July 29, 2025 • 77 mins
In this episode, Darryl Smithson shares his profound journey from a troubled childhood through military service, combat experiences, and ultimately finding faith in Christ. He discusses the impact of love and acceptance, the struggles with PTSD, and the importance of community and authentic relationships in healing. Darrell reflects on the legacy of a friend, Mark, who taught him about unconditional love, and emphasizes the transformative power of faith in navigating life's challenges. He encourages listeners to seek Christ for peace and purpose, regardless of their circumstances.
Mark as Played
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
He died during COVID and his wife asked me to do a video to share who Mark Watch was.
During that video, I realized something that Mark had done that I think was one of themost impactful things in my life.
I had heard so many times as I was changing, well, Christ loves you.
(00:21):
Christ loves you.
That was often told to me when I would tell people I was struggling with something and Ifelt like I didn't, you know,
really deserve any of love.
um And I really didn't believe anybody would ever love me.
And as I sat there and started talking about Mark, that's when I realized that it wasn'tMark looking at me saying, Christ loves you for those three hours.
(00:49):
It was this great big guy, because Mark was a bigger guy, sitting there going, man, I loveyou.
No matter what I said.
And it was horrible.
I've done some pretty bad things.
um And the fact that that guy kept looking at me saying, nope, I love you.
Mm-hmm.
(01:09):
realizing that he really meant that.
That it wasn't just something he was saying.
Made me realize that people could actually love me.
No matter how much I didn't understand it, that people could.
you
(01:31):
Welcome to Faith in the Line of Duty, a podcast where real people in uniform show howtheir faith in Christ has carried them through the toughest moments.
I'm Daniel Johnson, husband, father, and currently active duty in the United States AirForce.
Each episode I sit down with military members and first responders to talk about the powerof the gospel, the strength of community, and how faith transforms lives, even in the line
(01:54):
of duty.
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the host and do not constituteendorsement by the Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, or the U.S.
government.
Now here's your host, Daniel Johnson.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
(02:15):
Today I have the honor of introducing Darrell Smithson.
He's a great friend of mine.
He served in the firefighter role as an EMT, a sheriff's deputy, and in the Marine Corps.
So just really excited to have you on here today.
Thank you.
Excited to be here as well.
So I'd like to get started and just tell us a little bit about your childhood and whatthat was like.
(02:39):
uh That's very difficult for me.
I don't remember my childhood.
What I do know of it is mostly uh stories from my family.
I have some flashes of memory, let's put that away.
So for the most part, just the quick rundown of my family, of my childhood is m we lived arather, let's say, different life than most.
(03:04):
uh There were times in my life we lived in very,
let's just say places mostly we don't.
Like camps and stuff like that because of financial reasons.
Partly also because uh my mom married a alcoholic and he didn't work a lot.
(03:26):
And unfortunately he was very abusive to my mom and us kids.
uh And because of that, at some point, I don't remember a lot of the age and stuff, atsome point my
Dad came and took us and then for like a better term kidnapped us because he wouldn't letmy mom have any contact with us.
He did all kinds of weird things like not letting us get mail or phone calls.
(03:51):
We would go someplace expecting our mom to show up but he would go an hour early and thenwe would leave before she was supposed to be there.
And even if she called and said she was running late or whatever, he would make sure.
eventually that we got, I say lucky, my brother actually
got the mail from the mail woman day and it was a letter from my mom.
So that kind of changed things.
(04:12):
And so high school I was pretty, I would say, considered in a normal environment exceptfor the abusive dad.
I mean, there was a situation with me and him, I guess, where rather violent.
So that changed things too.
And by the net, I think the biggest thing I remember we get to tell about footballs wasone of my greatest events that I liked.
(04:35):
I was hopeful I was to go play that at least college level, but I wound up having tocouple knee surgeries when I was younger and eventually got told that wasn't going to
work.
I was a defensive end.
I played offensive guard and defensive end was where I loved to play.
And so I was, yeah, that was my goal when I got to college.
(04:59):
so unfortunately, like I said, defensive end and bad knees really don't go together.
Exactly.
So did you play any other sports in high school?
I did, I did things just as I considered it was just a staying shape for football.
I played basketball, I wasn't the greatest at it, but also with all the surgeries, most ofthe time that happened during basketball season.
(05:23):
So my basketball was like play for a little bit then surgery recovery period, know.
So then I did track.
I didn't do a lot of running for track, I did more of the shot put and the discus.
I really enjoyed it.
But I did, as a younger kid, I apparently did a lot of running and hurdles and stuff likethat.
(05:47):
But as I got older, I was more concerned about getting mass to play football.
So running wasn't my best thing.
But one day I was just, give you an example of that is one day I was running, decided tojump hurdles while I was going down to the discus spot to throw.
And I tripped on one of the hurdles and
(06:08):
came down and pinned the discus between the ground and my head.
um And the discus is dull, so it didn't cut my head, but it bruised it so bad thatliterally the blood rushing to the spot right here made my head pop open and took a few
stitches to fix that.
And the concussion was, you know, part of it.
Yeah.
(06:29):
I have a tendency to um hurt myself or get hurt.
I've knocked on them.
somewhere around 27 surgeries at this point in my life.
So um at what point did you join the Marine Corps?
I joined the Marine Corps, I think in 1988.
I was 18 or so.
(06:52):
Yeah, about a year after high school got out.
I was quickly learning that that's probably my best chance.
Plus, I really want to tell you, I I desired initially thinking about doing the SEALs, butbecause of my bad knees, the Navy pretty much said no.
Right.
And as I was walking out of the Navy recruiter office, this Marine sitting in an officeyelled at me and said, because apparently as he put it goes, why are looking so glum?
(07:18):
So I told him and he says, well, come in here and talk to me a minute.
so I walked in and sat down and we started talking about things and he goes, would youjoin Marine Corps if I can get you in?
I'm like, yeah.
He goes, because it's just as good as the SEALs.
He goes, we go on ships and we do everything they do.
(07:38):
And I said,
deal.
Yep.
And so that's he did he got me on a medical waiver for my knees.
So you know, that's what started my experience in the Marine Corps.
And so how was being in the Marine Corps when you first joined?
I love the Marine Corps from the beginning.
(07:59):
mean, yes, bootcamp's hard.
I won't go into the whole story, but I had a drill instructor that wasn't exactly right incertain aspects.
I got some injuries from bootcamp because of him, so did lot of other people, but he woundup getting court-martialed and kicked out.
That's how bad it was.
thing, yeah.
Yeah.
But that didn't change me a bit.
(08:20):
I just love the Marine Corps.
I loved everything about the aspect of
let's just say the combat part.
I say I love everything about it.
The part I don't like about the Marine Corps was what a lot of people don't, and that's alot of the civilian stuff that goes on, you know?
It's like every job, there's things you love, things you hate.
(08:41):
And I'm not, as I was once told, you're not a very good Marine when you're not in thefield.
You're a great field Marine, but a garrison Marine, you have some issues and like that.
Yeah, right.
So and you and so you joined in in the 80s and were you there for 9-eleven happening?
Do you remember what that was like?
(09:01):
Yes, I.
It's funny to me that 9-11 when 9-11 happened because when I I was in Desert Storm, DesertShield in 1991 and we were all like really told after all that happens like, look, you
know, you guys, this is your war.
You know, you'll never see war again.
(09:22):
You know, it's been so long since.
And so when 9-11 happened and that instantly all those conversations started happening.
about being act, because I was reservist.
And so there started to talk about being activated and all that stuff and what was goingto happen.
And so as I watched 9-11, it was hard to sit there and accept that, in my opinion, thingsthat we allowed to stay in place when we left 9-11, left Iraq.
(09:58):
I felt like that's part of the reason why this happened.
Truth be told, we don't know.
It's just, you know, we like to attribute to certain things.
And so what was your, if we back up a little bit, what was your part in Desert Storm?
What were you?
Were you in infantry?
Yes, I was part of an infantry regiment.
