Chaplains are front-line people. We are the people who are contacted when there is a problem that has anything to do with personnel or family, so much so that when social workers in Petawawa hung up their telephones at four o'clock and went home they in fact left a message on their telephones that said to contact the duty chaplain.
What I was dealing with almost always had family relevance. If there was a problem, it involved the wife and the children, and often grandparents and parents somewhere else, because all these things happen within a relational context.
There are many skills I wish I had had in sitting and helping a couple work through their problems. Their problem might simply be that the member has been away for probably a year, because there's six months of training and then six months actually on tour. He has come back and discovered that his wife, or spouse, I should say, is suddenly taking care of the finances, taking care of the kids, and coping very well, thank you. And he or she--the member--feels left out of the family.
I didn't know how to help with that when I was a chaplain, yet I was expected to. There was a great deal of time spent sitting with couples and sitting with families and trying to help them work through their problems. But I didn't really have those kinds of skills or that kind of training at that point.