by Jamie Neherenz, Epilogue Written by Scott Scheurich, FSM ACBC Certified Biblical Counselor
I was in the greater Phoenix area for a second opinion. As I sat there listening to a well-renowned forensic psychiatrist, I heard it. The one thing I really did not want to hear: "You have PTSD along with severe depression and anxiety."
I took the diagnosis with a straight face. As the doctor discussed the start of a treatment plan, I heard only these words . . . PTSD, severe depression, anxiety. I was in disbelief. This cannot be! I am too seasoned as a police officer and detective for this diagnosis. I help other people as a peer advisor with these symptoms. This cannot be happening to me!
As I left the doctor’s office, I made it approximately one block before it was all to hard to comprehend and pulled my vehicle over to the side of the road. All at once I felt pain, anguish, shame, and anger overflowing through emotion as I sat and beat my steering wheel and dashboard, screaming to God, "No, this is not happening!"
My name is Jamie. I am a twenty-two-year veteran law enforcement officer/detective who spent half my career in the great state of Ohio and the other half in the beautiful state of Arizona. During most of that time in Arizona, I was a detective in the child sex crimes unit, where we worked in adult sexual crimes, child sexual crimes, severe child abuse, and human trafficking. I had heard there is usually one particular traumatic incident that causes a person’s PTSD. Through a substantial amount of reflection on my own personal life, I considered numerous traumatic events throughout my life—and then one final one that broke the camel’s back, as they say.
When I was about five years old, my mother divorced my non-biological father—that is another story for a different time. We quickly moved in with another man my mother had started dating. I cannot remember the first time I witnessed or heard him beating my mother, but it was soon after they moved in together. Before long, his anger turned toward me also. There were too many beatings to remember all of them, but there were a few that I would say were life changing. I will start with one of the worst. I want to be transparent here and tell you that as I am writing this, I live through it all over again. The reason I am sharing my life is not for sympathy but to hopefully help someone else who is hurting and to follow the will of the One who saved me and gave me redemption.
We had been living with Bob for approximately a year at this point. The abuse to my mother and me had been occurring pretty regularly. My beautiful young mother received far worse beatings than I did. Bob would disappear for days at a time on drunken binges. Even though it was nice when he was gone, his haunting presence was always surrounding us because we knew at any moment he would be back—and that was never good.
After a three-day bender Bob had been on, I was in bed asleep. During the early morning hours, I was awakened to the sound that I knew all too well. That sound was Bob’s fist pounding the flesh of my mother. When middle-of-the-night beatings like this would start, I would hide in my closet. It became a ritual. I knew Bob would find me in the closet, but, to be honest, I always felt as if there was a presence with me in that closet, keeping me breathing—even holding me, if you will, sort of preparing me for when it would be my turn. I had a night light in my room about two feet from the closet that would give me a few seconds warning when he was coming for me as I saw his feet come in front of the closet.
Now normally Bob would grab me out of the closet and begin screaming and yelling, calling me names and telling me how worthless I was. That I was a mistake that was ruining my mother’s life. He would smack me, kick me, and worst of all, step on my private area extremely hard and tell me that he would make it so I could never reproduce any other worthless pieces of you-know-what into the world. Many other things happened. For example, when I would wet the bed, he would actually rub my face in it and just degrade me the entire time.
Now I know you may be asking where my mother was when all this was happening, and that is a fair question. For the more minor abuses she would try to get him to stop, but he would overpower her. During these examples I have shared, she was injured herself, sometimes unconscious. That brings me back to this particular incident. I could hear the beating and can still hear it as I am writing this—her screams as she pleaded with him to stop. Then everything went quiet. After what seemed like hours (in reality, probably only ten minutes), here came the feet in the light under the closet door, and I knew it was my turn.
