Healing Religious and Military Wounds

I was supposed to pray at a local military event, but a scheduling conflict gave me the space to heal my wounds.

I went into ministry at the age of 23 and almost immediately got sexualized and objectified, anything to take away my power. The more powerful the sermon, the more emboldened the men behaved to put me in my place.

I have a storied history with the military chaplain corps. In the same year I was involved with a sexual harassment lawsuit at my church of internship, my USAFR evangelist chain of command weaponized my womanhood to dehumanize and disempower me and my fellow USAF female servicemembers, repeatedly, using Scripture. My commanding Southern-Baptist colonels and majors made it clear that military female chaplains were only ‘allowed because of policy’. Because it was military, I couldn’t talk back, I couldn’t report it, and even if I wanted to, defending myself in my concurrent church lawsuit was so wrought with pain and paperwork, that I couldn’t do it on two fronts with the military, too. I left the seminary, the military, and the Disciples of Christ church in 2019. 

I felt tremendous shame, grief, and guilt for leaving the faith/people/duty, and over time and with years of therapy, I became willing to give a blessing or invocation to churches and the military for ceremonial purposes. I have found that to be a safe level of engagement for me. But for a very long time, I couldn’t name my experience of being disempowered, publicly embarrassed, sexualized, then silenced, then blamed, until my eventual self-departure. Up until a year ago, I thought because I was loosey-goosy with my body (sometimes fidgeted at attention), or that my military hair sometimes had baby curls on hot days (unkempt hair is an infraction), or because I am not Scripture-focused and instead presence/counseling ministry-focused, that I deserved it: 

‘Like of course they’re gonna treat me like a doll, I am having a hard time adapting to being like GI Joe and I really, really want to be like GI Joe. They’re right to treat me poorly - I don’t act like they want me to.’ The military is not a figurine, but I am also no doll. 

Recently, I was asked to give the invocation for my community’s Military Affairs Committee, a joint group of our fellow military base leaders and citizen community leaders. I have attended these meetings before, and many of the men usually don’t take me seriously. I’m smiley, stylish, and extroverted. I know what people say. 

Because I also know when I get the microphone, or a chance to show off my skills, God uses me to show what God can do. 

 My speeches and prayers and sermons silent rooms. Before I command a room and with that power, I become a vessel for God to speak truth. (This is also when the military and men in the church started to turn on me -- when through my sermons and ministering to all faiths, I became a ‘problem’. So I went from ‘throwaway eye-candy’ to ‘threatening’ that quick, huh? And why did the women, gays, and people of color seem to gravitate towards me and my ministry?). 

Now, that doesn’t mean that men don’t stop being men after the sermon and job is done:

‘Great sermon, could you wear contacts next time? You have such a pretty face.’ - major church donor

‘Good thing you’re not my pastor. I couldn’t concentrate on Sundays if you were the pastor!’ - a man who runs a veterans memorial 

‘I didn’t hear a word you said. I just kept staring.’ - congregant after a prayer

‘I’m not sure why you’re here (in the military) - you’d make for such a beautiful wife.’ - from my major

‘Do you have any idea how wealthy of a man you could marry if you stopped sharing your opinions? Men don’t like women with opinions. Ya don’t need ‘em.’

‘Here at the program, we do not have to agree with one another’s faiths to serve together. For example, my faith says that we do not honor women in ministry positions. But the military has that policy, and that’s why you’re here.’ - my colonel, to a room of 80% chaplain men, on the first day of chaplain training. 

And a narrative used against me quite often:

‘You must not be a true believer of Jesus if you minister to Wiccans and Jews and the seculars but not verbalize Jesus’s name or His Acts while doing so’’. 

Man, I’ve been a Christian for a long time and have never experienced such a narrow definition of Christianity as the one my Southern Baptist colonel and major impressed upon me. 

I don’t serve God if I’m not evangelizing? 

Let me get this straight: 

• I can lose 45 pounds and get in shape to qualify for the military

• I can be in seminary, with a solid track record of public speaking recognition

• I can be a youth minister

• I can use my University of Texas BA in International Relations and Master’s in Divinity degrees to understand and work with cultures of all types in a ministry setting so that whatever their pain is, I can adapt to best serve them in their spiritual language/worldview

• You can make comments about my body and how it’s best served in a kitchen or to a husband but not in a pulpit or military setting

• You can tell me a particular airman is an abomination for loving a man, despite his military service to this country 

• You can disempower the clergy people who are directly supporting your own people’s faith and spiritual life in a time of war, during a time when military suicides are skyrocketing?

