“We just look for people to have into our home, sit around our table. It blesses the person, it blesses the stranger, but you’re also blessed by welcoming someone in and learning from them and growing together,” Meredith Snell explained as she described how she and her husband, retired Colonel Matt Snell, established a Cadence House at Fort Drum, New York, formerly called the North Country Hospitality House.
Cadence is a Christian-based organization that reaches out to military communities worldwide, primarily the American military, but about thirty years ago it began serving foreign militaries as well.
The forty Cadence Houses offer group dinners, Bible studies, devotionals, and open discussion to help military personnel and their families cope with the unique stresses of military life and recovery from war.
On their website, Cadence describes its mission: “Cadence International exists to be there for military people and their families in these crucial moments of life-change. We are delighted to share with them the gospel and our lives.”
That combination of family and service drove the Snells and their five children to dedicate their lives to serving the spiritual needs of soldiers.
Meredith said that as they kept knocking on doors and seeking where God wanted them, it felt as if the Lord was saying, “I have you where I want you. Stay. The Army is your mission field.”
She said they needed the Army to be a schoolhouse to learn how to walk out their faith through difficult bosses, deployments, frequent moves, long separations, and raising children in that environment.
Through those experiences, they learned to walk with the Lord through hard things and find community.
She described how her children grew up in the Cadence House, particularly her daughter, Grace. “She spent a lot of time sitting around our table listening to the stories of people from all around the world, and I think that helped give her a picture of the world and of the ways that the Lord is at work around the world.”
“That’s a smaller picture of what hospitality ministry does,” she concluded.
Colonel Snell discussed how soldiers can be fighting alongside their brothers-in-arms one day and home, isolated, just days later. Cadence helps them transition by giving them space to process their experiences.
“Our Bible studies are really springboards of where we meet people and then…we say counseling, but maybe it’s just taking them out to grab coffee or going outside and spending time with them. Really, it’s doing life-on-life, inviting them to go for a run or go fishing or do something where we have time together to process whatever is going on in their lives.”
As the mission of the Army has changed over the past ten years, so have the problems soldiers face. “When it was really a kinetic fight, they were in Iraq and Afghanistan where there were a lot of injuries and guys getting killed.”
During relative peace, soldiers still struggle. “In the American military right now, the guys aren’t coming home with a lot of PTSD based on where they were and what they were doing, but it’s more loneliness, depression, pornography. These are more the issues of the day.”
Brian Kleager, VP for Strategic Partnerships and Public Relations, spoke about a chaplain they met on a Cadence mission in Ukraine who drove around the war zone in an old, beat-up car, alone and unarmed, praying with soldiers.
“He was on volunteer status. So when I was over there a couple of years ago, I asked him, so how do you make money? He’s like, what do you mean? I’m like, how do you pay rent and buy groceries? He goes, oh, God provides.”
The chaplain added, “Sometimes people give me money. Sometimes organizations give me money. God just keeps providing money, and I use it to buy stuff for the soldiers and to take care of my family.”
These are the kinds of people Cadence personnel meet who continue to inspire their work and strengthen their faith.
On a frigid morning in the mountains of Burma during a lull in the fighting, I saw Cadence in action. U.S. Navy veteran and former Seabee Paul Bradley preached to Free Burma Rangers during their morning devotional.
Well over six feet tall and 64 years old, he still goes to the front lines in Burma, Ukraine, and other war zones.
Paul serves as vice president at Cadence International and oversees outreach to foreign militaries. He has helped the Thai police and the Cambodian army build Christian discipleship programs.
He also partnered with Free Burma Rangers to build the first dedicated chaplain corps and chaplain-training program in Burma and served alongside the Rangers and the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and Syria during the war against ISIS.
With ethnic FBR chaplains translating, Paul reminded the soldiers that God’s capacity to forgive is infinite, a message many need as they struggle with having killed.
He also reminded them that God’s love is limitless as they fight to defend their families and countries while those they love are suffering.
When he concluded, the ethnic Rangers, composed of Karen, Karenni, Shan, Burmese, and other groups, sang a hymn in Burmese.
Later, over tea by the campfire, Paul told me, “This problem’s been around as long as wars have been around. It used to be called soldier’s heart or shell shock, and now we’re calling everything PTSD.”
He said that when someone cannot process what they have experienced in a healthy way, “that noise has to get quieted because it’s loud.” The noise refers to memories that trigger flashbacks, insomnia, and unprovoked rage.
“There’s a lot of instability. Guys talk a lot about not being able to sleep. They’re angry all the time. A lot of guys turn toward drugs or pornography or other things to try to quiet that noise down because they never properly dealt with what they’ve been through.”
Paul prefers to call trauma stress. In his view, that stress should be treated as an injury that can be healed rather than a disorder managed only with drugs. “Trauma is more an injury due to stress that’s not processed or excessive stress that overwhelms our ability to cope with it.”
He cited a friend who served with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. After a difficult deployment with heavy losses, 28 soldiers separated from the Army shortly after returning home.
They did not process what they had experienced. They were alone trying to unwind everything they had seen and done. Eight later committed suicide.
A stress reaction, he explained, is the brain keeping you alive, like jerking your hand from a hot stove. Trauma happens when the brain over-learns the lesson, when you jerk back from a cold stove or hit the dirt at a car backfire. That is the nervous system failing to realize the war is over.
Talking through experiences in a safe environment is crucial, but soldiers are often reluctant. The Burma war has lasted nearly eighty years, with the current intense phase at five. Unlike U.S. soldiers, resistance fighters cannot fully demobilize apart from victory. The war continues, and the same men accumulate stress on top of stress.
Paul said, “A friend of mine who also operates here said he’s got a bunch of ambulance drivers who have done over 1,000 runs.” These runs go from casualty-collection points in the battle zone to hospitals across the border. “Three of the guys are completely going off the rails…they’re drinking a lot, self-destructing and isolating. That’s another symptom. If they start isolating from you, you need to lean in and pursue them.”
It is important to get soldiers together to talk about what they have been through. There is pushback because they are taught to “motor through it” and are embarrassed to show feelings in front of comrades.
Yet they stood shoulder to shoulder in combat, trusting one another with their lives. Emotional vulnerability should not be harder than that.
Eventually they open up, especially after the first brave soldier speaks. Then others realize they share similar experiences and fears.
Another issue is coping mechanisms, drugs, alcohol, and pornography. Soldiers turn to these when they see no other way to quiet the noise. This is where Jesus comes in. As Christians, we believe God can take that pain and bear it for us. That is the message Colonel Snell, Meredith, Brian, and Paul share.
In conclusion, Paul urged soldiers to process their experiences together while still deployed. “These are your brothers, right? So this is the opportunity for you. Don’t wait till you get home to start processing the stuff that you’re seeing.” If that feels too difficult, they should pray about it first.
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