My name is 1st Lieutenant Trevor Needham. I’m serving as a Combat Engineer Platoon Leader with the Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment deployed to the Diyala Province, Iraq. I am in charge of 34 enlisted soldiers, and our main mission is to conduct route clearance, driving down the worst routes in Iraq in order to find and blow up the road-side bombs that have been the most deadly threat to our forces in Iraq.

My wife Becky attended a Head & Heart Immersion Course in June, and she encouraged me afterwards to write a testimony about how the TOB has transformed our lives and our relationship in recent years.

Becky and I met in eighth grade, became close friends through high school, and began dating our senior year before heading off to college – I to University of Scranton and she to Franciscan University at Steubenville. By God’s grace, we have battled through much adversity together, remaining long-distance through college, during our engagement and even now that we are married. The two months we lived together in Germany was the longest time we’d had together in the past 10 years, until my unit was called to be part of the troop surge in August 2007.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Kuwait was all of the graphic graffiti in the port-a-johns. General Order #1 bans all pornography in theater; however, there was no shortage on soldiers’ computers, or even drawn on the latrines. I quickly began to understand the struggle our soldiers were experiencing --- the majority of my soldiers had never had to be in control of their sexual desires. It was something they had never experienced, and it made them very vulnerable to addiction. I suppose it has been the same for every generation, as I think back to the pin-up girls from WWII. The combination of high stress, separation from loved ones, and physically exhausting conditions creates an environment of vulnerability to any means of release or temporary escape, lust being a major temptation.

However, the deployment has been marked by small victories, and the TOB has helped me in my work and in my leadership role here in Iraq. You will talk about anything when you are on 8-to-12-hour patrols stuck inside a vehicle day in and day out. I have been asked a full spectrum of questions regarding morality, Catholicism, and God. Sometimes we have Bible studies on Sundays and it always turns into a Q&A session by the end. While I know that many of my soldiers will continue to be stuck in their habits, I take some comfort in having possibly planted a seed in their heart that there is something more out there.

As for me, understanding TOB has been a help in my own struggles during the deployment. The unity or “oneness” of man and wife has provided me with more graces than I could have ever hoped for. It is something that I learned about in college, but I’ve experienced it in a very real way through our unique situation. The Theology of the Body helped us to discover intimacy beyond physical sexual contact, to really love the whole person and rejoice in her personhood, not just in the momentary pleasure the world would have us pursue. Before the deployment, I spent a month at a leadership school known as the Sapper Leader Course. The course is 28 days of hell where they physically break you down and mentally overwhelm you. The course coincided with Lent, but I had no access to the sacraments. My wife, therefore, went to mass everyday and received for me. I distinctly remember swimming across a 37-degree lake in March and tapping into those graces.

By understanding and living out the unity of man and wife, I have been able to endure my time here in the desert and I look forward to my homecoming as a time of renewal for myself and for my family. Our son John Paul is the fruit of our love and a sure proof that what the Church teaches is true; that it is possible for love to continue to flourish even in circumstances in which it seems impossible to do so. Where the world would have doomed us to failure with all of the hardships we’ve been through, it is because Becky and I keep Christ at the center of our lives that our love for each other has not only continued to deepen, but new life has come from it! We praise Him everyday for all of these gifts. 

Thank you again to TOBI for the opportunity to share our story with you, for caring for my wife and son in their time with you back in the States, and for all of the work you are doing to spread this much-needed message throughout the world. I pray that we will all be together soon, but until then I will continue as best as I can to do my part in this work, bringing a little light into the tents and vehicles of our soldiers overseas. God bless you.

After attending our June Head & Heart Course, Becky Needham has donated her time as a music minister to serve the Institute at two courses, Love & Responsibility and TOB II: “Into the Deep.” Trevor is set to return in November for Thanksgiving and meet his son John Paul for the first time; they will then return to Germany to finish out his tour together. Please keep them in your prayers.