From the Chaplain’s Rack: Asking the Why’s
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
This reflection first appeared March 2024 in the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin.
When was the last time you got stuck in a spiral of “why’s?”
It most likely was a kiddo who had you cornered, and with every short answer you gave to their “why,” all you got was another one.
Asking “why” is good training for kids. Their vision of the world is breaking open. They are beginning to realize that the sky changes colors, that grass is wet in the morning, and that getting dressed to go outside is not optional. Their want to understand how the world works is a powerful motivation.
It’s also worth our time as big kids to ask ourselves, maybe even ask our crew or our department, why we do the things we do. Or care about the things we care about. On one hand, asking a firefighter why they are a firefighter will earn a very short answer: “I’m here to fight fires.” Fair. And, it’s more than that. Or maybe a better way to say it is, the reasons for why one person is firefighter will be different from the next.
Each one of us has a set of values that shape how, and why, we do what we do. We can call them our Core Values, those concepts and ideas that are central to our identity. We can call them our Moral Code. Whichever term you prefer, we’re thinking about how we see the world, what we hold as vitally important to how we walk in the world, and what we expect of others whom we share the world with.
Every person has core values. Principles that are so important to our identity that we are willing to make significant, life-changing decisions because of them. Have you left a job because you simply could not handle how the boss was running the place? Maybe they were mean to trainees, deeply offensive, or cooking the books. Whatever the reason, you were done. You left because your core values, or moral code, gave you the wisdom to get out before you had to compromise yourself.
Being able to recognize our core values is a way to know more about ourselves. I know, that soft, fuzzy psycho-babble stuff. But, when we know more about how we operate and see the world, we can more easily explain when we feel “off” in a situation. Back to the whys of our childhood. Asking ourselves why a place, a space, a person, or an event doesn’t sit right with us compels us to remember what is vitally important to us (core values) and how to address what’s not working.
I suppose this is one of the fuzzy aspects of being in a fire department. There will always be a little tension because the nature of a firehouse is to gather type A, problem solving, highly motivated women and men. Self-assured people butt heads. Sometimes, though, the tension gets thick, the ability to work effectively begins to slip, recruiting gets hard, and some folks just don’t want to share the back of a cab with certain others.
If you find yourself there as person or group, it might be time for you to evaluate your core values, consider the differences and, dare I say, talk about what is vital for each. Discover the common ground and name what is distinct. Maybe even think about what the core values of the department are as a whole. What kind of people should represent the patch? What values shape the way the entire house operates?
Naming core values brings clarity for you and for others. Clarity can make working alongside others a little easier because you know what you hold dear, and you know them. Being clear about who you are can give balance, purpose, even confidence. If you are curious what the heck I’m talking about, reach out. I’d be happy to have a chat about what you value, or swap ideas about how you can name them yourself or in your house.
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Preventative Maintenace
This reflection first appeared January 2024 in the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin.
A few weeks ago, I was driving my kid’s car and for whatever reason, I checked the mileage on the sticker. We were well overdue. A point of clarity: my kid is away at college and they didn’t take their car. My wife and I drive it around town about once a week just to keep it moving.
What I’m getting at is the oil change. Or, a little more broadly, the regular maintenance requirements of owning a vehicle. Nothing bad happened, the oil wasn’t dripping from the pan or so sludged that it had be scraped out. I called our guy, he got it done, we have a brand-new sticker. No big deal. Life continues on, and so does the car.
That’s why we do preventative maintenance. To prevent the engine from overheating and blowing up. We replace furnace filters, clean our lint traps, winterize our homes, and replace the batteries in our smoke detectors. We do these things practically without thought, even if the smoke detector has a green light.
So why not do some preventative maintenance on your mental health? Yes, you seem fine to me. You probably are fine. Which is the perfect time to do one or two things to make sure you’re fine for when the bad stuff comes your way. Sorry, friend, in this line of work, the bad stuff is inevitable.
But I don’t really like talking like that, it makes it seem like we’re all ready to blow up like neglected engine blocks. I doubt you are. Most folks are not that far along. I simply want us to be prepared, be aware, respect ourselves and others when things get tough, and consider two actions you can do now that might help keep whatever the moment is a little less disrupting.
