{"id":2559,"date":"2008-07-21T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/kimberly-dozier-the-more-horrors-i-saw-the-more-my-own-christian-faith-came-to-the-fore.html"},"modified":"2008-07-21T00:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T00:06:00","slug":"kimberly-dozier-the-more-horrors-i-saw-the-more-my-own-christian-faith-came-to-the-fore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/kimberly-dozier-the-more-horrors-i-saw-the-more-my-own-christian-faith-came-to-the-fore.html","title":{"rendered":"Kimberly Dozier: “The more horrors I saw, the more my own Christian faith came to the fore”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s rare to find someone in the media talking candidly about their faith and spirituality. I was heartened, then, to discover this post<\/a> about one of my CBS News colleagues, Kimberly Dozier<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/a>On Memorial Day 2006, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier and her crew were on patrol with the military in Iraq. A car bomb explosion killed cameraman Paul Douglas, soundman James Brolan, Army Captain Alex Funkhouser, and their Iraqi translator known only as Sam. Kimberly was critically injured herself. She lost more than half her blood because the explosion smashed both her femurs, scorched her muscle and skin from hips to ankles, and lodged some shrapnel near her brain. Though she technically died five times after reaching the hospital, the medical teams were able to save her. Kimberly endured a painful and grueling recovery, and now shares her story in the book \u201cBreathing the Fire: Fighting to Report- and Survive \u2013 the War in Iraq.\u201d Here\u2019s an excerpt from my recent \u201cChristopher Closeup\u201d interview with Kimberly during which she discusses the spiritual side of her recovery.<\/p>\n

TR: You write in the book about your own background as a Christian. You even considered being a member of the Episcopal clergy for a while. So I\u2019m wondering \u2013 when you were recovering in the hospital, did you have any mental conversations with God about what happened or why?<\/i><\/p>\n

Kimberly Dozier: Absolutely. It came down to, \u201cWhat am I going to do with this? I\u2019ve had this horrible tragedy happen. I\u2019m still alive. Why\u2019d you leave me here? Obviously I\u2019ve got something else to do. What is it?\u201d And yeah, you have the selfish response (that) you don\u2019t want the responsibility of this when you have lived and the people with you have not. Trying to turn that into something positive, trying to find the right words to say to the family members of those who\u2019ve been lost \u2013 that\u2019s a burden I didn\u2019t want. It\u2019s a privilege I didn\u2019t want. You\u2019re thankful and you are saddled with something you never thought you\u2019d have to deal with. Someone explained to me once that grief is a gift, that going through something like this gives you lessons that you then have to pass on. And that\u2019s been one of the hardest parts of this because, what I write about in the book, especially the first few months when I came back to work, so many people came up to me and wanted to talk about horrible things that they\u2019d been through\u2026For a while there, it just got (to be) too much. I couldn\u2019t handle it and I started skulking around back hallways at CBS because I didn\u2019t know how to help these people. That\u2019s part of the reason why I decided, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll write this darn book. I\u2019ll put it all out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

TR: At one point in your book \u201cBreathing the Fire,\u201d you write, \u201cThe more horrors I saw overseas, the more my own Christian faith came to the fore.\u201d Some people see suffering and violence, and it moves them away from God. Why did it move you more toward God?<\/i><\/p>\n

Kimberly Dozier: I guess I\u2019ve never held God responsible for some of the horrors that I see. The things that we are able to do to each other either in the name of government, ideology or God \u2013 it is soul shaking. But I guess you take refuge in your faith. You also see the positive things out there, the people who risk their lives to save someone else or risk their lives to protect a community. That restores your faith as much as the horrors you\u2019re seeing shake it\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Visit the blog The Intersection<\/a> for more. And a grateful h\/t to the blogmesiter, Tony Rossi, for sending this my way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s rare to find someone in the media talking candidly about their faith and spirituality. I was heartened, then, to discover this post about one of my CBS News colleagues, Kimberly Dozier: On Memorial Day 2006, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier and her crew were on patrol with the military in Iraq. A car bomb…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-media","category-my-world"],"yoast_head":"\nKimberly Dozier: "The more horrors I saw, the more my own Christian faith came to the fore" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/kimberly-dozier-the-more-horrors-i-saw-the-more-my-own-christian-faith-came-to-the-fore.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kimberly Dozier: "The more horrors I saw, the more my own Christian faith came to the fore" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It’s rare to find someone in the media talking candidly about their faith and spirituality. 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