As the door opened, his six-foot two-inch athletic figure looked like a man from the movie 300 to a small six-year-old. He reached down and grabbed me by the hair and proceeded to drag me down the hallway to my mother’s room. Now this is where it gets rough, and this could be what some call a triggering moment. As he dragged me into the room, he stood me against the wall at the end of the bed where I could see my mother lying naked—bleeding, bruised, and unresponsive. My heart still sinks for my mother in that moment, and there was nothing I could do to protect her. I tried to close my eyes, but Bob told me to keep my eyes open or he would kill her. He then removed his pants and sexually assaulted my helpless mother right in front of my six-year-old eyes. He left the apartment after he was finished. As he left, he said, "That is what you deserve."
After I heard the front door close, I went to my mother’s side. I can recall feeling her breath on my face as I leaned in to hold her. She had no idea what had happened. I covered her up with a blanket. I remember sitting in the hallway crying and praying she would wake up. Eventually she did wake up, cleaned herself up, and kept on going. She is one strong woman. My mother never knew what I had witnessed that night until thirty-two years later when I had enough courage to finally tell her what had happened. She remembered the beating but nothing after that.
Anyone who has experienced severe domestic abuse knows how hard it is to leave the abuse. I learned later that Bob would threaten my mother repeatedly that he would kill me if she ever left or had him arrested.
I cannot not tell you how long it was before he came back again, only that he did. Bob was around for a few more years, which brought broken noses, broken ribs, black eyes, and just pure evil. Then we moved from Ohio to Florida, and Bob was finally chased away from us by a combination of a good Samaritan, my grandfather, and the police.
Things really did not get much better after that as there were several men in and out of my mother’s life. From my recollection, only one of them was a good man. All the rest—well, they are gone, and that is what matters.
When I was sixteen, one of my mother’s boyfriends tried to throw a phone at her head because she had discovered he was cheating on her. I was no longer a small child and vowed I would never watch someone abuse my mother again. That being said, the boyfriend and I proceeded to get into a small scuffle. After that, I told my mother I would never live with one of her boyfriends again. Although I am sure it was painful, she understood. My mother and I have witnessed the evil of this world firsthand, and we walked through it together. We always had each other. One thing my mother always did was show me love. She made her mistakes, as all of us do. Although I never blamed her for what happened to us, there was still forgiveness that needed to be given. I have completely forgiven her for the choices she made in her young life.
Growing up with a single mother was not easy, as you can see, so I fell in love with sports and began playing football when I was eight. That gave me the leadership of some good men and brotherhood with other boys in my area. It gave me a sense of purpose and belonging. I was a surprisingly good player, so that helped. I was an average student through school and began to wrestle in junior high school and continued into high school. Again, there was something special about the one-on-one competition that filled a void for me at the time. I feel that on the outside I was an all-American kid, but on the inside, I was tormented.
I never felt worthy of anything and was always trying to overcompensate for things in my life. My freshman year of high school things were going good for me, but then my mother lost her job and we moved back to Ohio. I adjusted the best I could to the move, trying to find my place in a new school and a new town that were nothing like what I was used to. Going from southwest Florida to northeast Ohio was an excessively big change. Then I switched schools about six months after arriving in Ohio, and I started to thrive. I met new friends, played football again and found a new passion in lifting weights.
I did well and was being recruited by some good schools, but I still was not dealing with an overwhelming feeling of worthlessness resulting from not growing up with a father. The story of my fatherless situation is too much to add here, but it was a major part of my adolescent life. Knowing that the man I got my name from no longer wanted me or to even be a part of my life at all always made me feel unwanted. With that being said, I had an amazing football coach who was the equivalent of a great big brother to me. I attribute getting through the roller coaster of high school to him.
At the end of my junior year of high school I placed a significant amount of pressure on myself to succeed. For me, that looked like joining the Marine Corps after high school or going to college and playing football, then going to the Marine Corps as an officer candidate. I felt the Marine Corps would make me into a man.
Very soon that decision would be made for me as I started to experience severe abdominal pain, fevers, and then blood in my stool. I lost seventy pounds in about three months. I spent some significant time in the hospital and was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis. My soon-to-be senior year of football was finished—the doctor advised that a blow to my abdomen could cause a perforation of my colon, which could be fatal. I was devastated. Football had been my escape from all the realities of my life. By this time, my mother had finished nursing school and was working a lot. She was also spending a lot of time with a new man in her life. I had just met the most amazing girl and things were going well, but now I felt so alone. I felt that everything I had worked so hard toward was gone.
