Over the last few months, I have been writing and editing two books. The Lost Son and Alive Again. It was hard enough writing one, and I did that three times before. Doing two at the same time was torture, but it was also the best way to tell this story.
Chris Papadopoulos was a reporter, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq so he could watch over his friend from childhood, Bill Gibson. Bill wasn’t just his best friend, he was also Chris’s brother in-law. Brenda didn’t really love Chris, she just used him and she tried to kill him.
Chris survived a bomb blast in Afghanistan but for severn years, he carried the scars of that event on his body. He also survived his wife trying to kill him, and he carried the scars she inflicted on his body, as well as in his soul.
For almost 40 years, I’ve been telling the stories of what happens to veterans so they’d understand what causes PTSD, as much as I was trying to give them hope that they can heal. For far too long, I neglected to tell the stories of the rest of the people with PTSD. People like me. For all the years I researched it, and helped others, I never read about anyone else like me.
In my case, I started to survive from the age of 5. Put all the times together, it was well over ten times, depending on who is counting, but I don’t count hurricanes that hit Florida when I lived there. Some do. For me, the time that caused the most damage was when my first husband decided to try to kill me. It wasn’t until last year, that I realized I had a form of PTSD that I never heard anyone talk about. I mean, sure I had nightmares, flashbacks, mood-swings and the rest of it in the beginning, but they faded. They came back to life as soon as I heard a muscle car or saw one in my rear view mirror. They stopped when I found out he passed away. That was when I finally stopped looking over my shoulder. Strange thing was, I moved far away from him, but the memories of what he did came packed in my car.
“The scars on his body were reminders of what he survived but the scars in his soul were reminders of why he didn’t want to anymore. The condo in LA with his office covered with awards, was no longer his and he was living in a studio apartment back in Salem Massachusetts. His marriage ended when his ex-wife tried to kill him and then stalked him. All his friends were out of his life except his favorite bartender at a local bar. Chris thought everyone he knew burned down the bridges between them and him. He couldn’t see he was the one with all the matches and his friends were trying to find the firehose. He was right about one thing. Seven years was too long for him to be suffering instead of healing, but God had other plans for him. That night, Chris was sent on a mission to save himself and millions of others when he discovered a secretive society changing the world one soul at a time.”
The Lost Son Kathie Costos
Alive Again, is part two of The Lost Son. I thought that no one would want to read a book that was over 500 pages.
“Chris spent the last two years walking in the light and did not want to go back into the darkness he had been in for seven years. He learned to secret to healing PTSD was to see beyond the pain others caused, and finally see what miracles bring to survivors. God agreed Chris should stop suffering and start to change the world. As a reporter covering the worst that people do, he used his skills and experience to report on what people do after reporters move onto the next story. As a best selling author, he proved people want God to get as much attention as Satan does.”
Alive Again Kathie Costos
What I learned over the last, almost 40 years, was none of us can control what other people do to us, or how they treat us. We can only control what we do. I also know that walking in the light of God’s love is much better than living in darkness and misery.
I ran out of new things to say. I prayed for a way to say it all in a new way. God answered that prayer with The Lost Son and Alive again. This summer, I wrote two books. Yep! I wouldn’t recommend it but since it is two parts, it made sense to me at the time to do both of them at once.
I hope they give you a new understanding of what PTSD does, and how you can defeat the demon all of us end up with. If you wondered about God still working miracles….He does through us!
Remember, it’s your life…get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
