3 1/2 Seconds to Live: A Lifelong Journey with Ptsd and Depression

By Kate Thomas Baker and Don Baker

From a World War to a personal war this is the profoundly personal story of a preacher with PTSD and major depressive disorder. Don Baker shares his journey into the darknessthe black hole, as he calls itand how its shadow has haunted him for over seventy years. Insightful, vulnerable, and honest, this is a human story for human readers, for people who have tasted life and found it too often bitter and perplexing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512767988

Kate Thomas Baker

Don Baker pastored churches in California, Oregon, and Illinois, for nearly forty years and traveled extensively on multiple continents as well as across the United States for the Conservative Baptist Association as minister-at-large. He lives in the Northwest and is married to his college sweetheart, Martha. His numerous books include Finding Hope in Times of Crisis, Beyond Forgiveness, Restoring Broken Relationships, Pain’s Hidden Purpose, Love: A New Look at an Old Word, Fresh New Look at God, and Heaven.

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Copyright © 2017 Don Baker & Kate Thomas Baker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission."

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-6799-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6800-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-6798-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920647

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/17/2017

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Chapter one gsw

Chapter two ptsd

Chapter three 72,155,800

Chapter four union depot

Chapter five sodium pentothal

Chapter six twelve-foot camper

Chapter seven bewildered

Chapter eight top secret

Chapter nine cordovan shoes and tnt

Chapter ten nearly sixteen million

Chapter eleven have you ever thought of suicide?

Chapter twelve four words

Chapter thirteen it hurts to lose someone

Chapter fourteen theories

Chapter fifteen .38 Caliber revolver

Chapter sixteen two men and three women

Chapter seventeen doug and deanne

Chapter eighteen been there

Chapter nineteen a respectable diagnosis

Chapter twenty a stake in the ground

Chapter twenty-one encounter with a satanist

Chapter twenty-two a dead man, a dead church

Chapter twenty-three grandpa

Chapter twenty-four tired and hungry

Chapter twenty-five the unthinkable

Chapter twenty-six one of the fifty percent

Chapter twenty-seven a sunny day in memphis

Chapter twenty-eight no great mess

Chapter twenty-nine dr. Rothschild

Chapter thirty face of a stranger

Chapter thirty-one follow me

Chapter thirty-two a little upset

Chapter thirty-three thinking about feelings

Chapter thirty-four i named her donna

Chapter thirty-five i chose god

Chapter thirty-six something important

Chapter thirty-seven the angriest man

Chapter thirty-eight approval

Chapter thirty-nine an hour between appointments

Chapter forty tim

Chapter forty-one narcissus

Chapter forty-two raymond barone

Chapter forty-three emotional civil war

Chapter forty-four all i wanted

Chapter forty-five the first dream

Chapter forty-six pink

Chapter forty-seven the lie, the sin

Chapter forty-eight satan’s seduction

Chapter forty-nine david, moses, elijah, jonah, job, paul and bob

Chapter fifty jan

Chapter fifty-one the power dimension

Chapter fifty-two eight days

Chapter fifty-three that’s what it’s always been

Chapter fifty-four world wide web

Chapter fifty-five the rest of the story

Appendix

Bibliography

About the author

DEDICATION

With deepest gratitude for life and unending love to my parents Harry and Helen Baker, my two brothers, Tom and Abe, and my precious sister, Donna, and especially to my loyal and loving wife, Martha, our children, John and Barbara and Kathy, and their dear children James, Jeff, Meredith, Ashley, Jenny, and Emma. With special love to my great grandchildren A.J., Jack, Luke, Riley, Milo, Judah, Ben and Eddie and our newest sweetheart, Abigail Rose. Because of the encouragement of my family along with their labors of love in editing what you hold in your hands, this story is now being told.

To the Department of Veterans Affairs and its Veterans Health Administration, I extend a lifetime of thanks for their care and provision. The World War II bill, signed into law in June of 1944, made the V.A. second only to the War and Navy Departments in funding priorities. That service to all American G.I. Joes and reservists, has saved many lives including my own on numerous occasions.

Thanks also to so many generous friends who shared their very lives with us—Elmer and Barbara Friesen, Rhonda Friesen Elliott, Arnie and Maxine Blesse, Dave and Penny Scott, Dick Wahlstrom, Brent and Jan Bierkemeier, Dr. M.L. Custis, and Lee Pringle—several of whom have already reached our heavenly home. Special thanks to Matt and Ashley Corey, Dr. Stu Weber, Dr. Earl and Ruth Radmacher, Paula Gamble-Grant, Rob Mizera and Denise A. Lundblade for previewing the manuscript and for your encouragement.