I would start to make a slow recovery and then would get hit again with a bad flareup. Then I found out that the amazing girl I had met was pregnant. Needless to say, I didn’t handle that news well. In my immature mind, I felt she and the baby would be better off without me in their lives, and I broke things off.
Finally, I did start to recover. Gradually I put weight back on and started working out again. I found out there was a new Marine recruiter at the local recruiting station, so I thought I’d give that shot. I went in and lied about my medical condition so I could enter the Marine Corps. I thought I was finally going to be a man, and I would at least be able take care of my still unborn child. I went through the delayed entry program, passed MEPS ,and prepared to go to boot camp.
I had left so much undone between that amazing girl and me. Encouraged by a close friend, I finally picked up the phone and called her. One of the most amazing days of my life was when she agreed to see me and allow to meet my four-week-old son for the first time. The moment I saw her step out of the car, I knew; this is my family, and I can never do to them what had been done to me. This beautiful red-headed woman, Michele, would someday be my wife. She was supportive of my choosing a career in the Marines, and six weeks later I left for boot camp.
It was 1992 in the summer at Parris Island, South Carolina. The initial shock of boot camp was a lot to take in, but oddly I began to enjoy it. I became a squad leader in third phase and was so excited to get ready to see my family, who would watch me walk across that parade deck with pride in my country, my family, and myself. Unfortunately, that day would never come. When I had less than three weeks left on the island, the ulcerative colitis came back with a vengeance. After some time in the hospital, I was medically discharged. Platoon #3105, 3rd Battalion, India Company, Parris Island, South Carolina was the extent of my short Marine Corps career.
As I met with my major prior to being discharged, he advised me that he recognized how important being a Marine was to me, and he went on to tell me he had spoken to my uncle, who was a master gunnery sergeant in the Marines at the time—and one of my idols, if I might say. The major then said he felt I had earned my eagle, globe, and anchor. He placed them in my hand and wished me well. That did provide some sense of accomplishment, but I was overwhelmed with the feeling of worthlessness again. This disease was taking away another dream.
Upon returning home, I started working some odd jobs while Michele attended college. I was looking for something more to my life than just odd jobs, something to take pride in, somewhere I could give back to my community and my country. So, I entered the police academy when I was nineteen. I was the youngest recruit to attend, and it was difficult to find a department that would sponsor me. I was fortunate to find a sheriff in Mahoning County, Ohio, who after a lengthy interview agreed to take a chance on me. I progressed very well through the academy, and one week before graduation Michele and I were married. As a nineteen-year-old officer, I found it difficult to get a fulltime position, so I started out as what is called a special deputy. You basically work for free and after you can prove yourself are recommended for a fulltime position. My main reason overall for wanting to become a police officer was to help those who were like me as a child.
Someone described a police officer career like a slow drip—one trauma at a time that you take in and pack away until that slow drip overflows the cup. My very first call started like a waterfall. I remember it so clearly. The call came in as a one-vehicle versus pedestrian accident. As we arrived on the scene, I could see a middle-aged man with blood all over his hands screaming for help. As I looked toward his feet, there lay his three-year-old son, bloodied and his leg nearly taken completely off. As I attended to his injury by placing a tourniquet on the injured leg, my training officer went to the vehicle, which had gone to the opposite side of the road and come to rest against a tree in a ditch. I was positioned where I could observe the contact made with the suspected driver. He was uninjured and stumbling across the road, having no idea what he had just done. He thought he had struck a deer in the roadway, but in reality, he had driven his vehicle into the victim’s yard and struck the boy as he was playing while his father did yard work. The suspect was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. The boy survived his injuries, but I learned from following up with the fire department he had lost his leg from the accident. I went home and wrapped my now two-year-old son in my arms, but I was hooked from that point forward. I felt as if I had to save the world.