(10:18):
uh My MOS is access communication, so I was like the ground with the radio.
um So we were as a reserve regiment, we were basically tasked with the primary rearelement security.
(10:38):
And so our job was to patrol basically up to the frontline units.
um Unfortunately, I had a colonel that really wanted to go to war m and I got put on hissecurity detail as well.
And so there were many times we would go up as he put it to make sure we were providingthe frontline with the security behind them.
(11:02):
So I would spend a lot of time up on the frontline with some of the other units uh justwith our colonel.
And let's just say it did cause some issues.
um That was the most part that I dealt with besides in the communication aspect as in, youknow, we have what's called a common operation center.
So in the CLC, you would do a radio watch.
(11:25):
then so I kind of did both.
had my radio watch and then I'd go out and do the security detail.
And what would you say was the most challenging part about that time?
um I think the most challenging part for Desert Storm to the Shield was one, dealing witha colonel that was kind of a little out there.
(11:47):
But two, the uh initial struggle was at the time reserves had never been really activatedto do anything.
So there was a huge offset between active duty and reserves.
uh was struggle sometimes to get support.
um
And so that was the first initial thing is like that struggle there.
(12:10):
um And then as we progressed, you know, it was a learning experience for everybody.
We as a country weren't prepared for that.
Our communication assets weren't good.
We couldn't hardly talk to people.
um We were still using what was called a Pric 77 radio, which is what they used inVietnam.
Right.
Not much change.
(12:31):
And so we quickly realized we couldn't communicate with a lot of other
units, uh army, air force, because we didn't have the radios they did.
uh So that was a hard thing for us to do was to deal with the fact that not only asMarines, we kind of don't get everything that everybody else does, but as reservists, we
(12:51):
get even less.
And so that was frustrating.
ah How many times did you deploy?
Well Desert Shield and Desert Storm was my first deployment.
And then after 9-11, I deployed to Iraq.
ah It depends on how you count deployments.
(13:12):
To me, was just like, no matter what, if I was there a year, I considered it onedeployment.
The Marine Corps' deployments typically are seven months.
So like when I was there for a year, that was technically considered two deployments.
uh
I think all total by the time it got said and done between the years I spent in Iraq anddoesn't show I have somewhere around seven, eight deployments.
(13:36):
I ended up, I deployed so much and I did a lot of other kind of active duty stuff in thesummers because I had the freedom to do that.
I would join other units to go do things and um but I ended up with 13 years of activeduty as a service.
That's a little more than most people.
And so what was the first time that you experienced combat?
(14:00):
And as a Storm Radish Shield, we had a firefight type thing, but most of it was secondary,like, know, missiles coming in and stuff like that.
So that was the closest we ever really did then.
My first real one was in Iraq.
My first deployment, I'm trying to think that would have been...
(14:22):
So 9-11 was what, 2001?
And we went into Iraq 2003.
So 2003, 2004 was my first deployment.
And that was the first period of combat.
And for people that haven't been through that, what would you say that was like?
For me, I'm a little different.
(14:47):
At the time, I was not really a Christian.
So I lived a really different life than most.
And to me, the chaos of combat was really the first time I felt like I was home, because Ireally fit there.
(15:07):
the things I could do and the way I performed and everything made people, for lack ofbetter terms, desire me to be around.
And up to that point, I never felt that.
I always was, in my world, manipulating things to get what I want.
And it was strange for me that all of a sudden people wanted me to be there what I wasdoing, which is one reason why I deployed so much as a reservist is
(15:37):
I was good at what I did.
But also it started creating a little bit of em a split in understanding things becauseyou spend your entire life being told that doing the things you do in combat are not
(15:59):
right.
um And so your brain starts trying to struggle with
Okay, I'm doing all these things I've been told my entire life is not right.
But yet over here, everybody's praising me for what I do.
um And so it starts to kind of a mental, as I call it split structural mindset of saying,okay, I'm being told it's okay, but my brain still says it's wrong.
(16:25):
So during that time, what did you do to get through that, to kind of navigate that?
Well, like said, first off, it made me feel comfortable when I was home.
So part of it was I just, for lack of better terms, enjoyed being there.
But the split forced me to start trying to rectify my life.
(16:50):
Trying to understand is my purpose because it became obvious to me that I was willing andable to do things that most people are uncomfortable with, which I knew that law
enforcement.
So my primary goals in law enforcement was death investigation um and crimes againstpeople.
Well, I quickly realized that I could work scenes that most people would not go near.
(17:15):
um And so in Iraq, the first thing that really started coming to me was I wasn't quiteunderstanding how I was splitting my mind.
um I wasn't...
It was difficult because before that I had never questioned what I did.
And so I would say probably the biggest thing was after my first deployment, I did go tochurch.
(17:42):
um And I think like most people I was going because that's what was expected.
uh And I met a B-2 pilot at church one day and um we had a short conversation about thingsand my next deployment which
I think I was home maybe two months.
(18:02):
He just started sending me books because that was one of we found out about me, you know,is I like to read.
And where I was stationed initially in Iraq, there wasn't availability of getting, youknow, a lot of books or anything.
So he would just mail me books, lots of books.
(18:24):
But he mailed me books that I would never have normally read.
faith-based books.
um
When I started reading them, it partly helped me start focus on something different thancombat.
um So when I did, let's just say have a rough day or whatever, I would come back and a lotof times I would read those books to kind of get away from it.
(18:51):
And there's something about reading about Christ and God and the things that those bookstalk about.
were starting to be things I was starting to desire in my life.
uh The sense of belonging made me want to feel like that I belong somewhere.
uh And I knew that this combat was a limited situation unless I died.
(19:18):
uh So I think that was what first started to help me was the belief that maybe there wassomething else out there besides combat.
And that was probably different than anything you've experienced.
yeah, had never, I'd never considered that I was here for any purpose.
(19:40):
m I'd never considered that there was actually, for lack of better terms, something outthere that truly desired me.
That they wanted me to be a part of them.
That loved me, because I didn't understand the word love.
I mean, quite frankly, in my mind it was
(20:02):
a lie.
By looking at and talking about things from my past, it seemed to me that love was only aselfish thing.
People wanted to make themselves feel good.
ah It was a mental concept that people created uh because people wanted to feel likesomeone loved them.
(20:22):
They would find ways to make them feel that way.
But to me, it was just a word and basically a lie that people told themselves.
What would you say as we kind of wrap up like your time in the Marine Corps, what would beyour most memorable moment ah from those deployments?
um I would think that one of my most memorable moments of the core is the whole aspect oflearning even more about the nature of humans.
(20:59):
ah My entire life I've kind of catalyzed myself outside of the human race.
As things were changing there, one of my biggest thing was I got activated a lot because Iwas a cop, a Marine.
(21:21):
And so over there they were trying to get cops and Marines and everybody to train Iraqis.
um And so that's what I started doing.
I uh literally was sitting out on my own just to go meet with what was called Mitz Pitsand work and do things with Iraqis.
So.
I kind of just went anywhere I wanted.
(21:42):
I would come back with reports to the Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel of the regiment,explaining how the Iraqis were doing, and I would help plan the operations with the
regiment.
Learning that in the midst of all that, it didn't matter whether it was an American Marinesoldier uh or an Iraqi soldier or human or civilian or whatever, um the desires were
(22:08):
pretty much the same.
They wanted their families to be safe.
They wanted their kids to grow up and be educated and find a job.
And so trying to rectify what we would, I could watch what humans could do to each other,but the same side look at, but everybody just wants to live a life.
(22:30):
And so that was probably the most memorable thing from that country.
That's definitely a different perspective to look and I feel like you kind of need tohave, know, especially with seeing all that.
And I'm sure that they appreciated what you were doing too.
Somewhere.
I can tell anybody there were some of greatest combat people I served with for Iraqis.
They were very bold, they were courageous, and were willing to fight for their country.
(22:54):
They made it very clear that they weren't fighting for their tribe, which is kind of athing over there that most people don't understand.
