone

After an entire year, there remained no sense of healing. In fact, there in Harrisburg, during that assembly of a couple thousand people, I had what appeared to be symptoms of a heart attack and spent some hours in the infirmary. Something I later learned was due to agorophobia.

Daily I tried, and daily I cried. Literally speaking. The depression and anxiety were inexplicably mentally and emotionally tormenting, and day or night, at home or at work, most private moments were spent crying, praying, and thinking.

Was I so corrupt, so mentally and spiritually degraded, that I had to live like this the rest of my life? Although I feared that I may one day do so, up to that point I had never considered taking my own life.

As time passed, years passed, I learned that many converts had similar issues. Turning to God for healing, and the promise that The Truth Will Set You Free.

Returning To My Worst Best Friend

Pennsylvania’s economy collapsed in 1985, and along with it, a decade of employment. We tried to survive, but there was nothing to be done.

The trek through those ten years added two more children, the purchase of a house and a car, the death of my mother, the layoff, and finally a bankruptcy and the loss of everything.

So far, there was no healing; the same pain and torment persisted regardless of how much I learned.

Was it because I was unable to overcome my obsessions? Was it because I couldn’t change myself to be perfect like Jehovah’s Witnesses all professed to be?

At least they appeared so to me. All happy and smiling, going door to door, talking about how elated they were now that Jehovah was on their side; how glorious it was to come to the Kingdom Hall and be with “the friends.”

I felt none of that, and the fact that they claimed to do so pushed me further and further beneath the surface, until I began to pretend, just like they were.

Where was God? Why wasn’t God helping me? Am I that worthless?

Then the offer came. My rescuer and saviour! (Not so much.)

One day I received a call from my old worst, best friend, who still lived in Florida, who had recently lost his wife to cancer and decided to start his own insurance agency.

While visiting his mother, he’d heard of my dilemma and offered me a job helping him with his insurance business. All that we had to do, he said, was get ourselves to Florida, and he would take care of the rest!

What choice was there? It was a lifeline, and I grabbed it.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways, and So Did My Worst Best Friend

By this time he was an elder in the congregation, which I took to mean I would have a mentor, one who could guide me to sound mental and spiritual health. I looked forward to studying with him as he set the example for me to follow.

Well, as it turned out, not so much!

As I observed his behavior, I noticed that the old church lapel badges were back, figuratively speaking.

As I came to know the minions of the congregation personally, it appeared that they had gained their positions through façade rather than a true change of personality.

According to the New World Translation, Colossians 3:9-10 says:

“Do not lie to one another. Strip off the old personality with its practices, and clothe yourselves with the new personality, which through accurate knowledge is being made new according to the image of the One who created it.”

Observing their behavior and hearing how they spoke about those whom they were supposed to be “sheparding,” the group seemed more like a fraternity or a clubhouse mentality. A pretense rather than a true change of personality.

He was the same old worst-best friend I’d always known, worried more or less about pleasing ‘the organization’ than about pleasing God. To him, and the others, the two appeared synonymous.

Be Warm and Well Fed — James 2:15

In any case, it was barely a few months after our arrival that he met a woman, asked her to marry him, and folded his newly formed insurance agency.

Months passed, and it became obvious that he had no real intention of making his business a success. Little or no business had been generated, undelivered policies lay on his desk, and days went by without him being seen.

This is the same friend who years later would say to me,

“Don’t forget that you have me to thank for your success in life, since I brought you to Florida.” (Or substance.)

The same one who called himself my “brother” who showed up at our door some weeks after closing his agency, carrying a payment book for a personal loan of $10,000, which he handed to me, saying,

“This will be an easy way for you to repay me for helping you.”

That debt was paid in full.

In the end, his promise, “I’ll take care of everything,” collapsed like a cake in the oven, leaving my family and me to seek greener pastures, and those greener pastures had nothing to do with him.