YES, I MISS WEARING MY SA OFFICER UNIFORM ! (part one)

It is very difficult for me to begin this article because of the reason for writing it. I am a former Salvation Army officer, an organization I had been a part of for all but 6 years of my life and 32 as an officer. They let me and my husband Randy down, without any recourse.

I was born into a religious family, my father was a Wesleyan Methodist pastor and evangelist. Raised in my early years in that heritage has helped to develop who I am as a Christian. Although I was very young when we left that church, my parents and siblings did not change their core beliefs and so influenced my life. Through my father’s work as an evangelist, he came in contact with The Salvation Army and was curiously interested in the unique ministry. After visiting a service in he and my mother decided we should give thought to returning to ministry and in their home town. They were hooked and it was a short time before we moved to there and became thoroughly embroiled in the corps ministry.

Soon after, the Army leadership began to woo my parents to become officers. They were given the option to not attend the training school since Dad was 39 years of age and there were seven children. He eventually became the first Auxiliary Captain in The United States and finally was commissioned as a full officer 10 years later. His love for the Army was deep and it all revolved around the basic mission and how that could play out in the work of the Army in the community. He was a solid officer and a wonderful preacher of the Word.

Dad was promoted to glory 26 days after I resigned my officership, with his blessing. His disappointment was obvious, as he lay in his bed in the nursing home, when my husband and I told him our plans. The disappointment was not in us but in the Army, an Army to which he had given his life.

I was commissioned in 1976, the same year my mother was promoted to glory. From the very beginning it seemed, things were never settled for me. I had been given permission by my divisional commander to remain at home with my father for two weeks following the funeral. My corps officer/supervisors called me irate because I wasn’t at the corps to help decorate for a Halloween party and told me if I didn’t return the next day, they would have me moved. Unrealistically, I returned with very deep feelings of disappointment, discontent and definite disconnect from them and the appointment. I was moved that January anyway and realized for the first time how vindictive and hurtful people could be and how the politics were so prominent in The Salvation Army.

When I met my husband in my fourth appointment, I was again put in a place where the politics were able to have me moved, they thought, away from Randy and any further relationship. We were married four months later, the same day as my resignation.

(part one)
name will be shared on request