But they were very clear now that we're fighting for our country of Iraq.
We want our country to be uh a strong country.
How did you become a first responder?
Well, like I said, I was a reservist in Marine Corps.
(23:14):
So for the 24 years I was in the Marine Corps Reserves, I also had a career in the outsideworld.
so I, because of some of the injuries from the Marine Corps boot camp, I stayed reserveside.
And so I started college.
And because originally my plan was to go active duty, but like I said, there was somethings that happened.
(23:36):
So I wound up going reserve.
And so I decided to take advantage of the GI Bill and start college.
oh And so aside from the Marine Corps, what had sparked my interest was other things thatwere kind of journal and based.
So I wanted to become a cop.
uh I was always interested in the, for like a better term, the criminal mind, specificallythe kind that uh are serial killers and stuff.
(24:05):
mean, I was very interested in on again,
the way the mind worked.
So I went to college and got a degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology.
uh And from that, I started working uh part-time.
Well, I did an internship at the sheriff's department in Johnson County.
(24:25):
And from that, I went to work for them.
Because one, I was paying for my own college.
So that became a job while I was in college.
uh
And then based off of that, I started in fire investigations, became a certified fireinvestigator.
And from that, I started getting interested in firefighting.
um I started getting interested in being an EMT when I was a deputy because I was showingup on these medical scenes first and had no idea what to do.
(24:51):
um I knew the basics, but I mean, I'm really like frustrated because it's taken 10, 15more minutes for an ambulance to show up and I'm just kind of standing there.
So I...
went and became an EMT and the sheriff was willing to help build me a med kit that went inthe back trunk of my car.
So when I would show up on scenes, I would have oxygen and all the other trauma relatedstuff.
(25:14):
So I actually got to do things and yeah.
Yes.
I, an EMT, I almost did more work for my first probably five years as an EMT as a deputy.
then I joined the
rural fire department in Johnson County.
(25:35):
And during that process, did some EMT work, but mostly did firefighting.
And then from there, I got started working part time for Warrensburg Fire and working parttime for an EMT service at out of Holton, Missouri.
And so,
(25:56):
From all that, just started working part-time, full-time.
eventually, I switched.
After a lot of my deployments, I couldn't sit very well.
sitting in a patrol car became a problem.
And so I wind up switching from full-time law enforcement, part-time fire, to full-timefire, part-time law enforcement.
I always joke with people and tell them that I got tired of eating donuts.
(26:19):
So I joined the fire department and started making lasagna.
um
You know, that's where I kind of got my careers together.
And then towards the end of my career, I started, that's when I really got changed byChrist.
Because before that, I wasn't a guy out there to save and serve the public.
It was more of I was out there to, you know, meet bad guys and run into burning buildingsand all that stuff.
(26:46):
But as Christ changed me, I started realizing I was meeting people in the worst day oftheir lives sometimes.
And so I started really trying to make it clear to people that, you know, I was there forthem, that I wanted to be there to help them with their day.
I don't care whether I was a cop arresting you or whether I was a firefighter coming in toput your house, you know, if your house was on fire, put it out.
(27:15):
Or if I was an EMT helping you with a medical problem.
I wanted to make you understand that I cared.
So at what point did you surrender your life to God?
I know that you said you were reading some faith-based books during your deployment Butwhen was your point where you decided to give your life to Christ?
Well, initially I was asked to go to a thing called Men's Accounting down in Lubbenton,Missouri.
(27:41):
And that was probably in 2016, I think.
So I went there and it was a great experience.
initially it wasn't a big change.
What happened is my entire life, I basically never really associated emotions at all.
(28:02):
I still don't.
But one of things that started happening when I came home my last time during thesurgeries, I had several surgeries after my last deployment for some reasons.
And during that period though, I also started having some anger issues, which like I said,I'd never had any type of thing that really came out like that.
(28:25):
And so it was getting really bad.
I mean, I had pretty explosive issues, destroyed things and stuff, and it was very commonto happen easily three, four, five times a month.
So I went to this event, men's encounter.
was probably maybe a week later.
(28:49):
I realized I hadn't exploded for a week.
And then the next thing I know, I'd gone another week.
After the second week, started thinking, okay, what's different?
And the only thing that had changed is I'd gone to this men's encounter event.
And so from reading, you know, the books and that happening, I started getting even morelike, okay, there really might be something to this um that can really be a part of my
(29:15):
life.
So I was asked to go again.
They do it every other month.
And so I went the next time.
um This time I was a little bit more open.
to listening and stuff.
I won't say I made a big change.
After that, I came home and some things changed.
(29:36):
But the biggest thing I noticed again was that the anger explosions were even furtherapart.
uh
pulling back those layers.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you you hear a lot of people about what I call miraculousconversions, like they have something that happens and they instantly surrender the life
of God and stuff.
I think because the way I am, took the God knew it was going to take time.
(30:00):
It was going to take a slow process of showing me who He is.
So again,
You know, I was asked to go to third time and this time I was like really starting tolike, okay, I think I'm going to try to really understand.
(30:20):
And during this time, something that seemed to just come across me as I listened to a guynamed Ryan Huff, sit and give his testimony, because that's kind of what happens there.
You hear some testimonies and teachings.
Well, he had been a teacher of what was called spiritual warfare.
uh session, the first time I went.
(30:42):
um And this time he was up there giving his testimony about how he failed.
But he kept talking about every time he would come back to God, God was there.
Mm.
And for the first time, that's when I said, hey, that's the God I need.
(31:04):
I need the God that every time I fail will still be there because I knew I was going tofail.
And so I went to Ryan to ask how to get that God.
Ryan later turned around, looked at me he says, I don't know what your problem is.
goes, but when you figure it out, he goes, your testimony will reach thousands.
(31:24):
And so
During that period, I felt like God really wanted me to tell somebody who I was.
Every bad thing I did.
um And the only person there was a guy named Mark Watts.
And so I fought it for several hours.
Eventually I gave up and I went to Mark and I start off with looking at him like, man,you're going to hate me when you hear this.
(31:53):
Mark looked at me and goes, nope, I love you.
So for the next almost three hours, I told this man, and every time I was like, you'regoing to, I know you hate me, Mark would go, nope, I love you.
So after all that happened, he had gotten another guy that was kind of similar to me withsome issues that I had been through.
(32:13):
They said, hey, until you're ready to give this up and you're willing to come to God andpray and ask for him to take this, you're going to fight it.
So they convinced me to go get prayed upon.
They went and they got some of them in there that still this day, the impact of my life, Ijust, I wish I could talk more to them, but know, life separates you and I've got, I don't
(32:43):
go like I used to.
And so they prayed over me and I came home and Mark kept talking to me.
I started getting more involved in church and started letting people kind of talk to meand get things changed in my life.
Man, it's just been one crazy ride after I started changing.
(33:04):
mean, it wasn't like instantly everything was great.
I struggled for probably two years of trying to figure out who God wanted me to be.
One of the biggest reasons, like I said, again, I didn't understand love.
And when you don't understand love, it's hard to know who God is.
So it took me a long time to get that figured out.
(33:25):
And Mark probably had a big impact on your life.
Yes.
um Initially, I didn't know how big of an impact Mark had, um Mark wound up getting cancerand dying.
ah Sorry to hear that.
That was during COVID.
ah It really was.
(33:46):
It's a hard thing for me to again, to understand because he was such a man of faith.
And you hear people talk, literally people had told me that God could heal all my medicalproblems.
Cause like I said, I have a lot of nerve damage.
I have a lot of issues.
oh But they would tell me if you had enough faith, he'd heal you.
(34:07):
And so I struggled with that initially, but when Mark died,
I was absolutely convinced at that point that that was not true.
Because there's no way that man and his wife and family did not have enough faith.
um
(34:30):
He died during COVID and his wife asked me to do a video to share who Mark Watch was.
So I tried to do the video several times and I just couldn't get it going.
Well, I finally got to the point where I absolutely had to get it done.
mean, know, the funeral's happening and she needs a video on.