One preventative maintenance tip is well known, and I’ve written about it before. It’s called “box breathing” or 5×5 or 4×4 or square or Navy Seal breathing. All these names are the same thing. Picture a box. Breathe in for 5 seconds (take it slow), hold for 5, exhale for 5 (go slow again), and hold for 5. It is utterly simple to do, you can do it in the cab, in the office, on the couch. You’ve probably done it for SCBA drills. The goal is intentionality. Being focused on the breathing, and actually doing the breathing exercise as prescribed, lowers your pulse and your blood pressure. It increases oxygen intake and absorption. It lowers stress, even when you’re not stressed. Practice it when you’re doing fine so that you have a tool in your back pocket for when you can’t catch your breath, or the adrenaline is flowing out of control. Box breathing will give you back some control.
Another maintenance tip is just as simple and seems just as obvious. Practice talking to someone you trust. We don’t do this often enough. Find someone in the department and buy them coffee. Take your partner/spouse out for a great meal and don’t just listen, talk. In a study conducted of firefighters self-reporting traumatic events, nearly 50% acknowledged feeling disconnected from the people around them. This is an alarming stat. They do not feel like sharing anything about themselves with the folks closest to them. Disconnection leads to isolation, burn-out, anger, distrust, and sadness. And all the destructive stuff we firefighters have been known to do.
There are more preventative maintenance tools, but here’s two to try when everything is running smoothly. Because now is the perfect time to practice. My friend, trust me, it will make all the difference and will help keep lessen the bad stuff. More to come. Until then, take care of yourself and take care of your company.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline Text 988
To My Fellow White Pastors: Continuing Reflections on Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story
“[Pastor] Boltzius began his mission to blacks by first appealing to friends in Germany to provide him with money to purchase young black children directly from slave ships so that he could raise them as Christians.” – Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story, page 62
I try to imagine what I would have been like sitting at a rostered minister’s meeting, looking around at my beloved colleagues seated at various tables, and seeing the one or two who enslaved humans. They, no doubt, would be dressed the same as me. Obviously, they would be white men like me, quite likely seminary classmates of mine with whom I shared notes or church leadership ideas in the late hours after class.
I try to imagine myself throwing tables and pitching fits. I’d be fighting racism and slavery with a Bible and an axe. Maybe I’d be like John Brown, kicking ass and taking names, starting a revolution in the name of liberation and the fundamentals of Lutheran doctrine.
Yeah, right. I’d probably just sit there and drink my watered-down coffee and laugh at the bad jokes and grumble about whatever the Bishop was doing. I would have done nothing. Because its normal for humans to own humans. Right?
Dr Jeff Johnson, in Black Christians, is clear, that’s pretty much what non-enslaving white men pastors did to their slave owning colleagues. Absolutely nothing. Its clear because there are no stories of uprisings and strong abolitionist movements in our Lutheran history. Dr Johnson does note that there were some abolitionists within our ranks, specifically naming the Franckean Synod as speaking “out vigorously against slavery on moral grounds and [taking] the position that they would not have fellowship with any Lutheran who favored slavery” (p.123). Unfortunately, that’s about it for notes on good white Lutherans being good throughout the book.
For some Lutheran congregations, it was not simply the resident pastor getting into slavery. In colonial Virginia in the early 1740’s, a capital campaign was formed by a congregation in Hebron to raise funds for a 685 acre farm and “slaves to work the land.” They owned at least nine humans.
In Guyana, a Lutheran congregation connected to, and funded by, the Dutch East India Company, asked for 500 acres. It was named “Plantation Augsburg” and the land was “worked by slaves owned by the church” (p. 87). In 1838, when emancipation came to the enslaved people through British decree, the Lutheran church were judiciously compensated for the “180 slaves on Plantation Augsburg, [receiving] over 9000 pounds as their reimbursement for emancipation” (p. 91). In today’s dollars that is approximately $1.4 million.
Side note: what is the origin story of your congregation’s endowment? If your white church has financial reserves, where did they come from?
But lets take a moment to sit with that first truth about Pr Boltzius. He launched a GoFundMe in his native Germany to buy humans. Specifically, children directly off of slave ships. He participated in the entire machinery of enslavement in the New World and did with the absolute arrogance of a white man hoping to bring these poor people to Jesus. He did it without regard for humanity, divine identity, or any sense of decency. This was his mission field. I am confident that when he first floated this idea to his colleagues, to you and me, we responded with nodding heads.
This is not Lutheran history that we can read about and ignore. This is our history. This is my history. I have been complacent. I have been passive. I have sat in conference meetings with rostered colleagues and nodded my head. Said nothing. Once in a while, even had a passing question of integrity or justice, but said absolutely nothing.
