They challenge me to get back in the fight. And I knew I couldn't do it alone in that isolation. I knew I needed to step out of that isolation to surround myself with good quality people who was going to walk with me. That's Chad Robichaux sharing how challenging it was to find community when he was struggling with PTSD. Chad's our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
And as a veteran, he's passionate about providing hope and healing to active military members and veterans as well. Thanks for joining us. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. John, we owe so much to our veterans, and I think we have become a little apathetic about it. My brother served in the Navy and, you know, very.
Distinguished, and I so appreciate my brother. I try to call him every Memorial Day and Veterans Day to thank him. And I think that's the spirit of this broadcast today: to remember what these men and women have done for us. You know, I've seen clips on YouTube and things like that where sometimes these veterans are being hassled or heckled by people. I just go, Man, you have no idea what this man or woman and their family have done for us.
And so, this program is to really help you think about that, number one. But, secondly, we've got a great book, Silent Horizons. It's a fictionalized book by our guest, and it's a great resource to hand to a veteran, especially someone who's dealing with some difficulties, PTSD, things like that.
So, think about that as we talk today, and think about getting a couple of copies to have with you so you could give them out. And Chad served in the Marines. He's an expert in veteran care and related issues. As you said, Jim, this is a little bit out of the wheelhouse. We don't talk a lot about fiction books, but Silent Horizons is a terrific resource.
And we've got that here at the ministry. And the details are in the show notes. Chad, welcome back to Focus. Always good to have you here. It's so great to see you guys.
continued. I say it every time, but thank you guys for what you do for our nation, for the world. I focus on the family. You guys do such incredible work.
Well, it's a full effort, right? The Lord's kingdom coming into this world. And it takes everybody working on it, that's for sure. But you've done such a wonderful job. Of course, we've had you here.
People should go get the app and download the app so you can hear the programs before with Chad because they're amazing what you did to get people out of Afghanistan with very little help from our government at the time. And then things that you've done in the Ukraine. We're going to talk a little bit about that. But you are just the man's man. When I grow up, I want to be.
I'm trying to hang on. I've always been very blessed to be surrounded by amazing people in the professions that I've done, especially in the ministry we do, and Mighty Oaks Foundation to serve our veterans. We have such incredible. And this year, I stepped down from the role of being a CEO at Mighty Oaks and stepped out of the organizational structure to do more things like books and podcasts and my own podcast, The Resilience Show, some TV shows and things like that, just to build a... Because I feel like the gift things in the place that God has me in this season is to be able to cast the net bigger to reach more people.
And because of the people I'm partnered with and our team at Mighty Oaks and partners like you guys, I'm able to go out and reach more people and then bring them into those. It's so cool. We'll talk a bit about what Mighty Oaks does as we go through the program. But let's start with your designation. I love this Force Recon Marine veteran.
And a lot of people won't know what that means. What is Force Recon Marine?
Well, all the different branches of the military have different special operations. They don't all do the same thing. And, you know, force recon. The Marine Corps has the reconnaissance community, and Recon is the entry point to that. And about 25% of the recon community would be Force Recon, which has a little bit more focused missions, people with a little bit more experience.
My job specifically was called the AFO Advanced Force Operator, and you work in a singleton capacity by yourself with local nationals. And really, you just embed and live in those environments where they are non-permissive to the U.S. military. And all the worst bad guys are going to be in places that the U.S. military can't or won't go.
Like in Afghanistan, for example, it'd be in the federal administrative tribal areas or across the border in Pakistan. And so these tier one special operations units, when they go to capture or kill those guys, someone has to go there first to build all the clandestine infrastructure in order to be able to successfully have an operation there. And those are the AFOs. Is there really a place in the world that we can't go militarily? I mean, with special forces guys, it seems to me like we can go just about anywhere we want to.
There's not. And for the Abbey. Adversaries out there, there's nowhere you can hide America's military. If you're an enemy of the people of America, we will come and find you. And we have proven time and time again that we have the ability to do that.
So be your best behavior.
Well, we'll talk more about that. Wielding force for righteousness versus for evil. And there is a big distinction, a big difference. And, you know, I'm sure nations don't always get that right. They're not operating from strictly a biblical mandate.
And we'll get into some of that. But boy, those virtues that are high-democracy and voice and lifting up women and children, those are all good things that I feel like the U.S. has always stood for and tried to do admirably. It's an important part about being a Christian nation and being a nation of morality and being a just nation because we are the world's superpower. We are the most powerful nation in the world.
And with being that and not being a nation of morality, that would be a dangerous combination. And so, you know, that's one of many reasons that America should stay true to who we are. As a nation and our true principles.
