Two Army medics rededicate their lives to Jesus Christ and find hope for their marriage through Operation Heal Our Patriots.
The two Army medics were ready to quit their marriage and had a hard time remembering why they’d bothered applying to go to Alaska with Samaritan’s Purse. Just a couple weeks before Army Sergeant First Class Jason Smith and Army Specialist Amy Smith were scheduled to leave for Operation Heal Our Patriots, they delivered the bad news to their kids.
The Smiths recommitted their marriage to God and to each other.
“We told them we were divorcing,” Amy said. “Yeah, it had gotten really bad in the months since we’d been accepted to go to Alaska.”
But, in the end, they changed course at the advice of a friend. Amy told Jason, “We’re going. We’ve got to go. We have to try this for our marriage.”
Drinking had been a problem. So had living in two separate cities.
“It was crazy,” Amy said. She was taking care of her kids in one state. He was taking care of his in another. Both had children from previous marriages.
“It’s one of the hardest things—blending families,” Jason said. “In true military family fashion, none of us all lived in the same place.”
They were also getting into “blowout fights,” according to Amy.
Stuffing Down Their Emotions
Amy joined the Army to find direction in her life.
“I come from a small town in New Hampshire and a difficult background,” she said. “I knew I needed kind of a clean slate and a fresh start. I thought the military would be a good place to do that. I had no money for college. I didn’t enjoy school. I didn’t know what to do. So I talked with a recruiter.”
The marriage classes helped them learn how to reconnect with each other and how to lead their family well.
Jason joined for similar reasons. He was aimless after his father’s death.
“We were hunting for mushrooms when he died,” he said. His father suffered a heart attack in the woods. “I was just kind of lost after that. I started drinking a lot.
“I needed to get out of the town I was in and the situation that I was in and do something. Make a better life. That’s why I joined.”
They saw injuries on two sides of the ocean. Jason in combat. Amy at a stateside hospital where she treated soldiers wounded by the battles that Jason had seen.
During his deployments, both to Iraq and Afghanistan, he served as medic attached to a scout unit. He also served in Liberia during a humanitarian mission during the Ebola crisis of 2014. He treated victims of IED blasts while out on patrol. He witnessed the horrors experienced by Ebola victims in West Africa.
He’d seen many people die, some even as he was treating their injuries. In recent years, he’d lost two close friends to suicide and a drug overdose.
The couple honored a fallen soldier during a special bracelet ceremony at Samaritan Lodge Alaska.
When Amy and Jason met, they had stuffed a lot of emotions deep down. It’s what the Army had taught them to do.
“We as humans probably aren’t meant to see the things that we see in the military,” Amy said. “But there’s a sense of purpose there. We’re taking the brunt of it so other people don’t have to. We’re doing this hard thing so other people don’t have to endure this.
“In the military you’re taught to bury that,” Amy said. “Whatever you may be experiencing, the mission is still there. So, you just keep working. Keep going.”
Of course, it comes out later in various ways. Some of those ways are unhealthy, and the tendency is to keep them hidden. They both dealt with the stuffed-down experiences by drinking. Within their previous marriages, all that unchecked emotion drove them apart from their previous spouses.
Now it was happening in their marriage, too.
Finding God’s Healing
In the weeks after receiving an acceptance email from Operation Heal Our Patriots, they hit rock bottom. They were drinking again. They drifted from their church.
The couple enjoyed a morning of kayaking on Lake Clark.
“We were really lost in our faith. We didn’t know what to do. We saw Christians and how they were at church and then how they acted outside of church. We thought, ‘We don’t want to be those people,’” Amy said. By then, the couple was living separately. They were fighting. They decided to cancel the Alaska trip. “It was crazy.”
Then they recanted. Days later, they were on the flight to Anchorage.
At Samaritan Lodge Alaska, during Biblically based marriage classes, they were seeing a different side of the Christian life.
“The people here are authentic,” Amy said. “Coming here, it feels like people aren’t worried about what everybody’s thinking. They’re here to deal with their own issues. And so some people are saying some really hard stuff in these rooms.”
The Smiths were able to deal with and talk through the hard things they are facing. In classes and in one-on-one counseling sessions with our chaplains, they faced the difficulties and the teetering faith they had been trying to forget. In Alaska, God helped them to remember.
“We used to put God first. We used to prioritize our marriage. We said we’d never use the word ‘divorce,’” Amy said. “That all slipped.”
The Smiths got to enjoy hiking together to Tanalian Falls, bear watching in Katmai National Park, and fishing for grayling miles up into Lake Clark’s pristine waters. They experienced God’s healing power in the middle of a beautiful wilderness that He created.
They spent the day together watching bears feed on salmon at Katmai National Park.
“It’s easy to overlook God’s creation and forget about Him when you’re in a concrete jungle. I had very little faith coming here but knew I needed faith. Coming here has helped us slow down a bit,” Amy said. “We’ve decided to never quit. We want to give our children a marriage they can model their marriages after. We want them to say, ‘Mom and dad got through some hard things and they didn’t give up. We can do that, too.’ Coming here has restored our faith in humanity and our faith in God.”
Jason said it’s also renewed his sense of purpose as a man, husband, and father to his family.
“Our society has pushed against having strong men to lead their family, and I want to be the strong example for her, and for our family.”
On an August Friday, we praise God that the couple recommitted their marriage to God, they rededicated themselves to Jesus Christ, and were baptized in Lake Clark.
Now, after a week spent focused on their marriage at Samaritan Lodge Alaska, the couple is working to change what could have been a tragedy. They want to save their relationship and protect their blended family, by God’s grace and help.