Michele was still going to college, and we were pregnant with our second child, a little girl. I was hired fulltime at a small department in southern Ohio soon after our daughter was born and was learning a lot very fast, as the department was shorthanded. At one point, I recall working thirty-six days straight without a day off, and many of those days were double shifts.
My career was moving quickly, but my family life was also falling apart very quickly. Michele was basically a single mother as I was working all the time. As a young married couple, we argued and started to resent each other. It was shameful that while Michele was pregnant with our daughter. we lived separately for a short time because of our arguing. I had just walked out one evening. It was apparent I didn’t know how to be a husband or father—or a man for that matter. But Michele and her grandmother took me to church, and I started to feel that pull from God as I had when I was in that closet as a child. I received Jesus as my personal savior, but I didn’t moved forward from there. Yes, I was saved—but what now? Our marriage was falling apart so quickly, I just started running toward sin and soon I found myself in infidelity—the one thing I had always told myself I never wanted to do. I had seen what it did to my family, and I despised it. Yet here I was.
Our marriage recovered from the infidelity but only because of Michele’s pursuit of God. I didn’t have a whole lot to do with it in the beginning. My beautiful wife is a fiery redhead, so she is one amazing fighter. She has never given up on our marriage and has always turned to Christ when things got rough for us.
Because of my infidelity, we found it very difficult to stay in that area. There were just too many reminders for Michele, so we moved back to our hometown. We bought a home, and I began working at our hometown police department along with working at a state prison. It wasn’t long before I became very ill with ulcerative colitis again, which resulted in a total colectomy with three separate surgeries over a one-year period and one year with an ileostomy bag. I lost my job at the prison, but the police department kept me on. At one point after the first surgery the doctors advised Michele that I had a 50 percent chance of survival due to the severity of the infection. I obviously recovered. It was during this time that a total stranger I worked with showed me the love of Jesus the entire time I was recovering from these surgeries. He would call me nearly every day to pray with me and remind me that I was put here for a purpose and that God was not done with me yet.
I have to say that Jesus was always poking His presence into my life during the most difficult times, yet I continued to turn away when things got better. I’m confident in saying that I know many people do the same thing. As I recovered, the doctors advised me against going back to work as a police officer, saying it was much too stressful for my health issues. I was determined to prove them wrong. I went back to the police department, but I quickly realized I was going to need more time to recover. So, I decided to take a break from law enforcement, and we moved to Florida for a few years. I even did some missionary work in Haiti for a year. I would take work teams down once a month to help build schools, homes, and even provide medical teams for the local villages.
I was growing closer to God, and our marriage was growing also. Then September 11, 2001, happened. As I watched police and firefighters running toward those buildings, I felt an immediate pull back to law enforcement. We moved back to Ohio, and I quickly joined another police department in northeastern Ohio. I would be there for five years before taking a lateral transfer to Mesa Police Department in Mesa, Arizona. During my time in Ohio, I experienced several critical incidents, but one stands out more than others.
On January 8, 2004, I was dispatched to an infant-not-breathing call. Upon my arrival, a woman led me down to the basement, where I found the six-month-old beautiful baby boy. He had turned blue but was still warm to the touch. I checked for an obstructed airway but saw nothing. I then proceeded to perform CPR, using two-finger compressions on his little chest relentlessly until fire units with paramedics arrived. I can see it like it happened an hour ago. I continued chest compressions all the way into the ambulance, laid him on the gurney, and paramedics took over from there. But he didn’t make it. To this day I can’t help but feel as if I should have been able to save that little fella. I continually asked myself what I could have done differently. Should I have driven faster to the call? Did I not perform CPR to the best of my ability? I know there was nothing I could have done any differently, but for some reason that little boy’s death affected me in ways I never thought possible. It didn’t help that since I also did many investigations for the department, I would have to attend his autopsy that next morning. It was determined he passed away from sudden infant death syndrome. I will never forget that little guy, never. He wasn’t the first deceased child I ever had to witness but he was one of the youngest. Many more children would capture my heart in my career. It seemed as if helping children was what I was meant to do.