(34:51):
So I just start talking.
And it was during that video.
I realized.
something that Mark had done that I think was one of the most impactful things in my lifewas I had heard so many times as I was changing, well, Christ loves you.
(35:12):
Christ loves you.
But that was often told to me when I would tell people I was struggling with something andI felt like I didn't really deserve any of love.
um And I really didn't believe anybody would ever love me.
And as I sat there and started talking about Mark, that's when I realized that it wasn'tMark looking at me saying, well, Christ loves you for those three hours.
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It was this great big guy, cause Marvin's a bigger guy, sitting there going, man, I loveyou.
No matter what I said, how, and it was horrible.
I've done some pretty bad things.
And the fact that that guy kept looking at me saying, nope, I love you.
Mm-hmm.
realizing that He really meant that, that it wasn't just something He was saying, made merealize that people could actually love me.
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No matter how much I didn't understand it, that people could.
And so that, to some degree, is part of my ministry.
I tell his wife all the time that when I help someone come to Christ, I will let her knowthat Mark got another one.
Because I tell people, I truly believe that what helps me bring people to Christ is doingthe same thing.
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I tell people Christ loves them at times, but when I initially meet you, I want you tounderstand that I love you.
And that's probably exactly what you needed to hear too.
I mean, with everything that you went through, through your childhood and combat and allthat.
yeah, I had no understanding of love.
I had no belief that anybody loved me.
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ah Mom, dad, you know, all that stuff.
I struggle with that kind of relationship.
uh Me and my mom, which is crazy, have built a huge relationship.
My dad and me never got to.
He died before that happened.
um You know, and it's hard for people to understand that to me, like when my dad died andI look at him, it's just a person in a box.
(37:23):
I don't have this sense of loss or uh stuff like most people describe.
um But, you know, just like with my mom, I don't have what people talk about like thisemotional connection.
I mean, I have more of emotional responses now than ever have.
And quite honestly, I don't understand it.
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To me, I just feel uncomfortable, good or bad.
It's still the same thing.
I'm uncomfortable and I want to change it.
um God's teaching me that it's okay to be uncomfortable.
I can look at somebody and be uncomfortable and tell them, love you.
So your journey of faith in Christ, how is your relationships with people and how have youchanged?
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Well, first and foremost is my family's been very gracious.
I've been able to come back and develop relationships with all of them.
uh My mom literally, uh when she left her husband, that was abusive.
She left him oh one night when he took her down to the marina at a river and playedRussian roulette with her.
(38:32):
Yeah.
So she showed up my house terrified, but said she couldn't do it anymore.
um
And so again, just the way things work out as a deputy, um I one night was out patrollingand sure enough, I wound up getting behind a vehicle that my stepdad was driving.
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Like I he was an alcoholic.
So I pulled him over from the way he was driving.
He was really drunk.
And then he started talking about how he was looking for mom and he was gonna, yeah.
for lack better terms, solve some problems that he thought was there.
And I looked at him and I made very clear that he was going to jail.
um And for a few minutes, things got a little tense because I told him he was going oneway or the other.
(39:24):
um But he decided not to fight and he wound up going to jail.
um And then just for quick reference of how things went is a few, after he got out, waslike maybe
Two weeks later, he got up and walked into the front room of the house and his heartexploded and he died.
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So my mom did live to him till death did him apart.
But that cause a huge thing in her life and I won't go into her story, but that wassomething that haunted her for a long time.
But my mom and me started becoming someone that talked a lot.
(40:07):
I tried to build the relationship with her.
Initially it was rough.
uh She was so afraid of me, she really wouldn't call me.
It took like three years before she would be willing to call me on the phone.
um But eventually she and me got to the point where I was actually building a kind of abarn of indium in my backyard that she was gonna live in half of.
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She went from being that afraid of me to where she's living in my backyard.
And, you know, during one of the periods where me and my mom were talking, I shared mytestimony because, like I said, she was kind of haunted by feeling like she couldn't be
forgiven because of her husband dying, because she left, in her mind.
(40:52):
So I felt it was necessary to give her the testimony that I was giving to thousands ofmen, because that's men's encounter.
uh Initially, when I was going there, there were just hundreds.
I was giving my testimony too, but...
The last few times I went, there were over a thousand that was getting my testimony.
And Ryan was right.
(41:13):
I mean, literally I've given my testimony, probably the best I've figured over to over10,000 people.
So I had to give my mom that because I want her to understand if God could forgive me thethings I had done, he could definitely forgive her.
So one of the questions that I wanted to ask her is I give
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You were so afraid of me, why did you come to my house instead of my other brothers thatwere there?
oh And her response was she didn't know anybody meaner than Rick but me.
So.
Good or bad, that's why she showed up.
(41:54):
So again, that's how much Christ was changing things in my life.
So me and my mom, talk a lot, we have a lot of God conversations, but I just enjoy it.
I have learned, I feel like my ministry is to teach men and women that developing brothersand sisters in Christ, and I mean significant ones, when you're young and even when you're
(42:18):
old, but learning to find them and love them unconditionally.
And how can someone do that?
know, we go to church, but how can you have another, uh how can you have an authenticrelationship with another brother or sister in Christ?
Well, the authentic relationship first comes with what you always hear, being willing tobe vulnerable, being willing to be honest, and being willing to do it when you need to.
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The problem with, I see most men is if we start to fail, most of time we don't reach out.
We try to tell ourselves that I can do this, I can stop this myself.
um And I try to understand that that real brother,
you're going to have problems with.
There's going to be times you probably want to hit him in the face, um which is why I tellthem if you can learn to develop this relationship with a real brother before you get
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married, well, when you get married, loving that beautiful woman is a lot easier once yourealize that you can love that stupid guy.
And that relationship should be one that just builds you.
It should be one that allows you to be told, hey, dude, you're a negative person.
You need to fix that.
(43:33):
because negativity is lack of faith, you know?
um Or he's willing to tell you, hey, you're being an angry person.
We need to work on that.
um They're willing to be honest.
They love you so much they don't care about your feelings.
They love you enough that they care about your eternity.
And so, yeah, you go through the heartaches.
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There's gonna be times, because there's gonna be times when you're being honest withpeople, there's gonna be times they're gonna upset you.
There's gonna be times when you're just hanging out.
It's not gonna be fun.
something's gonna happen and you're gonna get, you know, in disagreements.
But it's through this process, just like with your wife, your children, it doesn't matter,that builds that bond that makes you realize that they care so much about you, that they
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will always be there.
I tell people that kind of brother is the kind that at three o'clock in morning when theirphone rings and it's you, they don't wait for you to even say what's going on.
They've already grabbed the car keys and they're driving towards your house.
They can always turn around.
But if you're calling at three in the morning, they already know something's going on.
(44:42):
So I tell you that you need at least two or three of those.
Um, partly because you can never rely upon one person cause they will fail you.
We're human.
Every brother will fail you.
having two or three is necessary.
So you got more than one to count on.
Um, proximity matters.
(45:03):
I can develop that lifelong.
mean, and I do, have some brothers that we've committed to each other for life.
Now it doesn't mean we live in the same house.
Doesn't mean I see him every week.
We talk on the phone every week.
We try to see each other at least monthly, but every week we're on the phone.
We can, you know, hey, what's going on in your life?
How's things going?
(45:25):
So for our lifetime, I know I've got these brothers.
Now, some that I've developed move away, because I live in a transient world here, becauseI live in an air base, a white and Air Force base is close to where I live.
I have a college where I live.
So I meet a lot of people that are moving.
(45:45):
So I don't shy away from committing to somebody.
But I know that...
When they move on, my commitment and minor actions in their life is gonna be a lot less.
So I tell people proximity matters.
You gotta have people that are your brothers in Christ where you can reach out and touchthem.
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And I do mean literally touch them.
The other thing that I've learned is uh kind of weird for me, but uh is that hugs matter.
