Chaplain Kim Donahue serves wounded soldiers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. She pastored a Reformed Church in America congregation for eight years, then worked as a hospital chaplain before entering the military. She’s served in Guam and Iraq, among other places. Now she lives in Baltimore with her husband and has two grown children.
What have you learned from the patients at Walter Reed?
I’ve learned how critical it is to be a part of a community. One of the first things that the warriors talk about when they come back and they begin to talk is they’re concerned for the guys they left behind, how they’re doing without them. They want their buddies to know they’re OK, they’re going to be fine. Living and working and doing everything with somebody, sharing confidences, and being together in life and death situations really forges a bond, unlike almost any other that you could imagine. As a chaplain, I feel deeply honored that almost without question, we can slip in and be a representative of that community that they left.
What are the spiritual needs of wounded soldiers? How should people pray for them?
One of our really big challenges is the number of deployments that people have made, the kind of disjunction that causes within family relationships, and also integrating back into the United States. I think the prayers should be for God to show a way for members of the community to really be sensitive to those needs — restoring broken relationships or disjointed relationships, supporting members who have long-term rehabilitation and need employment and need to know that they are still a valued part of the community.
What was on your mind this 4th of July?
I was thinking about the people that I’ve left behind during my deployment. Many of those are Iraqis, and they are continuing to try to work so that they too can have freedom. Freedom fosters the willingness to sacrifice for it. One of the most touching moments I experienced when I was in Iraq was hearing the Iraqis talk about the Marines and the soldiers that have helped them, literally protected their families during conflicts. They talked about how amazing it was that these young men from another county would come and protect them, risk their lives for them.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
We are tied in our core to something much larger than us. I call that God, this power that is at work within our lives. When we are able to let go of our self-preoccupation, we can let in the love that God offers us, and that love becomes reciprocal between us and God, and that it then expands to all those people around us. When the law of God is summed up, it is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. I have found that deeply at work in the military. It is such a privilege and an honor to have been loved in that way and to share God’s love with those who have sacrificially cared for me.
– Liz Essley