In 2006 we moved to Chandler, Arizona, where I started working for the City of Mesa Police Department. I quickly made the jump to detective and started my journey as a sex crimes detective, where we handled all child sexual crimes, severe child abuse, and adult sexual assaults. My goal was to make it to the homicide division, and in the career development process, being a sex crimes detective was one of the few ways to gather a lot of experience with large cases to carry over into homicide. The homicide detectives would always say the work we were doing was much more fulfilling because our cases would put people in prison for much longer than most of their homicide cases. I believe to this day God put me right where He wanted me to be a warrior for these children.
Our case load was high and we worked exhausting hours, but it felt so rewarding to put these monsters away and give some relief to children who would have to live with the trauma for the rest of their lives. (Little did I know at the time, but so would I.) I felt as if I had finally found my calling. I was good at what I did, and we put a lot of bad guys away for a very long time. Arizona has some of the best laws against child predators, and my mission was to make sure those who hurt children like I had been hurt when I was child were not going to get away with it. There was one problem with that—the kids I couldn’t protect. You know, the kids’ cases where there just wasn’t enough evidence but I knew in the depths of my soul the suspect had most definitely caused the child so much pain and there was nothing I could do.
It didn’t take long before those cases started to haunt me. Every time I had a child with a disclosure of sexual abuse but couldn’t obtain a confession from the suspect, I shoved the pain and frustration deeper and deeper into my imaginary rucksack. There are too many cases to talk about here, but when I finished my career, the attorneys had to gather the numbers of cases I had been involved in. They estimated I had assisted in over 3,500 child cases and was case agent in approximately 350. That was a lot of little faces collected in my head.
I spent nearly seven and a half years as an SVU Detective. On January 18, 2016, I would see a face that would never leave. It was Martin Luther King Day, so we didn’t have a full unit due to the holiday. The call came in at approximately 0720 hours. I remember the sergeant coming to me and advising me of the case. The details were so horrendous, I thought he was playing a joke on me because I just didn’t think it was believable. But it was!
We gathered up the five detectives we had and went to the scene. As I walked up to the apartment building, I witnessed at least four very veteran officers in tears. I was a peer support team member, so I began to console the guys on the call and advised them I would get the monster who did this.
Officers had been made aware by way of a 911 call that a female child was being sold for sexual acts at this apartment. When officers arrived, they witnessed something they will never forget the rest of their lives. A man had called 911 advising he had just left an apartment of another man who had a small child bound and gagged in a closet. The man explained he was there to have sex with the male resident of the apartment. It was later discovered that the male suspect had been selling the child for sexual purposes over the Internet. When officers arrived, they were able to pry the window open and then open the front door, as the suspect would not open the door. They looked everywhere for the child but couldn’t find her. The suspect then told them she was in the closet. There she was, the beautiful innocent face I will hold dear to my heart forever—a three-year-old little girl bound and gagged with duct tape. She was sitting in her own feces and urine that covered the better part of her body. I will spare you any more details, but her injuries were horrific. Through the investigation it was discovered that the male suspect had been watching the victim for many months. Her mother had worked with the suspect and was homeless, so she asked if the victim could stay with him until she got her own place. It was discovered through a medical exam that the victim had been sexually assaulted, so my attention then went to the male suspect.