Authentic hugging somebody says more than you will ever say to them.
not like a physical touch person when you were
No, physical touch, um again, because things that my childhood and I think and a lot ofother stuff, oh to me, physical touch is disgusting.
(46:38):
I don't want to say disgusting in the aspect that...
I don't like physical touch.
um Not because I'm trying to be a tough guy or whatever, it's simply because it makes mefeel pretty um weird.
ah I really don't know how to explain it completely, but it's just not something that mybrain likes.
(47:04):
But as I've done it, because I feel like that's what God has called me to do, is to showpeople
I accept you for who you are, whether I know you or not.
Matter of fact, what I tell people is true, heartfelt loving somebody and telling them Iaccept you fully for who you are.
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It's easier to do it with a stranger than with a person you know.
Matter of fact, I think that's part of what makes marriage so mysterious.
If you go into a house and you've been married for somebody, to somebody for 10, 15 years,five years sometimes, for you to authentically walk up to that person and take them in
(47:53):
your arms and say, I love you for who you are right now, at this moment, you gotta let goof everything from the past and you gotta not worry about a thing in the future.
You gotta look at them as the beautiful creation Christ has them.
Powerful.
And it's hard.
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To me, it's one of the hardest things that people do when they're married, is to bewilling to continue to see them the way Christ sees them.
So because of all that, yes, touching is hard, but I hug everybody.
And yes, when I hug you for the first time, I love you as much then as I do when I hug youthe hundredth time.
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I believe that's part of what helps me change people's lives.
I personally feel I can have watched my desire to hug somebody make them willing to talkabout Christ because they realize I care.
And that must be for people that know you from your childhood too, to see you hug people.
(49:06):
I'm sure that that's pretty interesting for people to see too.
Yes, my family, that was very difficult.
um Now I will also admit for a lot of them, it was very difficult because of things I'ddone in the past with them and other people that was kind of made them uncomfortable.
There's things about me that still scare people.
(49:28):
think certain ways I'll act if something happens.
that really is, there's people who watched me from my law enforcement firefighter careerum that have
even told me that some of them are in church and in Christ because they watched the changein me.
Because yes, if I could start doing the things I was doing, then there had to be somethingto it.
(49:53):
So looking back from your time in combat and overseas, and now that you've beentransformed by Christ, how can you kind of deal with the stuff that you've seen over there
in the PTSD?
Yeah, there's a lot of things that when I first came back that started showing me how tohandle some things different.
(50:14):
I went to the thing uh called the men's charge, uh or excuse me, I went to what wasoriginally, it's called men's counter.
So that one's in Lebanon, Missouri.
And then as I've continued to be involved, that one of my friends who went to that alsohas created something similar called the men's charge that he does uh locally.
um And so that.
(50:37):
involvement continues to help me because the more I continue to follow Christ and worktowards loving and helping other people, it helps me.
um I've been blessed by being put around men who dealt with stuff like that uh and dealwith it.
I work for a company called Strategos International that does a lot of training tomilitary law enforcement civilians in learning how to handle weapons, but as well as
(51:06):
We teach how to set up church security and, you know, active school shooting and all thisstuff.
So we're being taught how to use what we've used, what we've learned, how to apply it andhelp other people.
And again, as Christians, we make it clear to them how we love them.
Many people tell us like off our range, we've literally had people come to Christ on therange because they see how we love them.
(51:32):
You know, they want to know why are you guys so different?
And so we let, know, then we love to tell them who Christ is.
um So that helps a lot because I get to continue reminding myself that when all the badfrom my past starts coming at me, because it does, um sometimes a whole lot worse than I
(51:53):
want it to, because I still struggle with feeling like I deserve to have this life.
I don't deserve to feel this good.
And I don't, but Christ...
in me allows me to have that and it's because of Him because if I'm doing it right, I'mnot living for me, I'm living for Christ.
(52:15):
And so I don't have to carry all the shame, the guilt.
Matter fact, like I tell most people, I wouldn't carry it.
I reached a point where I, even after I came to Christ, I reached a point where I didn'tfeel like I was able to go the right way.
Again, because of the love issue, I was trying to serve people but
I was serving them out of obligation, feeling like, well, Christ says, hey, you gotta godo this, you gotta do that.
(52:39):
And yeah, you can do a lot of good things, but if it's not a God thing, if God's notsending you there, it's not gonna work out.
um So eventually I had to pray to learn how to what love is, and for three years God'sbeen trying to teach me that.
m And through that process, I realized that by accepting love
(53:04):
based off of who Christ says it is.
God didn't come serve us first.
In John 3.16 he said, so loved the world.
He loved us first.
Then He came to serve us by saving us.
And so that is where I started realizing that my job isn't to go serve people out ofobligation.
(53:29):
My job was to learn to love people and then serve them.
And so through that, I feel like there's times where God does, sends me to love a personand accept them and do whatever I can to help them.
And all that allows me to, when the time comes and the shame and the guilt and all thethings, I mean, I've literally had people look at me after I give my testimony and say,
(53:54):
how do you justify being alive?
Well, I reached that point and I had to question that.
um
I won't go into the whole thing, but God did a crazy thing that kind of kept me from doingit uh because I had told God that I was going let Him have the last thing I refused to
(54:14):
give to Him because I'd give Him my money and all this other stuff, but my home, mysolitude, I didn't want to give up, but eventually I did.
um And He wound up moving a whole family in my house for several months.
And it was kind of during that month period I was...
Not because of them, but before they moved in, I decided that whenever I paid off myhouse, then I my mom was set, and I was going to kill myself because I felt like I was
(54:43):
going go backwards, that I was going to start hurting people again.
And I would rather go to hell than take somebody else with me again.
So I was all set in my mind that was going to happen like in December.
In October, this family moved in.
They're supposed to move in for just a few weeks, and they didn't move out till March.
um
(55:03):
And so, I'm not going to lie, things went really bad with them, um but it doesn't matterto me.
I love them.
I love all of them.
The husband, the wife, the kids, they're still my family.
But God did that and made me realize that I don't have to carry it.
(55:27):
And when I'm afraid I'm going go backwards, I don't have to do anything but look at Godand just try to follow where He's taking me.
And so, yeah, when I wake up and I start thinking that's where my brothers come in, I callthem, I'm like, hey, dude, I just need to know that I'm not worthless, that I have a
(55:50):
purpose, that there's a place for me.
And I tell everybody that my goal is that the day I die, if I'm sitting by myself in arocking chair, reading the red letters, I know that's because it's enough.
Because I told my family was graceful, but one of my brothers and me really didn't have arelationship.
(56:13):
Because when I was a deputy, he has a drug issue.
got to a point he was going to kill me and I didn't care.
But then he started telling people he was going to just kill any deputy if couldn't findme.
So back in the old Pager's days, my Pager lit off and I started calling these people thatwere mutual relationships of ours.
(56:35):
And he started telling me that.
So I went to the sheriff, said I'm gonna go find my brother.
Sheriff didn't like that idea, but I didn't care.
So he made me take at least another deputy with me.
So I wound up finding my brother about an hour later.
um Let's just say I was faster on the draw than he was.
ah So he decided not to finish drawing the gun he had in his waistband.
(56:57):
ah I wound up arresting him.
He went to prison for about three or four years, something like that.
So we didn't really like have a great relationship.
um But God told me to go love him.
And so I did.
um And we had a really rough time for the first year and a half because he was goingthrough some court.
(57:19):
related issues and he was still dealing with drugs.
um And we had a lot of rough times where our paths came up.
But I started finding out that he fell alone, that nobody cared.
So I've been trying to prove to them that Christ cared.
And so every time, everything I've done for him, I make it clear to him, hey, it's not me,it's Christ.
(57:43):
um But he's clean right now.
We have a relationship.
It's still hard because we don't see eye to eye.
But I love him like crazy.
And God can transform any relationship.
It doesn't matter how messy it is.
(58:04):
Me and him have had God conversations.
He has literally done the sinner's prayer with me, even though that everybody says that wewere all saved when we were kids.
I tell them I don't care.
