The Greatest WarriorSample

Reaching Out to God

Chris D. & Renee Ayres

Captain, Bravo 1/5, USMC, Retired

While fighting in Fallujah, I was hit with an RPG, leaving the back of my right leg torn to shreds. All I could think about were the contractors that were dragged through the streets there and hung from a bridge above the Euphrates. I was afraid I was going to be next. 

The damage to my leg turned out to be minimal compared to the hit my mind and my family took.

After lying in the hospital for over two and a half months, I went home to a life that was now foreign to me. My anger was hard to understand and control. My wife, Renee, knew I was suffering from combat trauma. She asked me to see someone about it, but I was too much of a man and a Marine to admit to this kind of struggle.

The turning point came when I almost killed my wife. Listen to what happened from her perspective.

Chris was a different man from the one I married. Whenever we fought – which was often – I began the target of his anger. 

One day we got into a fight and I refused to back down. He finally said he was going to divorce me. He pushed me and our baby daughter, which banged into the wall, and started crying. He picked her up and then took me by the throat, lifting me off the floor. I knew I was about to die. His eyes were glassed over – he wasn’t there.

I spent hours that night trying to find someone or somewhere to help him. I found an inpatient program that he agreed to check into. He was gone for 111 days.

I was thankful for what Renee had done for me. When I returned to my family, I had the tools to identify when I was making poor judgements. 

Finally, I decided enough was enough. I drew a line in the sand, reached out to God and cracked open the Bible and started reading the New Testament. The deeper I engage the Bible, the deeper my relationship with Jesus becomes as I try to live out the story that He wants to write for my life.

PRAYER: Lord, thank You for coming near me as I come near to You. Thank You for being faithful and true, always present and ready to provide what I need to live free from fear and the wounds of the past. Be my strength today and every day.