When War Comes Home: Christ-centered Healing for Wives of Combat Veterans

by Chris Adsit, Marshele Carter Waddell (Contributor)

When War Comes Home: Christ-centered Healing for Wives of Combat Veterans offers spiritual comfort and practical, Christ-centered solutions for wives of combat veterans struggling with the hidden wounds of war ranging from reintegration challenges to potentially devastating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). These are solutions for the “Secondary Trauma” she is experiencing when his trauma symptoms impact the family and even begin to show up in her. Insights from the medical and counseling community are wrapped in biblical principles and combined with the shared experiences of wives who are veterans of their own husbands’ PTSD struggles. The book guides wives to: 1) understand what happened to her husband – spiritually, psychologically and physiologically; 2) understand how her husband’s trauma symptoms are affecting her; 3) learn how to deal positively with grief, loss and forgiveness issues associated with her husband’s PTSD; 4) learn how to build her own “healing place,” develop her support network and know when and how to find physical safety; 5) understand and focus on her true identity in Christ; 6) recognize the real enemy and how to fight the spiritual war she and her family are engaged in; 7) learn how she can contribute to her husband’s healing environment; 8) learn how to construct a safe, healthy environment for her children; and 9) understand the process of moving on to a “new normal.”

Genres: Counselling

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2008

Reviews

[Jennifer DeFrates · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a soldier comes home, War comes home, too. When my husband came home last time, it was our hardest yet. He came home to a stressed-out wife getting ready to start her next school year and a toddler daughter he barely knew. Reintegration was going to be tougher than it had ever been on top of the extreme stress of cumulative deployments.

God placed this book in my path at just the right time to make dramatic changes in my heart and marriage. I spent the next several months reading a chapter a week and discussing it with a dear friend. We were both struggling with how combat had changed our husbands.

The book is written by combat veterans, wives, and experts from a Christian perspective. It costs about $25, but is a priceless resource. The book deals with everything from grieving the changes any combat veteran might experience to the most severe PSTD, offers insight and biblical solutions, as well as resources for help, counseling and domestic abuse if necessary.

I learned so much about forgiveness and commitment, God’s truths, and our real enemy in this world. Some content might not relate if your spouse isn’t a veteran, but so many raw truths about love being an action, not just emotion make this a trusted marriage manual I could recommend to anyone.

For me, the path to that moment of surrender started when I truly realized that war comes home. The smell of it, the frenetic energy of it, the despair, bravado, and horror of it moved in with his foot locker at the end of his 4th deployment. Click here for my personal review and story - http://heavennotharvard.com/2016/01/2...