Now, in your book, Silent Horizons, your character, which is fictional, Foster, struggles with feelings of isolation and eventually, you know, PTSD issues. I'm sure this is an amalgamation of you and your buddies that suffered different things. You kind of put it into this fictionalized version, but like all good fiction, it's usually rooted in reality. Is that fair? It is, yeah.
Book one, it's a three-book series.
So this is book one.
So Tyndo is a, if you guys don't know, Tindo is a publisher's a ministry. I mean, they're not a, they're a 501c3 nonprofit, and their, their mission and what they want to do in the military thriller genre is to be able to minister to those communities. And so just like Adventures in Odyssey, using, you know, cartoons and to be able to minister children, that's the same with this. And so Foster is very much a lot of things from me, from my life, and they're in book one. A lot of the things that Foster experienced were things that I experienced in book one.
And And so we fictionalized it, made him tall and handsome. We changed the locations and operations and things like that, and embellished a lot to make it fun for the reader. But there's a lot of things at the fundamental level about his life and his struggles and hardships and battles that are not just my story, but a story of so many of our warriors. And there's a path forward. There is hope.
There is healing. And we're going to be able to, the reader's going to be able to walk through that with Foster in a very pragmatic way that I don't think a lot of. Of the American culture gets to see. And so we really take him through that journey of the hardships and why he has those hardships. One of the cool things about this book is that Jack Stewart, who's the guy who wrote it with me, he's a Navy top gun pilot and adversarial instructor.
He spent his ground time at Tier 1 Special Operations Units. He's a phenomenal writer, brilliant guy. But we made a point to really honor so many people in that book. Foster Quinn is the character. Foster Harrington was one of my best friends for 10 years and died in Alambar Province in 2004.
Robert Cottle was another one of my friends who died in Iraq. And so Foster's pseudonym is Foster Cottle. And so a lot of the names you'll see, Seth, and different names you'll see in the operators are all those who are being honored as they were killed in action in duty to our nation. And that's amazing.
Well, like Foster, you talked about in the book the sense that he had, obviously you had and others, of isolation. Paint that picture for us because those, I'm not sure I can feel what that would feel like. Help me to better feel that.
Well, he goes through the isolation of physical isolation of operating alone, which I, you know, I spent many times alone operating, you know, in the mountains of Afghanistan or across the border in Pakistan. And when I worked in Singleton and Pakistan, I was the only one from my unit in that country.
So, is this that feeling of just being out there by yourself? And I mean, there's no protection.
Well, you realize that if something does happen, no one's coming to get you. There's no time for anyone to come to get you. Most of the time, there's no way to communicate that you need help. And so, you're relying on a local national that you build a relationship with and become close to.
Sometimes they're witting, meaning they know some of the things.
Sometimes they're partially witting.
Sometimes they're not witting at all. I've talked in the show before about Aziz, and Aziz was my most trusted confidant in my friend, and he was fully witting of the things. But there was often times I was not in those environments and spending days, weeks, months by myself. And so, that's the isolation of that and feeling alone. And there's nothing I know of that will eat you alive more than being alone and feeling isolated.
Because I don't think humans were created to be alone. They were created to be in community.
So, when you're alone and you're not having to be able to tell the truth to anyone around you, you're living in this lie of this covert capacity. It just. It takes a toll on you. It doesn't matter how good you are, how smart you are, how trained you are, how tough you are. Eventually, it's going to change you and it's going to affect you.
Then there's the isolation of taking that struggle, those struggles, whatever the struggles may come from, and that could translate outside the veteran community to anyone. And when you're struggling, you feel like no one feels the way I feel, no one's hurting the way I am, no one feels the hopelessness I feel, no one's marriage is as bad as mine. No one, you name it, no one, no one would understand, no one feels this way. That in itself becomes you could be in a crowd of people, you could be in front of a thousand people, but you feel isolated because you feel like no one could connect to the way you feel and you feel alone. And that's you know, the work of the enemy in this, you know, spiritual warfare to tell you that you're alone and there's no hope.
And I think that that lingering thought leads to the suicide epidemic that we don't only have in the veteran community. It's the highest in the veteran community. But we have throughout our nation, and no one really talks about this, that we're at a time right now in our country that we are at a historical suicide high in America and globally. And no one really wants to talk about that statistic.
Well, it's hard to figure out how to how to be effective in bringing that number down, but getting certainly veterans to talk about their experiences and where they're at. I do want to ask you about PTSD. I mean, that that term is bantered about quite a bit. If you've not been in the military, again, you may not really catch what that is. I mean, you're thinking of being gripped by perhaps fear or sounds that spark your memories of battle, you know, allowed something, and then you go into kind of an odd place emotionally.