Because, my white pastor and rostered friends, that is our pattern. It is our history and our present and it directly impacts the lives of God’s people to whom we are called to love with a glimpse of Christ’s love. How could anyone have thought that Pr Brotzius was loving the ones he went down to the slave houses to buy? The same way we convince ourselves that the embedded, systemic racism in our congregations and denominations is acceptable.
We think of it in terms of good order. We assume, as we do when a non-white pastor is targeted and defrocked without a proper judicial process, that they clearly did something to deserve it. We convince ourselves that every congregation, including historic black churches in deeply impoverished communities, need to pay their own bills the same as our very white, very wealthy suburban congregations. We establish training and affirmation processes to lift up clergy that are shaped in white thinking and wonder why we don’t have many black, brown, and Latine clergy. We show no regard when black women clergy are ushered out of church leadership and bishop roles because the white voices tell us there was simply a conflict of priorities.
We keep nodding our heads and sipping our watered-down coffee, chuckling at the bad jokes and griping about this or that, while saying nothing about our history. One that is continuously being manifest right in front of us.
Friends, it doesn’t need to be this way. Christ liberates the oppressed, and we are co-conspirators in the oppressive narrative of good order and passivity. We are also liberated from our sin through the cross and set loose as people of God to speak God’s Word of justice.
Read this book. It is a divine pry bar that wedges open our eyes once squeezed shut by our acceptance of the systems we are part of. Let’s read it together and create a conversation. Let’s listen to our black and brown colleagues without the filter of good order and with the expectation that God is speaking to us. May we be cut loose of our complacency and our need to be good white Lutherans.
This reflection is part of a short series on Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story, Jeff G Johnson, Concordia Publishing House: St Louis, 1991. You can purchase a copy of this book through the link and read the prior post to White Lutherans here.
To My Fellow White Lutherans: Periodic Reflections on Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story
“What brought together Lutherans from Europe and blacks from Africa…was the need for labor, that is, slaves. For almost two and a half centuries, from 1623 to 1865, slavery and colonialism were the primary context for contact, conversion, and Christian brotherhood, if indeed those labels can be used.” – Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story, page 22
As a white man with a Germanic Lutheran background who checks every box of privilege, I knew nothing of black Lutherans. One could easy argue that I still know next to nothing. People of origins other than Scandinavian and German were not taught or discussed in my home churches. The only humor I learned was rooted in white midwestern food choices and how Lutherans are known for eating certain dishes. In seminary, I only heard about black Lutheranism from the black Lutheran theologians.
This short reflection series is not going to fix much of that, though I hope that in lifting up this book, Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story by Dr Jeff G. Johnson, some of us of paler, northern European heritage who claim the Lutheran tradition as “ours” might come to realize that the church does not belong to us. Though there may be historical connections to the Scandilands and Germanic hills, the Church belongs to Christ and is formed by a multitude of peoples longing for Christ’s liberating promise of grace.
I also want to offer this profound book to my fellow white people of the Lutheran tradition to demonstrate that there are very clear, very racist reasons for why most of us have no experience or understanding of Lutheran churches outside of our own white models. We (collectively, historically) created our churches, synods, and national church bodies to reflect our own image. We were intentional, direct, and clear in our want to keep the Lutheran church white and homogenous. This profound book by Dr Johnson is plain in exposing our systemic racism.
Black Christians spans a robust history from 1623, when the first recorded Lutherans landed in New Netherlands (now New York/New Jersey) to 1991 when it was published. To put this timeline in context, Black history reminds us that the first enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of the New World in 1619. As Dr Johnson notes on page 231, there have been three myths of Black Lutheranism: “(1) the myth of no contact (ie, Lutherans have had little contact with black people), (2) the Johnny-Come-Lately myth (ie, that black people are essentially newcomers to the Lutheran Church), and (3) the myth of the unbridgeable chasm (ie, that the difference between Lutheranism and the black heritage is so great as to be unbridgeable).”
Further on page 231 he writes, “On the average, once every eight years beginning in 1669, Lutherans have launched a new and/or additional effort to work with black people somewhere in the New World.” Like a broken record, we white folk have conjured a plan to interact with black and brown people on our terms, by our rules, and with our prescriptions roughly every eight years.
We see this pattern of stumbling, self-centered intentionality in my churchwide presence, the ELCA. In 1993 we wrote a social statement reflecting a goal to increase our cultural and ethnic representation to 10%, and a Pew Research study released in 2014 reveals that the ELCA is still 96% white. In 2016, the ELCA churchwide assembly called for the organization of a Task Force for Strategic Authentic Diversity and in 2019 they offered an Executive Summary calling for clear steps toward a “change of heart and mind” in the whole church. These steps were forged by a task force made up of non-white voices from within our church and many of these clear, achievable actions continue to remain on a shelf, ignored. Maybe we are waiting for another 8-10 year cycle to give these words from our non-white leaders another passing glance.