• But if I don’t read Scripture or work Jesus into all my spiritual caregiving conversations or if I am open to working with other faiths, I am not a Christian 

The whole thing was wrapped in patriarchal, evangelist, power-struggle bullshit. They decided what being a Christian minister meant and therefore who could serve and be served. I didn’t realize the military was role-playing as the Pharisees – I thought we were the liberators of oppression! Not the ones building the cross for our own people. 

An organization’s policies on DEI, when not followed by the people in the organization, leads to DEI harm. Full stop. I am one of those who got harmed when policy did not align with practice.

How much of the harm in the military to our servicemembers is done by our own military members' inner-power struggles, and not by a foreign enemy?

Until the point of release and reward of using my voice, the experience of being in a military or church situation where there is a clear male power dynamic sometimes fills me with anxiety or irritation. I take deep breaths and reread my written prayer and I wait to give my prayer so that it’s over with. Then, I gauge the room and through feedback, I find relief and affirmation in knowing that God used me for the larger good. Suddenly the anxiety doesn’t matter because the mission was accomplished – through me in that role, folks feel connected to the Wholeness. I feel connected. 

Today, in this context, I did not get to pray. Through an innocent scheduling and communication error, a male chaplain in uniform was double-scheduled to pray. And I sat there, in my stole and Stetson and cowboy boots honoring my Texas heritage, after shaking hands and introducing myself as a person of power and safety in an otherwise disempowering and triggering context, mortified. 

As soon as the introduction was for ‘not Leigh Larson’, I looked at the people’s confused faces and instinctually looked down at my stole as if to say, ‘You* were supposed to protect me’. 

(*Is ‘you’ the stole and its icon of power in this context? Is it ‘you’ as God who, through this stole, I expect to feel empowered and protected by God? Or is ‘you’ referring to Adult Leigh, who continues to put Inner Child Leigh in trauma-likely situations to prove to herself she’s brave and doing the right thing and to others that she’s still ‘on the team’? Who is the ‘you’ I blamed so quickly?)

As soon as this man’s prayer at the luncheon was over, I left. I got halfway down the hallway before my legs couldn’t do their job anymore. I collapsed on a chair, swallowed back vomit, and regained breathing and bodily control. I left promptly and spent the entire day picking apart the event and my trauma leading up to it, using the words and language given to me in my seminary class.

I am not at all shocked that I had a panic attack today. A man was chosen over me in a similar context where I was repeatedly disempowered by men, in favor of men, specifically in regards to who had the right to spiritual power in religious contexts. 

It has been years since I’ve had a panic attack, and yesterday was an opportunity to learn a side of me that I had buried – or blamed myself for. I went to that event expecting to give spiritual care, but I received it instead in the form of awareness of an old pain. To me, yesterday was holy. 

The panic attack in a military religious context gave me the opportunity to explore and dig deep, and this class gave me the specific language to explain and name the processes of my experience. While the panic attack event was uncomfortable, I figured while the wound was open, I took it as a chance to ask questions and try to address the wound properly. 

The story I told myself since these events transpired was that I loved my country and God, but in the execution of my faith and patriotism, I was told I did it wrong and felt like I could not be a Christian or supporter of the military if I spoke out against sexual harassment or women’s discrimination. I swore my life to die for my country as a chaplain, got harmed by the patriarchal bureaucracy that exists within the religious contexts of our military, and then felt like if I said anything, it meant I wasn’t a patriot or that I was anti-military/national defense. 

When did being against harassment mean not supporting or defending our nation? 

Panic attacks are our bodies' way of telling us that something is wrong and they will keep happening if the problem goes unnamed. I had a panic attack over a scheduling issue, seemingly. But that’s not what it was, was it? 

I had a panic attack because I have a specific trauma history of being sexualized and discriminated against by fellow male chaplains through weaponizing Biblical Scripture while I served in the military at the same time I sued a male minister for sexualizing and spreading lies about me and others at my civilian church. Both within my denomination and in mixed-faith environments, the religious men who held power treated me as a distracting pawn in their need for power and an object of lust. I was able to successfully win, in the courts, with the civilian case, but I did not report my military experience because the experience in the courts was so harrowing. And besides, it was hard to prove my first case, who would believe a second? 

It wasn’t that, as a 24-year-old female minister I was in the wrong or bad for being who I was, it was that at the age of 24, who I was was already rockin’ boats without being aware or intentionally rocking them. I had pure intentions and had no intent to be political nor a nuisance – but my existence alone was a political nuisance, and I didn’t know why. But now I do. 

My body and face have been used against me. But this is my body, my face, my brain, and my mouth. And now I’m using it for me.