Describe for us what PTSD is like.
Well, PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder. And I believe there's a conflict in the name disorder, because I don't believe that it's actually a disorder. The diagnostic DSM, the diagnostics and statistics manuals. Identifies it as that, but the most common definition is the body's normal response to abnormal situations.
So, my body's normally responding the way it was created to respond to abnormal situations, situations we were never created to see or do. And describe that abnormal situation: high stress, your life's on the line, hypervigilance, high stress, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, getting panic attacks.
So, your sensories, which we have, you know, our five sensories, I think we have more, but we have five sensories that we talk about. Your sensories, particularly the sense of smell, sound, you might smell something that'll bring you back to that moment.
So, your limbic system recognizes, maybe smells gunpowder.
Now, your limbic system says, I remember this event last time, there's a time that we smelled this. And you were about to die. And so the limbic system is very reptilian. Part of your brain is primal. And so the way God designed us was that fires off, and you go, you, your body has a normal response, the way it was created and designed to do.
And all these physiological effects happen for one thing and one thing only to protect you and survival, right? And so now your heart rate goes up, your breathing changes, you have like auditory exclusion in your ears. You can see things differently. And if that happens in a normal environment, not in a combat environment, your body's doing exactly what it is to do, the performance to survive. If you're sitting at the at dinner with your wife and kids.
That you're not supposed to be at that state physiologically in that moment.
So you feel really something's off, it'll create a panic and a real discomfort. And oftentimes, people. Will do only one thing, and that's medicate those symptoms to numb them, but they're not actually healing. And so. I'm not against medication.
You know, this, Jim, from us talking before. I believe medication is a part of the process, but it's the only part of your process. It's a bad process, right? You should seek to find, you know, to be able to understand what's happened to you, why it's happened to you, seek God's word and how to live through this and bring in community around you. And then do what I call clinical world calls prolonged exposure.
Expose yourself to environments to realize: hey, I'm not dying right now. I'm at dinner having a. Emil and The kitchen caught fire and I smelled something that triggered me and I didn't die.
So, the more you expose yourself to that and realize that I'm not in danger, the more you can react. Human body is amazing. You can re-acclimate yourself to a norm. Isn't that something? I mean, God has created an amazing machine in our bodies.
Let me ask you, though, specifically about your journey of healing, because you did have PTSD. Who stepped in? What was effective for you? Why did it work?
Well, you know, all the advice I give, I didn't follow at that time because I didn't know it. It's pretty typical of most veterans, right? Yeah, that's why I'm on such a mission to. Educate and inform and reach people through every avenue I can because I wish I would have knew that. I wish someone would have reached to me.
And because they didn't know, I tried to deal with it in isolation on my own without the tools and principles, without turning to Creator to recalibrate my life to the life I was created to live. And so that led me in a downward spiral that led to me coming to the hopeless thought that maybe my family would be sad without me, but they would be better off. And I made a decision to take my life. And again, That same hopeless thought finds a home in the hearts of over 20 veterans every day. I think more like probably 50, if we're accurate on the statistics.
But it doesn't matter the number. One is too many. Maybe my family would be sad without me, but they'd be better off. And it was, I made a decision to take my life, and my wife, Kathy, intervened in a suicide attempt and really challenged me and asked me, you know, how could you do all the things she seen me doing? Special operations, as an athlete, all these things I did.
But when it came to my family, that'll quit on them. Challenge, you know, of me being poked and being called a quitter because nothing, no more soul-cutting word to me than being called a quitter. They challenge me to get back in the fight. And I knew I couldn't do it alone in that isolation. I knew I needed to step out of that isolation and surround myself with good quality people who was going to walk with me.
And I chose to reach out by asking Kathy: Is there someone at this church that she was going to, not me, was going to help hold me accountable to that? And a man named Steve Till stepped in my life and not only led me to Jesus, but discipled me. I don't want to say mentored me because there's a difference. He discipled me for a period of a year and radically changed my life, my perspective, and my future. And at the end of that journey, it was a lot of revelation and a deep burden on my heart to share those revelations with others.
And that's why I'm what I do today in my life's commitment. Chad, let me ask you this: the wiring for men, we as men. As you were saying there a minute ago, the isolation that you feel as a man, they'll be better off without me. Th it's heightened. I think going through a military experience, all those things are juiced, if I could say it that way.