Thirty years after Dr Johnson’s book was published, the pattern still holds. Another reason for us white Lutherans to read his work, recognize our role in our self-perpetuated history, seek confession and, as our baptismal promise states, “strive for justice and peace in all the earth” (“Affirmation of Baptism,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 236).
I will continue to lift up passages from Black Christians throughout the coming month and I ask you to hold me accountable to this task, as well as hold me accountable for seeking meaningful reconciliation through confession, forgiveness, and works of justice. This history of white American Lutheranism we share will be difficult for some of us to read, and we will resist it. I have resisted it, and no doubt continue to, in my own subconscious, defensive ways.
To my fellow white Lutherans: will you join me in reading and reflecting on this book with me? Can we see ourselves in these historic movements of intentional racism? Might we acknowledge, confess, check our biases, hear our embedded language, notice the art on our walls, and be moved toward transformation? I pray these reflections will break us open and break our long held patterns through Christ.
link to purchase book: Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story, Jeff G Johnson, Concordia Publishing House: St Louis, 1991.
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Carrying LODDs
This reflection first appeared January 2022 in the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin.
140 Line of Duty Deaths in 2021.
5 LODDs in Illinois.
For 2021, I decided to track each LODD on a map in my office. The USFA and Firefighter Close Calls notifications have always been a lightly chaotic experience for me, coming in trickles and downpours with names appearing and going from my mind. It seemed too simple to read the notice, delete the post, and continue on.
I wanted to hold space and time for each of these names. I’m never going to remember all of them, or the nature of their death, and that is not the goal. For me, it is the simple acknowledgement that these women and men signed on, threw on their gear, grabbed their EMS bags, and responded to someone else’s distress.
For me, and maybe for you, each of these ribbons and every email, represents a person no different from the ones I am privileged to serve alongside. Some have spouses and kids, some are flying solo. Some of these individuals accumulated decades of experience, others were brand new. Some were full time paid, others were paid on call or unpaid volunteers. They all showed up, the way our people show up.
We cannot know all their stories, even as we know that each one lived remarkably. We have all spent our time seeing the notification that grabs our attention and then falling down a rabbit hole of research and facebook pages and local news clips. We go looking for answers and information, clues in obituaries and initial reports, that remind us of the humanity of each LODD victim, and how their experiences compare to ours. We want to know whatever we can, in order to make something as senseless as death make just a little more sense.
We want these 140 people to matter, and they do. The way our companies, officers, families, this vital work of caring for our community, matters. One of the biggest challenges we face in the fire service is a feeling of futility. Firefighters and EMS personnel are doers, fixers, responders, type A’s who always have a plan with a backup plan and a few more plans mapped out just in case. When our plans fall apart, when our best efforts are still not enough, when we are reminded of the limitations of our humanity, it can be deflating.
Honor the fallen by giving them a passing thought when the email comes. Honor these people by training and learning from NIOSH reports. Honor them by taking care of yourself.
If one of these names cuts a little too close, talk to your faith leader or fire chaplain. Seek out peer support or professional care. Don’t let those obnoxious thoughts, the ones that can slowly creep in through LODD stories, become too loud. We don’t get to choose which incidents will affect us, yet we can choose to name our thoughts before they consume us.
The work will always be there, as will be the risks. As I am submitting this for print, 9 LODDs have appeared in my inbox. 9 new ribbons for 2022. 9 more reasons for us to be diligent with our skills, our situational awareness, and our health. Take care of yourself, take care of your company, watch out for each other.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain or Peer Support Personnel
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Doomscrolling
This reflection first appeared November 2021 in the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin
Have you been doomscrolling?
First, do you know what doomscrolling is? Go ahead, take a minute, google it. In essence, its scrolling through Facebook or your favorite social media app, reading bad news. Instead of turning away, you keep going down the feed. Doomscrolling is difficult to stop.
This isn’t just a social media thing, so let’s not jump straight to cursing our devices. We see it when we watch the news. A 2019 study of humans across 17 countries through the National Academy of Sciences found a significant uptick in heart rate when folks watched “bad news” versus “good news.” Humans are attracted to disaster and crisis stories.
