My Story: Captain (Retired) Rian Adams
We all have stories, so here’s the short story of William Rian Adams:
My story is like my life’s journey, a fun ride filled with some adventures and a few bumps in the road. I’ve experienced success. I’m also intimately acquainted with the bitter taste of public failure. I’ve thrown interceptions and touchdowns, lost games, and won them. I received war medals that made my family and friends proud, and my struggle with war injuries and the medications to treat them caused grief to the ones who love me and anger to the ones who didn’t. Through it all, I’ve learned, as Joseph Campbell said, the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
I’ve learned that mistakes are one of the best things that can happen to you.
Yes, you can turn coal into diamonds, but mistakes show you who really loves you and who holds the compassion of Jesus in their hearts. That is more valuable than diamonds.
These days I worry little about my past and focus my attention on the people I can help in the present. That’s why I tell my story passionately. It’s a story about learning to trust Christ regarded of where you find yourself.
Military Service
When I heard my great-uncle open up and tell his stories of D-Day to my grandfather, I felt compelled to serve our country. I have family members who served in nearly every major conflict in American history. Dr. Francis Bates, a field surgeon in the Civil War, was a specific inspiration because compassion led him to serve. I will confess that his medical tools scared me. But I knew from a young age I would be a member of the U.S. Military.
I finished a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, then a seminary degree so I could commission as an officer and a chaplain in the Army. I commissioned and found my service rewarding. Then I had one of those years that changed my trajectory forever. That year was 2010. I spent a month in a hospital from an injury in Afghanistan. I did not think it would lead to spinal fusion and a seizure disorder. If those things were not enough, I lived in denial of post-traumatic stress from combat experiences and the difficulty I faced while serving our dying service members in field hospitals.
MRIs later showed that I had mild damage to the brain’s occipital lobe.
That’s when the seizures began. They were mini seizures of a few seconds, followed by incoherency. It took years for medical teams to discover the seizures since they are not easily detectable.
Unfortunately, the medications military doctors prescribed brought harsh side effects. The meds magnified my emotions to the point of exhaustion. I even thought about suicide on one occasion. Yet I continued to serve the church and was happy when my new parish welcomed me.
The Adversities and Opportunities
In 2017, I was in an incident while on vacation in the Florida Keys. A truck tailgated me and bullied me on the highway.
I moved over to the other lane to let them pass. As passed the passenger threw a Coke bottle at my car and the driver kept swerving into my lane. The bottle ruined the hood. I felt like I was back in Afghanistan, and all my training from the past kicked in without a second thought. It was one of the most instinctual and embarrassing moments of my life.
I’ll admit it, I’m not a guy who takes bullying well, my family and the military made sure by teaching me self-respect and self-worth.
I rolled my window down to hear the passenger of the truck cursing me. Both of us exchanged angry words. I told them I would use deadly force because I felt my life was under threat. I did not, nor have I ever pointed a gun at anyone outside of combat. The bottom line is that I was wrong and I humbly admit it. I learned from it.
A few miles down the road the Florida Highway Patrol pulled me over with guns drawn on me. Their flashing lights caused dozens of mini seizures, and in the incoherence from the seizures, I failed to answer their questions suitably. I went to jail for a few hours, and then the story exploded. My Story on the clickbait read, “Rian Adams, Priest, Pointed Gun at Mother and Child.” The “child,” who was the driver of the truck had a history of incidents on file with the State of Florida.
Life is often like football, and in most other sports for that matter, we do not flag the person who starts a fight. The one who responds to the aggression is the one who’s penalized. But I’m a believer that justice wins out. I was not found guilty of any crime, and eventually, the state of Florida ruled for total expungement.
A media frenzy ensued and the public shaming began.
Then I took personal leave time from my job because I had death threats in the mail, news outlets mocked me, and people on social media harassed my family to the point where they deactivated their accounts.
However, the point is not what happened, how it happened, or even the final legal closings. The point is that my soul grew when I realized I had a gift that could teach me about the suffering of Jesus. It birthed a deep desire to advocate for others in new and creative ways. I can relate to the struggles of those in congregations because I, too, have needed God’s grace when life and my faith became difficult.
Spiritual Alchemy and Transformation
I share this story with veterans when opportunities present themselves because one thing that I’ve learned is that we are only alone in our struggle when we assume we are alone. When my friends reach out to me, I’m always quick to mention the importance of care for the mind, the body, and the soul.
That’s when I began to focus on my health and work to complete my doctoral work on a Jungian approach to religious shame and how a theology of mercy could bring healing to shame.
Thankfully, I found the best epilepsy specialist in the southeast. He immediately changed my medication. The seizures stopped, and I was back to my old self.
Now I look back at those events, and I realize they were part of a reconstruction that afforded new opportunities. It became a turning point in my story and molded me into a much better person transformed by God’s grace. Over the past five years, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to serve two local churches and met some of the best people I’ve ever known in these congregations. I serve a local church and I brag on some of the people there because they have two things: 1) space for life to occur, and 2) the courage to trust God.
This slow process helped me realize that veterans need advocates on a spiritual level. We have advocacy for our physical and psychological trauma, but we desperately need soul care for our spiritual and moral injuries. My Doctoral dissertation is about how shame destroys the soul and how compassion and mercy can bring spiritual healing. I believe healing can happen with hard work and a little help from God.
Additional Resources:
Poetry
I also found healing through writing poetry. One difficulty people face when they tell their stories is finding the right words. I wrote poetry to describe my feelings and it healed many of my wounds from war.
You can read more of my poetry at: www.rianadamspoetry.com
The Book
I put my collections of poems into a book. I titled the book, Love, War, and Soul: Poetry of Darkness and Light. It is available on Amazon now! Click HERE for more information about the book. You can also check out my poetry page here.
Sermons:
Albeit I am tardy with sermon posting, I have posted them on the website, If you’d like to read them, you can find them here. Or watch them on YouTube here.
Contact: To connect with me on Facebook send me a message. Rian Adams.
A Note for Veterans: I share my story so you can feel safe sharing