To you, dear reader, I am hoping this biography will serve you and perhaps save you from some of the many pitfalls I encountered from within and without. And, if you are anything like me—looking for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and a cease-fire to that interior civil war that rages between your false self and real self—there is hope, real hope, and a life of freedom to be lived.

We all have a story. My story began in the South Pacific in the Spring of 1944.

"The LORD Bless You, and Keep You;

The LORD Make His Face Shine on You

and be Gracious to You;

The LORD Lift Up His Countenance on You,

and Give You Peace."

Numbers 6:24-26

Don Baker

September 2016

V.A. personnel, patient information and a limited few names and locations have been changed to protect identities. Other names used by permission. Therapeutic sessions were documented daily.

FOREWORD

Each of us may be fortunate enough, across the years of our lives, to meet a handful of truly remarkable individuals. Don Baker is one of mine. An actual hero to me.

Fresh out of the war in Vietnam—I entered seminary. Talk about two contrasting worlds! My mind was spinning. It was then I met Don. Over the course of the nearly half century since then—through all of the rigors, pains, celebrations, disasters, victories and defeats of Don’s journey—I have loved him deeply. I have sorrowed over his setbacks. I have cheered for his restoration. Through it all, the very thick and the very thin, I have respected him. Don Baker is a man. And, as is true of all of us, he is a very human being. Still, though he disappeared for a season, he never quit fighting the demons. I will always love and respect such a warrior. You will too by the time you finish this potent book.

When I arrived on the seminary campus in Portland, it was swarming with hundreds of would-be preachers, several of whom were abuzz about the new senior pastor of a large but somewhat staid church in town. This theologically conservative, traditional bastion, a virtual Protestant Vatican, was being transformed under Don’s ministry. From the inside out.

Particularly faithful with the text of Scripture and especially insightful regarding the human heart, Don began to slowly disarm the critics in the pew. People began to blossom. Of course, so did the church. One particularly hard-to-please academician commented, I can’t get away from him. Surrounded by hundreds of others in the congregation, I feel as though I’m the only person in the room with him. It’s as though his pastoral arms embrace me from around that pulpit, and his spiritual warmth melts any resistance.

Don was eventually elected Chairman of the seminary’s Board. From my office next door, I observed—very closely and personally—the relationship he developed with our seminary President. They were both very strong men, both assertive in personality, both highly opinionated, both strong voiced, and both committed to Christ and His Word. Hearing the two of them joust competitively at length (and not particularly quietly) and then emerge from the President’s office with their arms over one another’s shoulders as true friends in the Cause, was one of the richer lessons of my education. In faculty settings I watched Don’s humility strengthen, even transform, some professorial types.

Over the decades, in multiple churches, Don’s pastoral skills and writing ministry led many folks to still waters and green pastures. The gifted pastor and author positively impacted the lives of innumerable other people.

But Don’s own heart refused to be at peace.

The preacher, so helpful to others, could not heal himself. Don Baker, a WWII veteran, had fought more than a few battles of his own in what seemed another world. And the toughest battles still raged inside his own soul. Every soldier who’s been traumatized in a combat environment fights two wars—the physicality of the one and some level of soulish war within himself. Those two wars never left Don alone and a lifelong pattern of serious depression seemed hopelessly unwinnable.

His careful study of Scripture was only intermittently helpful. The unrelenting requirements of local church ministry were only occasionally distracting. But the internal gnawing of depression was both relentless and consuming—from the inside out. Such demons do not die easily.

Don describes it with uncommon candor: I pretended to be well while seeking endless counseling, taking numerous anti-depressants and spending months in psychiatric hospitals. Or, again: Anguish can be masked by serenity, desperation covered by smiles… If one could have seen beyond the … graying temples of this respected minister, they would have quickly recognized a cauldron of anguish—a mind in conflict that was again sinking deeper and deeper into a bottomless black hole …

This book you hold in your hand is not one more hapless book on depression! I challenge you to read the first chapter. That much alone will guarantee you will finish the book.