And here’s one of the things I think about when I see those “bad news” events on my screen. I think about all of you. I think about my department that, once in a great while, has the unwanted privilege of being a front page/top of the hour story. While civilians are consuming the news, we in the fire service are the news.
Doomscrolling is just a term to describe a human process of dwelling in the badness. And I know, I hear it all the time, we in the fire service are tough. We’re unaffected. We come off a bad medical or fire scene and try like hell to move on. We’ll talk about it at the report, maybe say a little later on, but otherwise, keep it to ourselves. It’s part of the job. It’s the nature of the beast. You’ve heard all that. Maybe you’ve said all that.
I want to be really clear in saying, my role as a Fire Chaplain is not to create what doesn’t exist. Every call affects everyone differently. I could do a full debrief with responding companies after a big call and discover no one is negatively dwelling. That’s great. My intent is not to force what isn’t there.
My goal in talking about these things is to remind us that we don’t get to pick the call that our minds will obsess about. The wild thing about our brains is we cannot control how mental pathways are formed and which smell, song, or sight is going to flip our switch and send us down a rabbit hole out of which we cannot climb.
If you are doomscrolling (dwelling on) a scene or an event, please reach out to someone. Call your Fire Chaplain, that is the exact reason they exist in your department. Call your EAP (Employee Assistance Program) if your insurance offers it. Call your priest or rabbi. Heck, call me. We’ve never met, but I’m the Chaplain for the IFA, this is my role. I’m here to walk with you and find you resources. Do not let yourself spiral down in frustration and sadness. We have too much heavy drinking, too many divorces, too much risky behavior, far too many suicides in the fire service (one is too many), much of it rooted in us trying to tough it out and carry all those calls that we don’t want to admit are continuously scrolling in your thoughts.
You are the one the community calls when they are in distress. Who do you call when the mayday in your mind is going off? Your mental health is vital because you are vital to your department. You are more than one bad call. Take care of yourself, take care of your company, watch out for each other.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain or Peer Support Personnel (I hope you have one in your ranks)
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Reflecting on 9/11
This reflection first appeared in the September/October 2021 edition of the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin.
Throughout the week leading to September 11th, we were bombarded with all the images and video clips we’ve lived with for 20 years. We vowed we would never forget.
We will never forget.
We keep the stories of the 343 firefighters close to our thoughts and hearts because their lives deserve it. Our firehouses have helmet fronts, banners, and posters adoring our training rooms and public spaces. We have tattooed “343” on our arms and “FDNY” on our backs. Some have made the trip to see the memorials in Manhattan, Shanksville, or the Pentagon. Our apparatus may bear the image of the twin towers near the cab or the tailboard so that we, and everyone we serve, can see that the fire service stands together.
We will never forget.
We cannot forget because that day and the seemingly endless, arduous months of recovery that followed, have become part of our psyche. Like the dust that would not settle, the faces of the women and men of the fire service, the rescue efforts, and the debris cover our minds and cause our still grieving hearts to beat harder when we relive those days. And pray for the survivors. And feel every emotion that passes across our bodies.
Because vowing to never forget means feeling all that haunts us and inspires us. September 11th is a day in our lives when our passion to serve that stretches from big city departments to rural districts was brought together at the base of the towers. Twenty years later, we still find ourselves standing there.
These were our sisters and brothers who did what we all do wherever we serve: they heard the tone, grabbed their gear, climbed into their seats, and donned their packs. They carried hose lines and irons and carefully escorted thousands down stairwells to safety while simultaneously ascending. The coordination of duties was incredible and from command to rookie, they did their jobs without fail and without fulling knowing.
We will never forget.
Which means we will get angry. We will feel guilt wondering why we survived when others did not. We will wrestle old demons and we will shed tears. We may relapse. All of this is part of remembering, and proof that the 343 and the thousands who died are woven to our lives. I encourage you, friends: do not deal with your distress alone. Talk to someone, whether a chaplain, peer support, or a counselor, because you are not alone.
We will also feel pride that we have the privilege of telling the stories from the perspective of the ones who can no longer tell it themselves. We will feel inspired each time we don our gear, climb into a seat, and answer the call. We will trust our training and lean on the solidarity of the countless firefighters and medics who respond alongside us across the country. We will continue to have hope. Because we will never forget.
As we carry on for those who have earned their rest, I offer this prayer from Father Mychal Judge, FDNY chaplain, whose death continues to haunt me with sadness and hope. “Lord, take me where you want me to go. Let me meet who you want me to meet. Tell me what you want me to say. And keep me out of your way.”