I wanted to hear it.
I want to know that you know you're saved.
I got baptized again when I was a few years after I changed because I wanted to know forsure that I let people know who my Lord and Savior was.
(58:31):
So,
It's just amazing to watch Christ move in my life.
it's, like I said, I gave you my house and for two and a half years somebody's lived in myhouse.
And it's not been easy.
I mean, there's been some really serious issues with some of the people that have livedthere, but it doesn't matter.
(58:51):
You know, it's not my house and I love them.
And that's what has to prevail.
And I think that's an encouragement for other people too, because the Lord wantseverything that we have.
And if we're still holding on to any aspect of it, ah then we need to really assess somethings for sure.
Yeah, but I also tell people, learning to know, like I said, the difference between goodthings and bad things, learning to know when you're called by Christ to do something and
(59:21):
be willing to accept that it's not going to be easy.
That if I could do this on my own, then Christ ain't doing it.
have to be...
Like I when I hug somebody, I know that's Christ.
When I go love my brother, I know it's Christ.
When I let someone move in my house,
I know it's Christ.
All of those things are not who I am or who I was.
(59:46):
All those things are hard for me.
I want to be, I'm a naturally selfish person.
I don't want to give up anything, but I will give up.
I give up money constantly.
I'm not going to try to go talk about what I do because I don't want it to look like it'sme.
I don't want people seeing that, well, look what he thinks he's doing good things.
Look, people, I have.
(01:00:07):
I fight with the same things constantly still.
I'm still selfish.
Sometimes I still want to hurt somebody because they irritate me.
But all that dies less and less.
The power all that has is getting less and less.
I once was told by somebody that because of the way I've lived my life, the reason why Ican relate to everybody is because the sin of my past is like Walmart.
(01:00:33):
You could just walk in and pull whatever sin it is off the shelf.
and me and you can talk about it, because I've done it.
um And I don't often talk lot about how bad I was.
I keep saying I'm bad.
It's not because I'm trying to make me sound like I'm this, because sometimes the problemwith most of us is we want to glorify our past sins.
(01:00:54):
I don't want that.
I say that because I want you to understand that there's nothing Christ can't free youfrom.
And yes, if you need to come talk to me,
because you want someone who will understand your sin, then come talk to me, because I'llunderstand it.
But the biggest thing I'm gonna do is let you know Christ understands it.
(01:01:18):
So what would you say to people that are first responders right now?
What would be some practical uh faith based wisdom that you would have them do?
For anybody, first responders, military, know, people talk a lot about PTSD.
I tell everybody that there's so many different types you don't understand.
(01:01:38):
There are acute PTSDs where something significant happens in your life.
um PTSD often requires you to have a sense of hopelessness.
So like you can go to combat and you can watch a friend get killed and you'll feelhopeless about what you couldn't do anything to help them.
emergency responders, sometimes it's a career long hopelessness that through your careeryou see things that upset you because you just see how there's nothing you could have done
(01:02:04):
um from seeing, you know, young children in bad situations to seeing your own friends andfamily go through stuff.
I tell everybody that the significance of your hope is Christ.
And it has to start somewhere with you submitting to Christ.
(01:02:26):
And that is what will change your life.
And yes, it may not be done in 30 seconds.
It may not be done in three hours or three days and three months.
But start.
Look at Christ.
Give Him a chance.
Because the peace you're seeking, the freedom you're seeking, will only come from Him.
(01:02:53):
You have to be willing to give Him it.
And that's what gets the changes when you start learning how to give Christ everything.
Everybody talks about, He wants us, He freed us from our sins.
Yes, but that's such a small part.
Yes.
(01:03:14):
It's great and it's huge in the aspect that that's what gives us our righteousness, thechance to be right with God, the chance to be able to go spend eternity with God who loves
me more than I can even imagine.
That Christ took, but Christ also says, me your whole burden.
A burden is something you can't solve.
(01:03:36):
I think
Often we mistake the difference between what's called a burden and your load.
To me, a burden is when you can't fix it.
Like my brother was having some legal issues and financial issues, my brother couldn't fixthat.
Christ could.
He sent me to do some things that my brother could do.
I had to help carry the burden my brother could not carry.
(01:03:59):
But there's things that are my brother's load, and he has to carry those.
And I have to know when to let him do that and to step back.
oh
As a professional people, even in normal type jobs, you pick up burdens and you're notgoing to be able to carry them.
Well, those burdens even other people can't carry.
(01:04:20):
Only Christ can carry.
And so when those burdens of my past come and I feel weighed down like I can't go anotherday, and there's times where I don't feel like God's sitting there beside me.
There's times I feel like I'm the only person in world and I'm still the worst person.
Thank
(01:04:41):
I still know that I can just grab the Bible.
The promises are for me.
The promises are for you.
God loves you.
That's never changed.
He's there for you, whether you feel it or not.
I can hold on to the promises.
If nothing else, I can hold on to that Bible.
(01:05:04):
I know it's true.
Why do I know it's true?
Because I've seen it work.
I've seen the power of those red letters.
I've seen the faithfulness of Christ.
I may not always feel it, but I know it's true.
And if nothing else, I'm going to hold on to that promise.
(01:05:28):
And someday I know I will be back where I know my Lord and my Savior's sitting with me.
I'll know it because I will feel it again.
But if I don't, I don't quit.
I pray, I seek, I go to my brothers, I get reminded, I do all the things that I know arewhat's needed.
(01:05:50):
I read the red letters.
But yeah, there's still some nights where all I can do is...
Lay in bed and just keep telling myself, I'm not letting go of you.
What a beautiful way to explain it.
That's such great advice.
I really appreciate that.
I think I want to dive into a little bit of uh your time as a death investigator, kind ofwhat that was like and uh how you were able to bring closure to some of the families.
(01:06:17):
Yeah, that was really unique for me, again, to show how God used me when I wasn't evenchanged yet, um and the significance of that.
So, first and foremost, one of the biggest things I learned was, yes, that's the lastthing the Bible will ever do for you on this earth, is to figure out how you died, because
(01:06:39):
sometimes it's not in good ways.
um And sometimes it's a powerful thing that God can do for people.
ah
I've investigated a lot of SIDS death, uh Sudden Infant Death Syndrome that people havehad.
And I've watched it change people's lives.
(01:07:00):
It's mothers and fathers who lose their kids that way.
I can't imagine.
I never had my own kid.
I can't imagine how hard that is.
uh My mom lost my brother when I was 18.
My uh brother Ray was killed in a car train accident.
which really changed my dad too.
But I watched that happen.
(01:07:24):
um I watched mothers as their kids.
I had a friend kill himself in my backyard and I watched what that did to his mom andfather.
So as a deputy, I learned that a mother and father knowing that there was nothing theycould do, that their child...
(01:07:47):
died because of bad things of the brokenness of this world.
I've watched how that's helped them understand and work through that death.
Now, as adults, same thing.
I've watched where people have had to deal with issues um with people being uh killed bysomeone else.
(01:08:12):
I've watched young, when people commit suicide, it's hard for families.
um Because of back then my, uh let's just say disconnect.
from emotions, I've been able to sit with families and explain to them issues like whysome people do it um and try to get them understand that, you know, when someone does
(01:08:40):
that, there's nothing you could do.
I basically feel like they're not in the right mind.
m That's why I don't believe when someone says like when they commit suicide, they'recondemned to hell.
I don't believe that.
I believe that by the time someone reaches that point, they are mentally not at the pointwhere they are understanding truthfully what they do.
(01:09:04):
um And so I think when I've helped people understand that, it again helps them workthrough it.
By no means have I have a wisdom.
Even back then, I knew that I wasn't saying something that was...
drastically changing things.
I think what I was saying was just giving them a chance to start to understand.
(01:09:27):
it was, and I know for most of them it's probably through Christ that got them through it.
But I also learned that when I did that, there were things about being around dead peoplethat I think again changed my life.
(01:09:50):
And as I came through Iraq, I had a pastor, one of my last deployment that was anexceptional guy.
has a crazy story, the way God used him.
