Hi Reader,

There I was at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. A soldier had contacted her chain of command: she needed to talk. She had spiritual questions.

We met outside the Tactical Operations Center, at a picnic-style bench in the sweltering Kuwait heat, at least with a canopy over us. My religious affairs specialist, always a competent and caring professional, was not there for this one. It was the two of us and whatever she was carrying.

She did not need answers. She needed presence. She shared. I listened. We talked. What was said stays between us; that is the covenant of the office. Then she went back to her section and continued to perform her duties.

No dramatic ending. That is the point. These are the simple acts of presence that make a difference in the lives of soldiers.

I have written before about carrying two callings at the same time. This is about what one of them taught me about the other.

Chaplain training is not answer training. It is presence training. You learn to walk into a room where something permanent is happening, and to stay in it. You learn that the weight in the room is information, not interference. You learn that people do not need you to talk them out of the weight. They need you to help them carry it long enough to think clearly.

Here is what surprised me when I became a financial planner: the rooms are the same.

The rooms are the same

A couple sitting down to face the survivor election is not doing math. They are answering a question about mortality, about protection, about how one of them will live on if the other is gone. The math matters, and we do the math carefully. But the decision gets made in the same part of a person that faces every other permanent thing.

The military hands its leaders plenty of briefings for these moments. Slides, charts, deadlines. What it does not hand them is presence: someone who will sit with the weight of an irreversible decision without rushing it, without selling through it, and without pretending the weight is not there.

That is the part of this work my first calling trained me for. Not the spreadsheet. The room.

What presence changes about a decision

Three things, in my experience.

First, presence slows the decision down to its actual speed. Deadlines are real, and we respect them. But most bad permanent decisions are not made because the deadline arrived. They are made because the pressure arrived early and nobody pushed back on it.

Second, presence gets the second person into the room. The survivor decision is not one person's decision. Neither is the retirement itself. When someone is comfortable holding hard conversations, the spouse stops being a signature at the bottom of a form and becomes what she or he actually is: half the command picture.

Third, presence separates the decision from the fear of the decision. Those are different things. The fear says, "decide fast and stop feeling this." The decision itself usually wants one more question asked.

None of this replaces competence. The coordination work, the tax interactions, the deadline inventory - that is craft, and it has to be done right. But competence without presence results in a technically defensible decision they never actually made together.

So that is what the chaplaincy taught me about irreversible decisions: they deserve both halves. Somebody who knows the terrain, and somebody who can stay in the room.

What is the decision sitting on your desk right now? Hit reply and tell me. One sentence is plenty. I read every reply myself, and I write back.

Know a military leader or veteran family who would value this? Forward it to them. If someone forwarded this issue to you, you can join Exponential Purpose here.

With you in it,

Joshua Brooks, CFP®

Army Reserve Chaplain | Founder, Exponential Advisors

Joshua serves as a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve. Nothing here implies endorsement by the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or the Chaplain Corps.

Exponential Advisors LLC is an investment adviser registered with the Texas State Securities Board (CRD #333416). Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. This material is educational only and is not individualized investment, tax, or legal advice.