Take care of yourself, take care of your company, watch out for each other.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain or Peer Support Personnel (I hope you have one in your ranks)
From the Chaplain’s Rack: How is Your Spirit
I am the fire chaplain for Mt Morris Fire Protection District in Illinois and Fire Chaplain for the Illinois Firefighters Association. This reflection first appeared July 2021 in the Illinois Firefighters Association newsletter, The Bulletin.
How is your spirit doing these days?
As an aside, whenever I hear the word “spirit,” I think of high school basketball games where the fans yell, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how bout you?” Not exactly what I was meaning.
The words spirit and spirituality have an air of religion to them, which can create a reflex to want to ignore them. I get it. I’m a full-time religion person, an ordained Lutheran Christian minister in the ELCA, and I tend to recoil from churchy words, too.
If you’re still with me, I want to invite us to think about spirituality in broader terms. You may be a deeply religious person, on the fence about the God stuff, or an absolute atheist. You can be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Wiccan or have a uniquely local group with which you share your life. To talk about our spirituality is to talk about how we see ourselves in relation to others.
Spirituality is the core of who we are and the connections that sustain us. Spirituality is our wholeness and how we are made whole by the people who are in our lives. And when we have strong relationships and are feeling whole, we have a resilient protective force at work in lives. We have hope.
Spirituality is about liturgies and studies for those who use them in their faith practices, and it is as much about how we look forward with anticipation and a sense of purpose. In an Army Public Health Center post from July 2020, spirituality is described as “unique to each individual, and refers to the deepest part of you. It is the innermost part of you that allows you to gain strength and hope.”
Our spirit, or spirituality, is our inner resolve. To put it in better terms, it’s how we put up with the stuff of life, including the stuff we deal with in the fire service. We are called out of our bunks and meals and routines to respond to someone else’s crisis, and we always respond with our best training, skill, and focus. Most of the time, we’ll do our jobs and keep moving. Sometimes those calls stick with us. Or they pile up. They linger in our thoughts and begin to weigh on our hearts. The military calls these heavy events moral injuries. They are the situations and acts that do not line up with our understandings of justice, safety, and right and wrong.
We in the fire service have a powerful sense of right and wrong. It is why we respond to the tones in the middle of the night or at the end of shift. It is why we care so deeply for those strangers and neighbors we will show up to serve whenever they need us. It is why the calls that go sideways, or were tragic before we showed up, can linger on our hearts and challenge our purpose. Maybe even alter our ideas of who we are in relation to others.
How is your spirit these days, friends? How is your internal sense of balance and resolve? Who are your people when the calls pile up? How are you maintaining hope? I want to invite you, as you put focus on your tactical training, to put some time into your spirit. Your inner resolve is vital, and your sense of self is necessary. Because you are necessary.
Take care of yourself, take care of your company, watch out for each other.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain or Peer Support Personnel (I hope you have one in your ranks)
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Resilience and Holding Focus
At a strategic spot along the hallway of our house, right in line of sight, is our white board. Along with various little notes and neglected long term projects, there is a recurring list in the middle called “This Week.” The purpose is to give us a place to remember the weekly tasks that have to get done, such as walking the dog or cleaning the bathroom.
I walk by this list multiple times a day and often, its blank. Not because the dog has learned how to walk herself or that folks in our house suddenly clean the bathroom without prompting, but because we forget or some days, we simply don’t care. I’ll see that phrase, “This Week,” and the blank space beneath it, sigh to myself in my snarkiest voice and ask, “Yeah, what is this one going to be like?”
All you firefighters and emergency responders, how’s this week going? Feeling snarky and frustrated, or optimistic and ready to go?
In a prior post, I invited us to acknowledge that we might be feeling the emotions and acting out the behaviors of people who have endured (or are enduring) a traumatic event. Which admittedly seems strange to think about because we think traumatic events are car wrecks or significant medical episodes. As it turns out, traumatic events can be just about anything that shocks, scares, or otherwise alters our perception of the world. And the best part is, we don’t get to choose what is traumatic for us.
We can get stuck in a negative loop. Any one of us is prone to cycling between joy and anger, frustration and happiness. It becomes a problem when it affects our primary relationships, our jobs, or our ability to function at our best levels when we respond to a call.
Traumatic events, whether we like it or not, can change the way we see things and people. And its not about willpower or toughness or needing to “man up” (as if dudes are inherently stronger than women anyway) to get through the lows. When we don’t care, there isn’t much to convince us otherwise.
