Lessons from One Former Soldier to Another: What St. Ignatius Taught Me

Long before he became a saint, Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier.

That part of his story has always resonated with me. Before the Spiritual Exercises, before the Society of Jesus, and before generations of people learned his approach to discernment, Ignatius knew something about military life. He knew ambition, duty, courage, injury, uncertainty, and what happens when the life you expected suddenly changes.

I am a former soldier too. And while my military experience was separated from Ignatius's by nearly five centuries, I have come to recognize something familiar in the spirituality he eventually developed: the importance of paying attention to what is happening inside us, especially when everything around us is moving quickly.

During deployments, where days were long, nights were quiet, and everything in between felt compressed, I learned that the heaviest things we carry are often the ones no one sees. Gear can be weighed, packed, and accounted for. But the internal load is different: decisions made under pressure, moments that hit harder than expected, fears we do not name aloud, and experiences we have not yet figured out how to understand.

Days moved fast, sometimes too fast. I would occasionally lie in my rack at night and realize that I had not had a single moment to process what I had experienced.

Journaling became one of the places where the pace finally slowed.

At first, there was nothing particularly spiritual about it. I wrote a few lines at the end of a long day. Sometimes I recorded what happened. Sometimes I wrote what I was thinking. Eventually, those pages became a kind of oasis—a place where I could lay down things I could not quite say anywhere else.

Over time, I discovered that writing was not separate from prayer. For me, it became prayer.

There were nights when the only prayer I could manage was a sentence: Lord, I don't know what to do with this.

Other nights produced fragments—questions, memories, frustrations, gratitude, fears. Things I did not realize I was carrying appeared on the page.

Years later, through my experience with Ignatian spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises, I began to understand what those pages had been teaching me.

They were teaching me to notice.

The Soldier Who Learned to Pay Attention
Ignatius learned the importance of noticing after a cannonball shattered his leg at Pamplona in 1521. During his long recovery, the soldier who had dreamed about honor and achievement found himself with little to do except read, imagine, remember, and think.

And he began noticing his interior reactions.

Some thoughts excited him temporarily but eventually left him empty. Others produced something more enduring—a sense of peace, purpose, and movement toward God.

Ignatius paid attention to the difference.

That simple act of noticing would eventually contribute to his understanding of consolation and desolation and become central to Ignatian discernment.

Looking back, I realize that journaling during my military years was teaching me something similar.

It became a kind of interior after-action review.

Anyone familiar with military life understands the value of looking back after a mission. What happened? What went well? What did not? What should we learn before we go out again?

My journal asked different questions.

What happened inside me today?

What am I carrying?

What gave me strength?

What disturbed my peace?

Where was God?

I did not always use those words, and I certainly did not have neat answers. But writing created enough silence for the questions to surface.

Finding God on the Flightline
Ignatian spirituality teaches us to seek God in all things. During deployment, I began to discover that God's presence was not confined to the moments when I was formally praying.

Sometimes grace appeared in remarkably ordinary places.

It was a sergeant's joke that broke through the tension at exactly the right moment. It was the quiet of a sunrise over the flightline before the day began. It was an unexpected conversation. Sometimes it was simply a sense of calm settling over me amid the roar of fighter jets.

Without reflection, I might have forgotten those moments.

Journaling taught me to return to them.

This is one of the lessons I continue to learn from Ignatius: our lives contain more grace than we notice while we are rushing through them.

We often look for God in extraordinary experiences while overlooking the quiet ways God accompanies us through an ordinary day.

The challenge is learning to pay attention.

Knowing What We Carry
Military service teaches you to keep moving. There is a mission to accomplish, people depending on you, and responsibilities that cannot always wait until you feel ready.

That discipline can be a strength.

But there is a danger in becoming so accustomed to moving forward that we never look inward.

Writing helped me recognize when fatigue was shaping my reactions, when stress was accumulating, and when I was carrying more than I realized. It allowed me to name things instead of simply carrying them.

Ignatius would later give me a spiritual vocabulary for some of those movements.

Consolation.

Desolation.

Discernment.

Freedom.

Grace.

The words were new to me. The interior terrain was not.

Ignatian spirituality helped me understand that paying attention to our interior lives is not weakness or self-absorption. It can be part of learning how to live more freely and respond more faithfully.

For someone trained to assess the environment around him, Ignatius taught me the importance of also learning to assess the movements within.

Keeping the Heart Alive
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned was that service can shape the heart in different ways.

Service can strengthen us. It can teach sacrifice, courage, loyalty, discipline, and responsibility. But difficult experiences can also gradually make us guarded or hardened if we never give ourselves space to process what we have carried.

Journaling became one way I tried to keep my interior life open.

The blank pages of a notebook became a kind of spiritual shelter. I wrote prayers, Scripture verses, names of people I wanted to pray for, questions I could not answer, and reflections after difficult days.

I did not have to write beautifully.

I simply had to show up honestly.

And perhaps that is what I appreciate most about Ignatius today.

He teaches me that God works with the actual material of our lives—not the polished version we wish we could present. Our desires, disappointments, fears, hopes, memories, and questions can all become places of encounter with God when we are willing to notice them.

Long after my military service and deployments ended, journaling remains part of how I pay attention. As a writer, I now have the privilege not only of exploring my own interior life but sometimes sharing what I discover with others.

I like to imagine that the former soldier from Loyola would understand.

Ignatius taught me that reflection is not about endlessly looking backward. Like an after-action review, we look back so that we can move forward with greater awareness.

One former soldier to another, that may be the lesson from Ignatius I carry most closely:

Pay attention to what you carry. Notice what is moving within you. Look for God in the ordinary. And before rushing toward the next mission, take time to discover what the last one has taught you.