After witnessing the horrible condition of the three-year-old victim, I was prepared to sit and interview this suspect as long as it took to get all the details of what had happened to her. I entered the interview room, and there sat this approximately thirty-five-year-old male in a pink dress and handcuffs. After a long eight-hour interview, the suspect admitted to placing the victim in the closet, bound and gagged. He advised he would sometimes leave her in the closet for up to ten hours in a single day. I won’t give any details of other confessions or denials, but the suspect was formally charged with sex trafficking, kidnapping, sexual conduct with a minor, and felony child abuse. After a search warrant was performed on the suspect’s phone, some of the worst things I could have ever observed were discovered on those videos. I had been a veteran police officer for a long time, but those videos changed me. The evil I observed was worse than anything I read of in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Those videos have haunted my dreams ever since, along with many other things. We were able to find the mother of the victim, a young twenty-one-year-old woman. After another three hours of interviewing her, it was discovered she was aware of the child being placed in the closet while the suspect was at work. The mother also admitted to shaving the child’s head and portraying her as a cancer victim at local stores to get donations from people to help with her care. The mother did not seem phased at all concerning what had happened to her daughter. At one point my stomach could not handle it anymore, and I found myself dry heaving in the bathroom. After the interview the mother was also charged with felony child abuse.
The male suspect later took a plea deal for thirty-five years in the State of Arizona penitentiary. Then he will be sent back to his home country as he was in the United States illegally. The mother later accepted a plea offer and received twenty-three years in the State of Arizona penitentiary. Other suspects were contacted, but there was unfortunately not enough evidence to charge them.
As for the beautiful three-year-old little girl, well, she is now a happy nine-year-old princess. She has been adopted by a wonderful family with siblings and pets. The family is so amazing that they keep in touch with my family and me, and we enjoy spending time with them. That is not something that happens often, but I think we will be a part of each other’s lives as long as I live.
This is where my darkness started to overcome me. The department assigned a psychologist to the unit to speak with us every week about the case and how we were coping. I had started not sleeping at night. I would walk my neighborhood at two o’clock in the morning and fall asleep on the back porch. I was also experiencing panic attacks; I would wake up thinking I was dying because I couldn’t breathe. I told the doctor, and she wanted me to see a psychiatrist, but I told myself, "I’m good. I don’t need any more doctors. It will go away." Soon she recommended I leave police work and told me if I didn’t slow down, I was going to have a heart attack. Sure enough, a few weeks later I suffered my first heart attack.
About five months later I had another heart attack and was rushed for open heart surgery. After heart surgery, while I was recovering at home, a complaint was filed against me at the police department by my supervisors. After the complaint, I was ordered back to work only eight weeks after surgery. My doctor advised the department that they didn’t want me around any police department actions while on light duty. The city then placed me in a basement closet in the city records building. I was there for the next six months. Let me just say, that made the darkness all the worse. I couldn’t sleep. I was isolated at work, and when I got home, I was isolated to my recliner. My family was very concerned for me. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them to watch their big, strong husband and father just start to melt away from his old self.
The psychologist had enough and recommended I retire before the job killed me. I thought I could make it back, but I guess God had other plans. The next four years were filled with different medications nearly every month and doctor visit after doctor visit. I was approved for my retirement, which brought such am emotional struggle. All I had ever known as an adult was being a police officer. What was I going to do now? It didn’t get much easier as the city workers compensation staff has made our life extremely difficult, to put it nicely. They have never helped me as far as recommendations for other alternatives of therapy and so forth. All they ever do is fight the process every step of the way. Things like this makes the PTSD sufferer even worse.
Three years I lived in complete darkness, still battling the city as they stopped my benefits, which put a large financial burden on my family. I felt no escape. Then I came across a man named Victor Marx, who had been through many of the same things as a child and young man as I had. He was also a Marine and had an amazingly faithful wife who stuck by his side through it all like mine had. Victor and his wife, Eileen, run an amazing ministry, All Things Possible, rescuing women and children from sex trafficking. I can honestly say it was God who brought us together. Victor and Eileen were doing a live chat with the playing of his movie, Triggered, so I asked my wife if she would watch it with me. As we watched, I just broke down. My wife was hurting watching her husband fall deeper and deeper into darkness. She later told me she had been terrified of the place I was in. I then started to write a chat with Victor. I had never done this before, and he responded right away. I explained to Victor my experience and past law enforcement career and everything that was going on in my life at this point. Victor then told me to give him a few minutes to get back to me. He was going to call a friend to see if he could get me some help. Approximately ten minutes later, Victor asked if I would go to a program called Mighty Oaks Warrior Programs, run by his friend Chad Robichaux. He called Chad personally for me. This was completely an intervention from God. Victor didn’t have to do this for me, but he did and for that I’m beyond thankful. Within twenty-four hours, I was signed up for the program.
