My first doctor appointment tomorrow morning is on the south side of town and I don't think my legs are up to driving that far. I already had to reschedule that appointment once, so I feel badly about it, but I just can't see myself trying to make it. It's frustrating, but I guess they should understand. It's not like I planned this and I didn't know my legs would go haywire like this.
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This next article is:
Fioramonti, Mary E. (1993, Spring). The Army chaplaincy and change. The Army Chaplaincy, 18-20.
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The only section I'm interested in in this article is in the section titled "Use FM 22-102, Soldier Team Development as a Guide." (p. 20)The language in the section seems to mix development of teams/groups and development of individuals, but be that as it may, I'm particularly interested in this section under the above heading:
Every soldier goes through a formation stage. The challenges to face include belonging and acceptance, settling personal and family concerns, and learning about leaders and other soldiers.Presumably, if the H.R. staff at the Vienn mission, who were also U.S. military chaplains, and therefore trained in the kind of thing described here, the H.R. department could have included this kind of reasoning in their planning of socialization experiencees for new missionaries to the mission. Let's see how it might have applied to my experience.
The next stage is development. A soldier learns to trust leaders and others, find close friends, decide who is in charge, accept the way things are done, adjust to feelings, and overcome family vs. unit conflict.
The final stage, sustainment, is where a soldier begins to assist and trust other team members, share ideas and feelings freely, sustain trust and confidence, share missin and values, experience feelings of pride in the unit and cope with personal and family problems. (p. 20)
Did it look like they included some kind of acknowledgement that formation might be an issue for me (as with any new member)? Their initial overwhelming fawning over me could be thought of this way, I think. At least I suppose that's one way one could look at it. And people did help explain the basic necessities for getting set up and where things were, such as getting registered with the police or opening a bank account (so I could access my money!). On the other hand, I was thrust into a totally irrelevant (I thought) peer group, was given drivel to do which made me feel useless in the mission and like I was wasting my supporters' money. And I was having some unusual stressors at work, such as problems with the computer, too, that I was certain was rigged, so I didn't complain about it, any more than I complained about reading computer manuals for weeks on end.
As to development there has to be a basis for the trust, at least that's how I operate, although maybe I'm strange in that way and the masses of humanity don't require this kind of thing in order to develop that trust. Since everything possible was done in what I suppose might very loosely be considered my formative period at the Vienna mission to undermine my trust in the mission, it was impossible for me to learn to "trust leaders and others" as in the development stage in this article. My double life fooled the leaders enough, though, that they didn't know this. (By double life, I mean that when they sent me home to the USA I learned to keep my real thoughts hidden so well that it was like living a double life; it was the only way I could figure out how to survive there and keep my conscience.)
As to sustainment, well, it hardly seems necessary to even go there, because I practically failed formation and most definitely failed development so there was nothing to sustain. You can only sustain what has been developed.
One interesting question arises from this, though. When the mission sent me back to the USA, were they hoping to get me through formation or development, or both? I have a feeling that is was development that it would have been generally used for, because I was told that two other wives of well-appointed leaders were also sent home more or less similarly to me. So I assume that they would have been past the formation stage, and maybe they were being groomed for a more visible position, in which development (where trust, etc.) would be significant issues.
The thing is that first of all, all the details surrounding my early months in Vienna had too many problems in Vienna and then the being sent back to the USA and how that was handled was just too much for me to even come close to ever considering it as "development," as used here in this text. Before I left Vienna a few people tried to make it sound like I'd be back soon and things like that, but you could tell that people were tiptoeing around it, like something was not right and other people at the mission knew it too even before I left Vienna. Of course, I never should have agreed to return to the USA, but I've discussed that elsewhere about what my options were and that I was shocked and didn't really believe them until it was right upon me that they were really going to do it. And it's had impact on the rest of my life, so it's one of the worst things I've ever done.
So what they really needed to do was to take away the individual's free will. That's, at least, what they would have had to do with me to make me reach the development and sustainment stage. Just brainwash me or something. That's what it would take, because short of that I'm not going to allow unwitting takeover of my thought processes and values, and I think that that's exactly what the mission would have been happy to do, although they would have some counseling sessions with mentors and bosses or the H.R. director to help push you over the edge or explain the nuances or overcome any lingering doubts. But the thing is that my basic values and beliefs have come to me via study and serious thinking and, while I might not be a particularly great theologian or anything, I do mean that I don't just go along with any old thing that crosses my path either.
I was sorry I never reached the sustainment stage. But I never, ever could have shared my ideas and feelings freely (which I would have had to do at that stage). That would have been a recipe for disaster and if they knew what I was feeling I can't imagine what would have happened, but I suspect that my mission term would have been cut short.
Well, I guess that's all I have to say about this article, so I'll end here.
