The Aftermath of a Soldier

“After being served those papers, man, it was devastating. I felt like a failure. I felt a level of hopelessness. I felt like the world was crashing down on me.” Staff Sergeant Sylvester Jenkins was finishing his third tour in Iraq when he got the divorce papers. By the time he got home a couple months later, his life was a wreck. He recalls, “The car was gone, the furniture in the house, my bank account drained. I literally came back home to nothing. Walking into that house and experiencing that was one of the most devastating days of my life.” The love and family he’d always wanted was gone dredging up the trauma of his rough, lonely childhood. Sylvester says, “Growing up in a single parent, low-income home, gang and drug infested neighborhood. You only had three things that you can do. One, you can go to jail, two, you can end up, losing your life or just making out on pure luck.” Not feeling lucky, Sylvester saw gangs as a way to get ahead and feel accepted. By 13 he was drinking, smoking weed, and getting into trouble. He recalls, “Whenever I was in the gang. I felt a sense of, a strong sense of belonging, like I was accepted. And so, for me, that gave me a sense of love.”

As he grew older, he started to question the path he was on. So, following his grandfather’s advice, Sylvester joined the Army after high school. For a while he was doing well. However, when his girlfriend cheated on him, they broke up sending Sylvester into deep depression. He says, “I resorted back to what I knew, drugs and alcohol to suppress the pain. And I found myself at a level, you know, of true depression.” Sylvester decided to focus on his Army career and over the next five years he was promoted and did two tours to Iraq. In 2006 he got married. Although the marriage wasn’t strong, he thought it was the family he always dreamed of and within a year he became a dad. Sylvester recalls, “Becoming a father was the most, the greatest experience of my life. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever got to experience. I really felt a level of wholeness. Everything is starting to pan out, you know, it started to go in my direction.”

Then, in 2007, early into his 3^rd  tour in Iraq, a close friend died when his convoy hit an IED. Sylvester recalls, “It didn't really hit into me until I went to the memorial ceremony, and I was like, ‘man this is real.’ And automatically a lump formed in my throat, and the tears just started streaming down my face. And then the following day we went back to work. Like that never happened. No time to grieve, no time to mourn. I had to stuff all that pain into that duffel bag and just carry it with me. The rest of that deployment.” Although he pressed on, the stress was getting to Sylvester, and he started to suffer from PTSD. When his yearlong deployment was extended to 15 months, his fragile marriage broke, and Sylvester’s wife filed for divorce. He says,  “Coming back home from that deployment and walking into that house and experiencing that was one of the most devastating days of my life.”

Sylvester tried to push through, tried to be a tough soldier, but deep down he knew his life was falling apart. He says, “I completely hit rock bottom. I felt a strong level of hopelessness, at that point in time. Like, there's no, you know, I'm born to fail. I felt like I was just strictly born to fail, whatever it was at, you know, I failed in school. I failed when it came down to areas of the military. I failed at being a husband. It was just felt like nobody had my back. I couldn't get no type of support. And so, at that moment in time, I felt as though I was better off dead than I was alive.” So, one night, about six months after getting home, Sylvester got his gun to end his pain. He recalls, “I grabbed the gun, put it to my temple, put my finger in the trigger well and I screamed out so I couldn’t hear when I pulled the trigger. I started breathing hard and the next thing you know, the tears started streaming down my face. And then at that moment in time, I cried out to God. I said, ‘God, why me? Why do I gotta go through all this?’ But then I felt like I heard a faint voice that said, ‘is this what you truly want?’ And at that moment, I was like, ‘no, I just want the pain to stop. I just wanna stop feeling like a failure. I just wanna stop feeling unloved. I just wanna stop feeling all this pain and chaos that's going on inside of me’. And then I felt like he said at that moment in time, just give it all to me, all your pain, all your burdens, all your doubt. Just give it all to me and I'll give you rest. I said, ‘I just give it all to you, all my pains. I just give it all to you, God’. I said, ‘I just ask that you just take it away from me’. So, I chose to give my life to Jesus Christ.”

After surrendering to God, Sylvester got connected into a church and started to grow in his faith. He says,  “God filled every, every void, every dark area of my life. He gave me a sense of acceptance. He gave me a sense of love. He gave me a sense of security. He gave me a purpose.” With a new level of hope and confidence, Sylvester was able to lead his men on two more tours of duty. He retired from the Army in 2020 after 21 years of service. Today he is married and raising a family of four kids. Sylvester is on a new mission to help others move past their pain and struggles through a relationship with Jesus. He believes, “We all go experience chaos in life, it’s a part of it. But at the same time there's one person that you can truly count on in every situation that you experience and go through. It's God, he right there waiting on you. If you find yourself distant from him, it's because you move, not because he moved.”