How to Train Spiritual Resilience

The aspect of being resilient is to be able to bounce back after a traumatic or stressful situation. To understand why some can bounce back and others can’t I am proposing that it is more of a spiritual issue than it is a mental, emotional, or physical issue.

Let’s look first at a person of no faith. Many can bounce back after traumatic events, but all are left with questions that theologically they cannot answer. Is God the cause of this? What about my life? Why did this happen now? These are just a few questions a person of faith may not be able to answer in the light of a life and death issue. Why is this? I believe that they cannot answer, because they are faced with their own mortality and that begs the question is God real? 

People of faith, who face daily struggles or near death experiences and have come out on the other side understand resiliency. They understand because perseverance in the light of God’s grace and desire for relationship with the struggle provides the message of hope in the future. A person who is not hopeful in a future has a hard time moving beyond the fallout or debris of life’s issues. So what is the key to being resilient for our Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, and Marines?

The key to helping our fighting men and women be resilient is to build relationship opportunities.  Our warriors need to be able to connect with their experiences as a way to connect the dots that in the face of death and life struggles they see hope in the relationships they have and preserve in the moment. We need to encourage our service members to connect mentally, spiritually, and physically in training environments that fosters a perseverance attitude.

As a chaplain I see leaders give up on Soldiers to quickly and fail them as leaders because they do not desire to take the time to mentor the Jr. Enlisted or Jr. Officer. This mistake will be crucial on the battlefield, because when the fighting begins, the only trust these fighting men and women have, is in themselves. The resilient attitude cannot be established on individualistic properties or training. We must return to the basics of training and that is mentorship. Mentorship is having a healthy relationship with peers and leaders which bridge the ability to reach out for help and receive help when needed. 

To be resilient is to have the courage to ask for help and then preserve through the issue with the help of those around you encouraging you along the pathway. The scriptures say the same thing. In Romans 5: 1-5 it says; “¹Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, (meaning connected in a relationship) we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

A person that experiences the same things are connected and if given the opportunity to share the experiences they encourage others to lean forward and preserve in the fight. We need to celebrate our warriors and those who have fight the good fight and come out on the other side victorious. We need to allow them to speak about their challenges and obstacles and who has got them through the darkest of moments. Sharing testimonies of those who have won will inspire and encourage a spirit that is weak and desiring to give up.

This model is an approach in transcendent and immanent leadership.  As leaders we are transcendent to God and our Soldiers issues but we are needed to have a relationship of immanence with both. As we know transcendence is on the outside of a situation but if we are having a relationship of imminence we are considered within the fight with our Soldiers just as God is in the fight with us as we battle the issues we face in this life.  So let us join in the fight of connecting with our troubled and weary as we do with our heroes.