Then in August 2020 I attended the Mighty Oaks Warrior Program in California. Just before this, I had planned out my own death. This was my last hope. And Mighty Oaks changed my life. The founder of Mighty Oaks, Chad Robichaux, and his wife Kathy had been through a lot of the same hurts and pains as my wife and I, and Chad said something on his YouTube video that stuck with me. "If what you’re doing isn’t working, then why not try something different?" Being able to hear that God had the answers and His Word was going to show me those answers changed my direction. I was able to gain real brothers in Christ. We text one another from all over the country and have different walks of life but share so many other things I can’t even describe. This is one of the best things that came from it. I discovered that the brotherhood I had been searching for in police work was never there, but this was a real brotherhood in Christ.
Mighty Oaks uses the experiences of the staff to connect with each warrior in the program through the Gospel. Their approach to healing is nothing like what I had experienced in the social ways of many doctors. None of that had worked for me. I had been through so many therapies and pharmaceuticals, it was exhausting. Having these men teach the classes reminded me of the verse from Revelation 12:11: "They have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and the words of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death." In the Mighty Oaks Programs the staff and team leaders are living this out every day. If anyone reading this is a warrior in need of assistance or someone you know needs help, go to mightyoaksprograms.org and put the application in today.
Since returning from Mighty Oaks, I have definitely progressed. They also referred me to the Fallen Soldiers Ministries ministry (fallensoldiersministries.com), who provided me with a certified biblical counselor at no cost to me. This entire program is supported by donors who still care about our veterans and first responders. It is offered at no cost to the warrior—they take care of travel and everything. When I heard the counseling was free, I was just astonished. My FSM counselor, who is now my friend, Scott Scheurich, has been amazing for me and my growth in Christ.
Scott showed me how to study the Bible and gave me scripture to fight my battles with. The first verse he had me memorize was Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." It seems long, but I was having terrible nightmares, so when I would wake up, I would just continually read that verse until I was able to fall asleep again. This continued for about a month until I memorized the verse and started to recite it to myself as I fell asleep. My nightmares are down to approximately two a month now. He has helped me discover who I am—a child of God, not a police officer. So, thank you, Scott, for showing Jesus to me and helping me fight my way back.
Scott also taught me how to dig deeper into my understanding of the Bible and how to really study the Word. He gave me many different examples and walked me through them so I could fully understand how they work. These things he taught me reached into my heart and treated the real problems I had—the trauma I had experienced for so long and just shoved down into my imaginary rucksack. I was able to empty the rucksack at Mighty Oaks, but there are times I start to fill it back up. For example, as I write this, the city is fighting me again, attempting to discredit me and take my benefits away again. So, the enemy knows right where to try to take me back to the darkness. But I’m using all I have learned through Mighty Oaks and Fallen Soldiers Ministries counseling to battle these demons that attack my mind and my heart. I’m keeping my head above water. It’s not easy, but I know through any and all trials Jesus is with me, and no one will snatch me from His hand.
I’m now in the training phases to become a team leader for Mighty Oaks and see the doctor only every two months instead of every week or two. My wife says she has her husband 2.0, and to be honest, we have never been closer. God has been able to restore our hearts and take her worry away that she might lose her husband after everything we had been through. So, I’m thankful to Mighty Oaks and the Fallen Soldiers Ministries network and biblical counseling for being there for us in the darkness. You were the tools God used to save my life. To Scott (my FSM counselor), thank you, sir, for helping me navigate the Bible and teaching me how to dig deeper. Most of all, I thank Jesus Christ, my savior, for saving a sinner like me. I am no longer any of those things I heard as a child or a failure for not leaving my career the way I wanted to, but I am a CHILD OF GOD!
by:
Jamie Nehrenz, (Ret) Detective Child Sex Crimes, Mesa Police Department, Child Of God
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