Fatigue, trauma, and perpetual frustration can build and wear down our resolve over long periods of time. Like, say, during a pandemic no one thought would last this long or would be this dangerous.
To work through this erosion of motivation and lack of care for others or self (the worst form of fatigue), I invite us to start practicing resilience. Resilience is our ability to overcome obstacles and adversity, or to put it another way, the ability to endure. Before we are allowed to operate a pump panel, we drill and practice. Before we run into burning buildings, we drill and practice. Practicing sharpens our skills so we can respond at our best abilities.
Building resilience to traumatic events is no different. Mental toughness and ego-driven willpower require incredible amounts of energy that will always run out. Willpower feels great because its fueled by adrenaline or endorphins. Over time, the body runs out of chemicals. The result of continuously “bearing down” or gritting our teeth to “get through it” is a complete shutdown of the system. Really, the brain, the heart, the gut, something will start to break down. We’ll absolutely run out of energy and when we crash, then the harder we’ve been working, the harder we’ll collapse.
What actually works consistently and can sustain us through long periods of frustration is resilience.
What does resilience look like? How can I get some if it?
We become resilient to the stuff of life by doing the things our bodies and minds need to stay healthy. Yeah, that’s it. Most of what I’m going to suggest is so utterly basic that they are barely to the level of common sense. And yet, when we are worn out, saddened, exhausted, and losing our ambition to care, the basic stuff is easy to ignore. It is typically the first stuff we stop caring about all together.
How to start building resilience:
Go for a walk. I told you these were lame and obvious. Get outside and walk the block. Or the lane. Or a trail. Walking stimulates breathing and heart rate and activates healthy chemicals in our bodies. Put on some shoes and get out there, every day.
Exercise. Not into walking? Then go online and find some exercises you can do at home. Again, exercise forces blood to flow, it activates muscle groups and forces the body to pump good hormones. Feeling good after even a light workout is exactly the point.
Drink water. The average healthy human only needs 4-6 cups of water a day, based on the Harvard Medical School. Granted, more is always better and we all tend to drink much less. Drinking water flushes toxic chemicals that build up in our system due to stress. For example, cortisol is a hormone designed to keep you awake in critical moments. Its great in the blood when we are rolling on a structure fire at 3am, it sucks when we’re exhausted but can’t sleep. Under stress, the body keeps pumping it into the bloodstream. Drink more water and flush out those chemicals.
Drink less. You know what I mean. Keep it to a beer or two and obviously, if you sip, you can’t respond to a call for eight hours. If you’re sipping more than usual, that’s a symptom of stress. If you don’t care that you are drinking more than usual, that’s a sign that you are worn out.
Change your Perspective. How can you look at the situation differently? How can you look at yourself differently? Emotional fatigue and traumatic stress can be rooted in seeing ourselves as responsible for the state we are in. By the way, going for a walk literally changes what you’re looking at every day. After your walk, drink water and call a friend.
Talk to your people. Resilience is about using the protective factors that surround our lives. Family, close friends, a faith leader, fellow firefighters, folks we trust with our information are some of the most important factors for maintaining our mental health. Our people give us purpose, we feel connected, and they encourage us to keep moving. Tell someone else what’s in your head, let them walk with you.
Ask for help. Our egos and inflated sense of willpower are the biggest obstacles we face during turmoil. They can keep us from reaching out for professional help with a therapist. There is a stigma to psychological care that I am adamant to refute. If you are feeling out of balance, call someone trained to sort through all those thoughts. Our department has an EAP, Employee Assistance Program. Every fire department should, and its free and confidential. Use it. If you don’t want to talk to an outsider, call your chaplain. If your department doesn’t have a chaplain, seriously talk to your officers and recruit one.
Resilience is not a quick fix, it’s a long range approach to readiness. It won’t keep us from being impacted by significant events, but it will give us ways to move through the chaos without falling into destructive behaviors. Practice these skills, pay attention to your emotions and behaviors, and take care of yourself. That way, when we are called on to take care of our neighbors, we are ready and willing to serve at the highest level.
Be well, friends, I’ll see you around the house.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain (I hope you have one in your ranks)
From the Chaplain’s Rack: Recognizing the Impact of Trauma
To my firefighting and emergency medical responding siblings, we need to talk about how to acknowledge that this pandemic might be messing with us. I’ll start with myself.
I was sitting at my computer in mid-April when I suddenly realized that I had been staring blankly for half an hour. I wasn’t watching anything, typing anything or thinking about anything at all. 30 minutes were gone and for a breath, I panicked.
