BARTLESVILLE, Okla. — After 18 years serving in hot spots around the globe, Kevin Turner finally was wounded in the line of duty — not physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
As president of Strategic World Impact and an ordained Baptist minister, Turner wanted to be “a soldier of the cross.” He traveled to war zones, disaster areas and regions where Christians are persecuted, convinced God had called him to provide emergency relief in Christ's name to people “standing on the brink of eternity.”
In January, he had planned to accompany a 20-member medical missions team to Darfur. The team intended to deliver 1,000 kits containing tarps, mosquito netting, eating and cooking utensils, and basic hygiene supplies to displaced people in the war-torn region. They also meant to deliver a solar-powered water purifier and Bibles for distribution.
The Oklahoma-based crew was slated to fly into southern Darfur on a cargo plane by way of Kenya. But as the mission team finalized plans, the situation in Kenya deteriorated. Riots broke out after a disputed presidential election and allegations of vote fraud. Due to roadblocks and other transportation problems within the country, fuel was unavailable for the cargo plane originally scheduled to transport the team and their supplies from Kenya to Sudan.
“After Kenya flared up, I kept in the back of my mind that if we were needed there and couldn't go into Sudan, we'd do something in Kenya,” Turner recalled.
Working with indigenous church leaders, the mission team made plans to deliver the emergency kits originally meant for Sudan to internally displaced people in Kenya. But at two sites where the team tried to work — Nakuru and Molo — they narrowly escaped violence.
“There were 11 fires burning in the city when we left Nakuru,” Turner said. “People were throwing rocks as we stood between two vans and prayed, just before we pulled out. And right after we left, a mob ran into the lobby of the hotel where we had been staying. People were being chased by a crowd with machetes.”
The team saw cars set on fire and listened to reports from pastors of revenge killings and random acts of wanton violence. At one point, the team was located in a gated park surrounded by a machete-wielding mob, unsure how they would escape.
“It was the straw that broke the camel's back. For me, I reached the pressure point,” Turner said. “I've been in so many flipped-out situations through the years. I've had to make decisions that affect other people's lives — people I'm responsible for before God and people I love with all my heart.”
Although the team managed to get out of Kenya alive, Turner returned to the United States broken and depressed.
“I didn't want to see anybody. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I sat in the dark, not wanting to engage the world,” he said.
His trauma reached a crescendo one Wednesday night when his wife and children were attending church. He “whacked out and blacked out,” he said, finding himself disoriented and lost in his own garage for at least 15 minutes.
“I felt like my mind was shutting down — like I was melting down,” he said. When my wife came home, I told her: “I'm going insane. I'm going nuts. You need to throw me away.'”
When his wife finally persuaded him to seek medical attention at an after-hours clinic, the physician on duty — an Army doctor who had returned recently from service in Iraq — diagnosed Turner as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
In the weeks that followed, Turner's family physician and counselors confirmed the PTSD diagnosis, stemming not just from the trip to Kenya but from the cumulative effects of 18 years of ministry in crisis situations.
Over the last few months, Turner reports progress, but he still feels like he's far from fully recovered.
“My life has been in turmoil. The nights have been like hell for me,” he said. “I've been able to keep my thoughts in some perspective in the daytime. But nighttime is the worst. It all comes flooding in.”
Psychologist Dan McGee noted the symptoms Turner described, coupled with his prolonged exposure to trauma, fit the PTSD profile.
“The mind, in order to survive day to day, must assume the position of invincibility. It is a carryover — somewhat a gift and curse — from adolescence when none of us really believe any of the bad stuff will really happen to us. Without this defense mechanism, we would be compelled to live in a state of anxiety that would overtax our mind/body system, and make a normal life impossible,” McGee explained.
“Therefore, when life-threatening things really do happen around us, the adaptation is made possible through coping skills learned over time. The problem is that they are not meant by the Creator to be used as a permanent solution.”
When those coping mechanisms break down under overload, raw emotions and behaviors surface, he said.
McGee, a former director of Counseling & Psychological Services with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and now an independent contractor working with the state convention, noted ministers particularly are subject to overload, burnout and compassion fatigue. He cites three reasons:
• Ministers are expected to be the stabilizing force at times of illness, injury, death, divorce or other kinds of loss.
• They are “unfortunately believed to be immune from error, misjudgment, temptation or failure.”
• They tend to misinterpret “calling” to override their own needs and the needs of their families.
Even Jesus needed a break, McGee noted.
“One gigantic lesson that helping professionals must somehow grasp is the importance Jesus placed on regularly withdrawing to a quiet place for restoration,” he said. “Failure to do so results in overexposure, poor choices, damaged relationships and burnout — and eventually disqualification as a helper.”
Linda Beaty has traveled into global hot spots with Strategic World Impact since 2000, and she has served as Turner's assistant the last three years. Like Turner, she and other staff members have experienced difficulty in dealing with long-term exposure to trauma.
“Kenya, particularly, rattled many of us in some very deep places,” she said.
Beaty sees recent months as a season of healing for the caregivers.
“We have realized the need to slow down” and spend time drawing strength from “a new level of interdependency,” she said.
Through the last several months, Turner said he has learned important lessons about God's sustaining grace. But he had to jettison some trite clichés he once accepted.
“I've given up on pat theological answers,” Turner said. “There are a lot of things I believed that I've had to give up. But a lot of the other things I believe have gone deeper, down into the bedrock. … I used to have a lot more tools in the toolbox, but the tools I still have left, I definitely know how to use.”
Turner hopes what he has experienced will allow him to minister to hurting people in a new way — as a fellow sufferer.
Wounds have no value in themselves, he noted. But if they are sustained in Christian service, they signal credibility.
“I'm a bit remiss now to trust anyone who doesn't have a limp,” he confessed.
“I've come to believe that God values brokenness. … In the past, I would have said a minister should hide his scars. Now, I believe he should be identified by them,” he added.
“In God's economy, scars can be beautiful.”