As unique as Don’s story is, it is also in some intensely personal and honest sense, all of our stories. The book’s sheer transparency alone may well heal half the people who read it. And the nature of that same fierce transparency will likely heal the other half. I kid you not. There is hope! Read it and weep, occasionally. But rejoice in the end.

Stu Weber

Pastor and Author

CHAPTER ONE

GSW

It was 2:57 A.M. on a hot and muggy summer night in Chandler, Arizona. My little vibrating Motorola pager skittered across the book shelf above my head and woke me from a typically restless sleep. I groped for the bedside lamp and strained to read the tiny illuminated words. All it read were the letters GSW, an address and the engine companies and ambulances being dispatched. GSW means gunshot wound. It did not tell me any more than that. I did not know if it was self-inflicted, a domestic problem, a drive-by or a police shooting. What I did know was that it was probably serious and since I had not been ordered to stage and wait for the police to clear the scene, the shooting was over and any danger was past.

I was the chaplain of the Chandler, Arizona Fire Department.

Flashing lights and the whirring sounds of helicopter blades pin-pointed the location as I drove into the neighborhood. The presence of the medevac helicopter, parked in a nearby intersection, also told me the victim was on scene and still alive but in need of immediate transport to the nearest trauma center.

What have we got? I asked the fire captain who met me at my car.

Hi Chaplain, he responded. It’s a male, twenty-one year old Iraq War Veteran, an attempted suicide, probably fatal, and there’s a young woman inside who needs your help.

The woman in need of my help was huddled in a chair at the dining room table with her head buried in her arms, weeping. I sat down quietly beside her and waited. She did not move. She did not look up. She just sat there sobbing and shaking her head back and forth.

I’m so sorry, I said awkwardly as I placed my hand on her shoulder. She did not respond.

The distraught young woman seated next to me seemed to be from a different world. Gloria was at least fifty years younger than I. I learned later that she had grown up in a South Los Angeles neighborhood. She spent most of her teen age years running with neighborhood gangs and living on drugs and alcohol. Her parents disowned her and desperately searching for something, she had been exposed to just enough church to realize she never wanted to go back.

She and her 21-year-old Air Force Sergeant, Jose, had spent that Friday evening dancing and drinking heavily. While getting ready for bed, they got into a violent argument. Jose struck Gloria, threw her onto the bed, and then, in a fit of rage, reached for his .357 Magnum, jammed it into his mouth and blew off the left side of his head.

Gloria and I spent nearly three hours together in her kitchen. I sat with my arm around her shoulders as she shook and sobbed.

When the investigating detectives finally released Gloria, I drove her as fast as I dared to St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown Phoenix.

We were rushed through the emergency room and immediately directed to the intensive care unit on the second floor.

With face masked and scrubs sprayed with blood, a young nurse met us and told us that Jose was still alive.

Thank God, said Gloria, as she began to rush toward the open door.

But wait, continued the nurse. You must know that he cannot survive this injury. His heart continues to keep him alive, but the gun shot has caused irreversible damage to his brain. In a few minutes you can go in to him and hold his hand, if you wish. He won’t know you are there, but you can stay with him as long as you like.

The frightening little cubicle was surrounded by privacy curtains. When we pulled them aside, the two of us were accosted by all sorts of sights and sounds. A ventilator was breathing for him while the beeping from a cardiac monitor told us his heart was still beating. Fluids were flowing into his body through IV tubes and out of his body into a catheter.

Jose lay stone still. The left side of his face was swathed in bandages and covered over with a white towel.

At first sight of him, Gloria screamed and slumped to the floor. I joined her there and held her until a nurse and I were able to help her onto a bedside chair.

A long vigil began with Gloria’s head resting on the bedside railing, both hands rubbing and patting Jose’s right arm.

After a long silence, she hesitantly began to talk to me.

I love him so much, Gloria said. He knew that. And he loved me. No one has ever loved me like he did. We were going to have a baby together. Actually, we tried and I got pregnant; but, I lost our baby just eight days ago.

Her sobs intensified to a wail that filled that small space and much of the second floor of St. Joseph’s.

And with those words, my heart broke.

Could there be any greater grief, I thought. Who was I to be witness and counsel to a heart so badly broken?

I’ll never be able to be with him again, she said.

I’ll never be able to make love with him again.

I’ll never see him again.

He has no one who loves him, but me. Why did he do this?

She stopped as a doctor came through the curtains to check the monitors.

He looked at Gloria and said, I’m so sorry. And