I realized in that moment that I was empty. I had nothing left and my brain had shut down. The panic came from acknowledging that this disruption was utterly beyond my control. The wiring in my head turned off without me and here I was, nearly catatonic until I woke up.
For many of us, this pandemic has been more than an obnoxious inconvenience. It has been upsetting, disorienting, frustrating, and terrifying. These responses place it into the category of traumatic event. I thought as first responders, it might be helpful for us to recognize its potential impact on our lives.
What is a traumatic event? As defined by the National Institute of Mental Health, it is “a shocking, scary, or dangerous experience that can affect someone emotionally and physically.”
Not feeling shocked, scared, or fearful? You may not, that’s fine. What if I asked your spouse? Your partner? Your kids? What about your boss? They might agree with you, and they might not.
Here’s something worth knowing about traumatic events: you don’t get to choose what will be traumatic for you. And you don’t get to decide how trauma will affect you. That sucks for many of us to hear because women and men in the fire service are classic type A people who like to have a handle on whatever we’re doing. We love a good plan, as well as several backup options.
This one, unfortunately, isn’t in your control. Our brains are funny like that, they are influenced by everything around us. With that in mind, what you can do is choose to accept that it very well could happen, or be happening to you, and name it and figure out how to live with it.
The symptoms of suffering trauma run the spectrum from perpetual anger to virtual paralysis, from irrational tears to bouts of inappropriate laughter. It can mean impulsive behaviors, like snapping at your dog, drinking or smoking more than usual for you, or sudden needs to be highly active.
ITS ALL NORMAL.
None of these symptoms are weakness. They are not proof that you can’t cut it in the real world. More people are going through these symptoms than we might dare to realize.
ITS NORMAL. It’s okay to not be okay.
Let me be clear. It’s not okay to be destructive or to damage property. Its not okay to holler at your spouse or your family. Its not okay to start using or abusing or self-medicating. These are dangerous behaviors and if you find yourself moved toward any of these, call for help. It is better to pick up a phone, put down our pride, and use the resources available to find our balance again.
What do you do if your battery runs out?
First, a couple things I will NOT tell you do:
You do NOT need to remain positive. Positivity is annoying. Worse, it denies us the human ability to have any emotions other than happy ones. If you’re not in a good mood, that’s where you are at. You can still be respectful, but you don’t need to smile.
You do NOT need to get over it. It’s a classic American ideal that is great for hopping fences or crossing a bridge. Traumatic events are wiring issues buried deep in the brain with breathing and eating and the heart pumping. It is why, when people have panic attacks, their hearts race, their breathing quickens and they might even burst into tears or pass out. They are not willingly reacting these ways, its automatic and beyond their control. You can’t quick fix yourself, so don’t fight yourself.
What you can do (start with just one):
Breathe. That’s it. Keep breathing and realize that this autonomic system is reliable and good.
Be okay with yourself. You have to be okay with yourself, especially if you are not okay. If you are finding yourself irritable, exhausted in the middle of the day, or doing any other odd-for-you things, fess up to yourself. Then fess up to your spouse, partner, or close friend. Name it, start there.
Share it with someone. Do not carry this on your own. You might be good for a while, but you will wear out without recognition and care. I remember so little from my EMT training in the 90’s, but I remember this, “A dead EMT saves no one.” You need to give this to someone else. Find someone.
Work on your resilience. Cornell University defines resilience as “an individual’s ability to positively cope with stress and adversity – bouncing back to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of adversity to enhance flexibility and overall functioning.” Who doesn’t want more of that? Resilience is our turnout gear, it takes practice, and we’ll discuss it in detail later.
Below is a list of resources. All of them are confidential, safe, and available. There’s nothing wrong with you if you pick up the phone, and you no one needs to know. I can’t say it enough: they’re confidential.
You signed on to one of the best volunteer opportunities available. EMS and fire fighting are incredible ways to serve our neighbors. It weaves us into epic histories and cutting edge technology and training. While we are busy caring for others, though, we must take care of ourselves. So, take care of yourself, keep your batteries charged, recognize any changes that have happened in your daily behaviors, and keep track of each other. It is for your safety and for your company’s.
Safe Call Now (24-7 crisis hotline for first responders) 206-459-3020
National Suicide Prevention Hotline 800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line (National Suicide Prevention) “Hello” to 741741
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance Self-Assessment (mental health survey)
Employee Assistance Program-EAP (does your department have one?)
Fire Department Chaplain (I hope you have one in your ranks)
TrustNGrace 