But when he came back, he started a program where he talked about people having what hecalled was death's shadow.
(01:10:11):
And he talked about when Moses had the people stay outside the camp when they came backfrom combat, from war.
to be cleansed because he were unclean.
He talks about and points to things in the Bible where he feels like that when we dothings that cause people their life um and when we are around people who have passed, that
(01:10:39):
there is a thing that he calls death shadow that we pick up, a sense of death that comesupon us um that we need to get rid of.
Like we talk about getting rid of shame and guilt and fear and all that stuff.
Well, he kind of believes that's something else that we pick up is this thing that deathputs around you.
(01:11:00):
um
through all that as I look back to my law enforcement career, my military career, I dobelieve that that's a truth because I see how it changes you and changes people when
they're around that kind of thing.
So I believe, especially now, and still at times in the situation where I've been aroundthat, um I firmly believe that's something I have to come to Christ to and let go of is to
(01:11:28):
give up what I consider the weight.
of being around that.
Because I don't want to carry that, even when someone in my family, my dad passed.
I believe that was something I had to go to Christ and let him take the weight.
And some of it was like for me the shame and guilt that people look at me and like, whyaren't you upset like the rest of your family?
(01:11:52):
And so, but I also felt like, yes, that there's things about that that people want tocarry the rest of their life.
And I don't want that.
I want to let it go.
Alrighty, so in closing, why should someone follow Jesus and have a relationship
In closing, there any way to put it?
(01:12:13):
I think the biggest thing I can tell you is, again, the peace and freedom that everybodywants.
And I don't care what anybody tells me.
I know there's times where people think, I just want it to stop.
I want the things that I tell myself that aren't good.
(01:12:36):
I want the craziness in my head to stop.
Well, that's where Christ comes.
And there's times when people just think, just want to know somebody cares.
Christ cares.
I just want hope.
(01:12:57):
I want to know there's a reason to wake up tomorrow.
There is, it's called Christ.
It's called the mission he has for you to reach other people.
You see that when you stop looking at yourself,
to start looking out and seeing what Christ sees, seeing the people who need to be loved.
(01:13:22):
You have a purpose.
The purpose is to go out and to do your mission, to look outward.
It's hard to feel like you can't be loved when you're sharing the love of Christ withpeople.
I think the easy way to tell most people is the more you do what Christ calls you to do,the more you give, the more you know what Christ is like.
(01:13:50):
The more love I give people, the more I understand how much God loves me.
the more grace, the more mercy, the more forgiveness I give people, the more I know howmuch God is giving me.
As he continues to fill me, I get to understand who he is.
(01:14:15):
That is changing me.
That is where my hope lies.
Yeah, I have rough days, but that's where I tell you that the red letters, the promisesare true.
And if you have nothing else, you have the promise.
Read the red letters.
(01:14:36):
They're true.
And so when you're in the military, in your emergency services, I don't care if you'refacing war,
Divorce, having a new baby, getting married.
You see, Christ doesn't want just all the bad.
He wants the good.
He wants you to be willing to look and see what Christ is doing in your life.
(01:15:02):
All the good, all the bad, it doesn't matter.
He wants all of you.
And so don't just look for the bad that Christ is taking from you.
Look at the good that He's given you.
Even when you're single, go live the life Christ says for you.
(01:15:25):
You see, sometimes the worst thing that anybody can do when they're in emergency servicesis to look around and constantly see the bad that they deal with.
Even in the midst of the worst situation, Christ is there and doing amazing things.
(01:15:45):
Look for Christ.
Look for where he's at in your life.
Because when you don't think he's there, he's there.
I know, and I call it a journey, I know there's times where Christ helps me walk back tomy childhood and those visions that are there that aren't good.
(01:16:06):
I used to think to myself that that's why I have to be the way I am.
Let's see, can't blame everybody.
I made decisions.
But one thing I do know is when Christ walks me back there, I get to see where Christ wasstill there.
(01:16:26):
Even though I didn't know it, even though it didn't seem like it, He was there.
This world's screwed up.
It's broken.
But I don't get to be broken for an excuse.
Mm-hmm.
I know that things are gonna be hard, but I know Christ won't walk away from me and he'llget me through it.
(01:16:54):
So I don't care what job you do, but if you do something that makes your life feel veryheavy, find Christ.
He's the answer.
Thank you so much.
That was very well said and I've just had a blast just getting to be able to talk with youand all the wisdom that you shared was just very powerful.
(01:17:17):
So I just, I really, really can't thank you enough.
I appreciate you letting me be here.
I love being able to talk about Christ.
Thank you very much.
Thanks again for listening to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
If you're a first responder or in the military and have a story you'd like to share, emailme at faithinthelineofduty.com.
(01:17:37):
You could be a guest on a future episode.
To continue the conversation, visit my Facebook and Instagram page.
Thanks again for tuning in and join me next time for another encouraging story of Faith inthe Line of Duty.
He died during COVID and his wife asked me to do a video to share who Mark Watch was.
During that video, I realized something that Mark had done that I think was one of themost impactful things in my life.
I had heard so many times as I was changing, well, Christ loves you.
(00:21):
Christ loves you.
That was often told to me when I would tell people I was struggling with something and Ifelt like I didn't, you know,
really deserve any of love.
um And I really didn't believe anybody would ever love me.
And as I sat there and started talking about Mark, that's when I realized that it wasn'tMark looking at me saying, Christ loves you for those three hours.
(00:49):
It was this great big guy, because Mark was a bigger guy, sitting there going, man, I loveyou.
No matter what I said.
And it was horrible.
I've done some pretty bad things.
um And the fact that that guy kept looking at me saying, nope, I love you.
Mm-hmm.
(01:09):
realizing that he really meant that.
That it wasn't just something he was saying.
Made me realize that people could actually love me.
No matter how much I didn't understand it, that people could.
you
(01:31):
Welcome to Faith in the Line of Duty, a podcast where real people in uniform show howtheir faith in Christ has carried them through the toughest moments.
I'm Daniel Johnson, husband, father, and currently active duty in the United States AirForce.
Each episode I sit down with military members and first responders to talk about the powerof the gospel, the strength of community, and how faith transforms lives, even in the line
(01:54):
of duty.
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the host and do not constituteendorsement by the Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, or the U.S.
government.
Now here's your host, Daniel Johnson.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
(02:15):
Today I have the honor of introducing Darrell Smithson.
He's a great friend of mine.
He served in the firefighter role as an EMT, a sheriff's deputy, and in the Marine Corps.
So just really excited to have you on here today.
Thank you.
Excited to be here as well.
So I'd like to get started and just tell us a little bit about your childhood and whatthat was like.
(02:39):
uh That's very difficult for me.
I don't remember my childhood.
What I do know of it is mostly uh stories from my family.
I have some flashes of memory, let's put that away.
So for the most part, just the quick rundown of my family, of my childhood is m we lived arather, let's say, different life than most.
(03:04):
uh There were times in my life we lived in very,
let's just say places mostly we don't.
Like camps and stuff like that because of financial reasons.
Partly also because uh my mom married a alcoholic and he didn't work a lot.
(03:26):
And unfortunately he was very abusive to my mom and us kids.
uh And because of that, at some point, I don't remember a lot of the age and stuff, atsome point my
Dad came and took us and then for like a better term kidnapped us because he wouldn't letmy mom have any contact with us.
He did all kinds of weird things like not letting us get mail or phone calls.
(03:51):
We would go someplace expecting our mom to show up but he would go an hour early and thenwe would leave before she was supposed to be there.
And even if she called and said she was running late or whatever, he would make sure.
eventually that we got, I say lucky, my brother actually
got the mail from the mail woman day and it was a letter from my mom.
So that kind of changed things.
(04:12):
And so high school I was pretty, I would say, considered in a normal environment exceptfor the abusive dad.
I mean, there was a situation with me and him, I guess, where rather violent.
So that changed things too.