Yet all men seem to struggle with many of these things. The business guy that's out of kilter, that overworks, doesn't see his family as something he can rest in and be a part of.
So he avoids it, avoids his marriage. Speaking in that kind of general way, what do we as men need to think about when you're when Kathy says to you, come on, man, you could do better than this.
Well, Stu Weber wrote a book called Tender Warrior. And in the book, I'm going to misquote it, but he said, the things that you struggle with are in the heart of every man that you know. And that's absolutely true. We often, as men, think no one's dealing with what I'm dealing with. The truth is, in a different context, different job occupation, different people, every man is struggling with the same things.
There's nothing you face that hasn't been under the sun before by someone else. And so, what I'd say to men that are struggling is: one, Make this decision to step out of that isolation into a community of like-minded believers, into a core group of men that'll call us out and challenge us. And I think that, I mean, look, there's no second step. To living the life you're created to live outside of having a relationship with the Creator, that's one. But I think the next step beyond that is community, especially men.
We have to, we are our worst enemies. If we're outside of accountability, like I don't trust myself, like I know what degenerate I could be and what I'm capable of, of destroying, I'm my own worst enemy. I have to have community. And that's, I'm saying that honestly about myself, but I will say that to every man that's listening on the other side of this good work. They have to have accountability.
Chad, you're touching on this, but I want to pull this out even further. Your wife, Kathy, a brother of someone who's served in the military, if they're observing their family member or their good friend who kind of is expressing denial, I'm good, but you kind of can see. Where it's not healthy, whatever that might be related to PTSD, isolation, loneliness, whatever it might be. What do you say to those people? to be able to nudge, to encourage, because oftentimes guys, we're also quite prideful.
We're not going to respond well. I'm fine. Don't talk to me about it. I can manage it. Best advice I could give for speaking to someone who's struggling, it doesn't want help, that pridefulness doesn't want to help, is first of all, you know, you should probably sit down and say, Hey, come have a cup of coffee with me.
Get them in an isolated environment where it's just the two of you, and you show you're going to be willing to give your time to them. You care enough about them to give the time. But when you approach them, it's not, hey, what's going on with you? How can I help you? How can I be your savior?
That's the wrong approach and causes people to claim up. Instead, how about you tell them by the time that you struggle? Tell them by the time that you fell on your face and failed and got up again, and people came around you and God restored something in your life. Demonstrating that creates opportunity for them to reciprocate. And that starts the dialogue and the relationship that allows for you.
Yeah. What you have experienced, I mean, you're going into bases, you're allowed by the Pentagon to speak. People made in God's image need godly advice. That's right. And, you know, we need to get to the point where we're just sick and tired of people trying to water it down to the point it does no good.
And I'm so proud of you for going in and saying, hey, this is my experience. I was lost and then I was found. And you boldly point to your relationship with Christ as what saved you physically, emotionally, spiritually. But hit that again because I know he touched on it, but just the criticality, the warrior mentality that I'm not going to take somebody's imagination. This is what works.
This is what's true. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Yeah. How would I ever stand before God and say, I had the opportunity to stand in front of 600,000 active duty troops and sell my bill of goods without telling them the truth that in order to be the warriors that they desire to be and they were created to be, they have to have a relationship with Jesus. Like I have no option other than telling the truth.
And I have done that for, and God has really allowed me the opportunity to do that in a place that I was told. The door would be shut to. But you touched on something that's important to note before I say, and this: we're allowed to have. Bibles in our prisons, but not in our schools. And why not catch it on the front end?
Resiliency is on the front end. And an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. You can be in the front end and provide this. Why are we just using it to restore? We could use it to build resiliency.
And that's where I took that idea and pushed it to be to the Pentagon and to the White House and to Congress and Senate to be able to be at those bases and speak to those troops and speak to them on truth because they had taken it away. And in 2000, I know we probably don't want to get too political down there. But in 2009, President Obama removed Bibles from the military, and that's a fact. That's not a political statement, that's a fact. He chose to do that, and that's a fact of a state.
Since 1775, every U.S. service member has had a Bible until 2009. And then we see this radical increase in suicide. From 13 a day, 14 a day, 16 a day after he, at the time that President Obama signed the executive order to remove faith in the community programs from the VA, to 22 a day, right? This rap in two years.
Rapid, 16 to 22 doesn't sound like a lot, a day. A day. A day, right? That's a big difference.
So, yeah, six more in a day is a lot. And that was directly as a result to me because of the legislation in our government that we, the people, allowed elected politicians to do without speaking up. And so I. Made my way to DC and stood against this and asked Candidate Trump in 2016, if you become, because I was allowed to ask him a question in a town hall: if you become president of the United States, will you, by executive order, turn this around? He said yes.
And then I held him to it in 2018. He did. And since then, I've testified before Congress and Senate to fight to get faith-based programs back in the VA. And then at the DOD level, at the basis, our chaplains were able to talk about spirituality in a universal sense. But me, having a testimony, I was able to go there and speak from it, from my personal testimony.
And the military talks about resiliency in four pillars: mind, body, spirit, and social. They do a great job of mentally training the guys, physically training them, socially putting in the right teams. But the spiritual piece, they're too scared to touch. And so we've been allowed to, me, myself, at Mighty Oaks, go, and I've spoken to almost 600,000 troops now and speak to them about the spiritual resiliency that comes from our relationship with Jesus and how it's not weak and sissy, how there's nothing more masculine that a man could have on the battlefield of combat or life than being a man of God. And I've seen it firsthand.
And I mean, people, men of God, that will stand up and fight for, you know, what they believe at the core at their foundation. I mean, think of that. It's just, to me, it's profound because there's so much more to us, as you said, the spiritual dimension. And it's like modernity, we've just kind of looked the other way. We don't want to touch it.
Everybody has their own opinion and that whole thing. Let me ask you, I think one more thing I want to say about that is I think as listeners are here, the one thing we all could do, right? Not everybody's going to get a platform to go stand in front of a couple of thousand troops on Camp Hillon. But the one thing we all could do is continue to vote our biblical beliefs and elect our leaders who are people going to make decisions that are going to do the right thing for our country and our community and our troops. The right thing to do.
Yeah, for sure. Let me, right at the end here, let me just bring it all the way back around to Mighty Oaks because in your effort with Mighty Oaks, you are helping veterans to find purpose and identity in scripture. We've touched on that, but let's just hit it again right at the end. The mission of Mighty Oaks. The mission of Mighty Oaks.
Mighty Oaks has to save lives, restore families, and change legacies for eternity. And those aren't just bullet points for me to repeat for an elevator speech. We like those, though. Literally, what we do. We literally save people's lives that are in a moment of hopelessness, so they're going to take their lives.
We restore families that are broken and partnering with focusing the family. I mean, you guys have been a partner in the marriage piece of it. And then we. Most important thing is we change legacies for eternity through leading people into an eternal relationship with Jesus and then the reciprocal effect it has on the world around them.
So many people have come out of Mighty Oaks and not just been talked off the edge of suicide, but become community leaders and ministry leaders and reach thousands of people themselves. You know, I think of a guy named Reed Hasty who couldn't even get on an airplane because his PTSD was so bad to come to Mighty Oaks program. Uh, eight years later, I was on an airplane flying across to Ukraine to make it all the way across to Kharkiv, where I was in Kharkiv to minister to people there. Like, they didn't just get well, they got in a position to be a world-changer and kingdom builder for others. Wow, and that's what we do at Mighty Oaks.
And any veteran, first responder, spouse listening, active duty service member, if you are facing any kind of hardship in your life, there's zero criteria besides you say raise your hand. Bad conduct discharge, we don't care whatever your hardship is, wherever you are, if you're complete catastrophe or just trying to get in the right direction, get on the website, apply to Mighty Oaks. Everything's paid for. We even pay for travel. And that's because of a grateful nation of Americans that love our warriors and take care of them.
And so, anybody who does want to support, they can also go to Mighty Oaks. That's fantastic. And what a great spot to end at. Chad, thank you again for all you've done and all you continue to do in our country for veterans. It's awesome.
It's inspiring. And I love this book, Silent Horizons, a great fictionalized version of what really happens. Thanks for letting me do it. I know you guys don't do a lot of fiction, but it is a ministry tool between Tyndale and our ministry to reach a broader audience of people. And in my show, The Resilient Show podcast, and this is all efforts we're just doing to cast out as far and wide as we can to reach people, just like you did.
And it's so good. And we'll link over to Mighty Oaks so people can get there from our website to check it out. And if you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Silent Horizons as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry, both for Mighty Oaks and for Focus on the Family. And what a great testimony, like Reed's, who came from that dark place of PTSD and then overcame it through Mighty Oaks and is now ministering to people and changing the world. That's what you're talking about.
Yeah. Well, get in touch with us today. We'll have the link to Mighty Oaks Foundation and certainly get a copy of this book when you make a generous donation to Focus on the Family today. That gift will enable us to continue reaching out and providing programs like this one. The details for all of this help is in the description below.
or call 800, the letter A and the word family. 800-232-6459. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Yeah.
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