And by the net, I think the biggest thing I remember we get to tell about footballs wasone of my greatest events that I liked.
(04:35):
I was hopeful I was to go play that at least college level, but I wound up having tocouple knee surgeries when I was younger and eventually got told that wasn't going to
work.
I was a defensive end.
I played offensive guard and defensive end was where I loved to play.
And so I was, yeah, that was my goal when I got to college.
(04:59):
so unfortunately, like I said, defensive end and bad knees really don't go together.
Exactly.
So did you play any other sports in high school?
I did, I did things just as I considered it was just a staying shape for football.
I played basketball, I wasn't the greatest at it, but also with all the surgeries, most ofthe time that happened during basketball season.
(05:23):
So my basketball was like play for a little bit then surgery recovery period, know.
So then I did track.
I didn't do a lot of running for track, I did more of the shot put and the discus.
I really enjoyed it.
But I did, as a younger kid, I apparently did a lot of running and hurdles and stuff likethat.
(05:47):
But as I got older, I was more concerned about getting mass to play football.
So running wasn't my best thing.
But one day I was just, give you an example of that is one day I was running, decided tojump hurdles while I was going down to the discus spot to throw.
And I tripped on one of the hurdles and
(06:08):
came down and pinned the discus between the ground and my head.
um And the discus is dull, so it didn't cut my head, but it bruised it so bad thatliterally the blood rushing to the spot right here made my head pop open and took a few
stitches to fix that.
And the concussion was, you know, part of it.
Yeah.
(06:29):
I have a tendency to um hurt myself or get hurt.
I've knocked on them.
somewhere around 27 surgeries at this point in my life.
So um at what point did you join the Marine Corps?
I joined the Marine Corps, I think in 1988.
I was 18 or so.
(06:52):
Yeah, about a year after high school got out.
I was quickly learning that that's probably my best chance.
Plus, I really want to tell you, I I desired initially thinking about doing the SEALs, butbecause of my bad knees, the Navy pretty much said no.
Right.
And as I was walking out of the Navy recruiter office, this Marine sitting in an officeyelled at me and said, because apparently as he put it goes, why are looking so glum?
(07:18):
So I told him and he says, well, come in here and talk to me a minute.
so I walked in and sat down and we started talking about things and he goes, would youjoin Marine Corps if I can get you in?
I'm like, yeah.
He goes, because it's just as good as the SEALs.
He goes, we go on ships and we do everything they do.
(07:38):
And I said,
deal.
Yep.
And so that's he did he got me on a medical waiver for my knees.
So you know, that's what started my experience in the Marine Corps.
And so how was being in the Marine Corps when you first joined?
I love the Marine Corps from the beginning.
(07:59):
mean, yes, bootcamp's hard.
I won't go into the whole story, but I had a drill instructor that wasn't exactly right incertain aspects.
I got some injuries from bootcamp because of him, so did lot of other people, but he woundup getting court-martialed and kicked out.
That's how bad it was.
thing, yeah.
Yeah.
But that didn't change me a bit.
(08:20):
I just love the Marine Corps.
I loved everything about the aspect of
let's just say the combat part.
I say I love everything about it.
The part I don't like about the Marine Corps was what a lot of people don't, and that's alot of the civilian stuff that goes on, you know?
It's like every job, there's things you love, things you hate.
(08:41):
And I'm not, as I was once told, you're not a very good Marine when you're not in thefield.
You're a great field Marine, but a garrison Marine, you have some issues and like that.
Yeah, right.
So and you and so you joined in in the 80s and were you there for 9-eleven happening?
Do you remember what that was like?
(09:01):
Yes, I.
It's funny to me that 9-11 when 9-11 happened because when I I was in Desert Storm, DesertShield in 1991 and we were all like really told after all that happens like, look, you
know, you guys, this is your war.
You know, you'll never see war again.
(09:22):
You know, it's been so long since.
And so when 9-11 happened and that instantly all those conversations started happening.
about being act, because I was reservist.
And so there started to talk about being activated and all that stuff and what was goingto happen.
And so as I watched 9-11, it was hard to sit there and accept that, in my opinion, thingsthat we allowed to stay in place when we left 9-11, left Iraq.
(09:58):
I felt like that's part of the reason why this happened.
Truth be told, we don't know.
It's just, you know, we like to attribute to certain things.
And so what was your, if we back up a little bit, what was your part in Desert Storm?
What were you?
Were you in infantry?
Yes, I was part of an infantry regiment.
(10:18):
uh My MOS is access communication, so I was like the ground with the radio.
um So we were as a reserve regiment, we were basically tasked with the primary rearelement security.
(10:38):
And so our job was to patrol basically up to the frontline units.
um Unfortunately, I had a colonel that really wanted to go to war m and I got put on hissecurity detail as well.
And so there were many times we would go up as he put it to make sure we were providingthe frontline with the security behind them.
(11:02):
So I would spend a lot of time up on the frontline with some of the other units uh justwith our colonel.
And let's just say it did cause some issues.
um That was the most part that I dealt with besides in the communication aspect as in, youknow, we have what's called a common operation center.
So in the CLC, you would do a radio watch.
(11:25):
then so I kind of did both.
had my radio watch and then I'd go out and do the security detail.
And what would you say was the most challenging part about that time?
um I think the most challenging part for Desert Storm to the Shield was one, dealing witha colonel that was kind of a little out there.
(11:47):
But two, the uh initial struggle was at the time reserves had never been really activatedto do anything.
So there was a huge offset between active duty and reserves.
uh was struggle sometimes to get support.
um
And so that was the first initial thing is like that struggle there.
(12:10):
um And then as we progressed, you know, it was a learning experience for everybody.
We as a country weren't prepared for that.
Our communication assets weren't good.
We couldn't hardly talk to people.
um We were still using what was called a Pric 77 radio, which is what they used inVietnam.
Right.
Not much change.
(12:31):
And so we quickly realized we couldn't communicate with a lot of other
units, uh army, air force, because we didn't have the radios they did.
uh So that was a hard thing for us to do was to deal with the fact that not only asMarines, we kind of don't get everything that everybody else does, but as reservists, we
(12:51):
get even less.
And so that was frustrating.
ah How many times did you deploy?
Well Desert Shield and Desert Storm was my first deployment.
And then after 9-11, I deployed to Iraq.
ah It depends on how you count deployments.
(13:12):
To me, was just like, no matter what, if I was there a year, I considered it onedeployment.
The Marine Corps' deployments typically are seven months.
So like when I was there for a year, that was technically considered two deployments.
uh
I think all total by the time it got said and done between the years I spent in Iraq anddoesn't show I have somewhere around seven, eight deployments.
(13:36):
I ended up, I deployed so much and I did a lot of other kind of active duty stuff in thesummers because I had the freedom to do that.
I would join other units to go do things and um but I ended up with 13 years of activeduty as a service.
That's a little more than most people.
And so what was the first time that you experienced combat?
(14:00):
And as a Storm Radish Shield, we had a firefight type thing, but most of it was secondary,like, know, missiles coming in and stuff like that.
So that was the closest we ever really did then.
My first real one was in Iraq.
My first deployment, I'm trying to think that would have been...
(14:22):
So 9-11 was what, 2001?
And we went into Iraq 2003.
So 2003, 2004 was my first deployment.
And that was the first period of combat.
And for people that haven't been through that, what would you say that was like?
For me, I'm a little different.
(14:47):
At the time, I was not really a Christian.
So I lived a really different life than most.
And to me, the chaos of combat was really the first time I felt like I was home, because Ireally fit there.
(15:07):
the things I could do and the way I performed and everything made people, for lack ofbetter terms, desire me to be around.
And up to that point, I never felt that.
I always was, in my world, manipulating things to get what I want.
And it was strange for me that all of a sudden people wanted me to be there what I wasdoing, which is one reason why I deployed so much as a reservist is
(15:37):
I was good at what I did.
But also it started creating a little bit of em a split in understanding things becauseyou spend your entire life being told that doing the things you do in combat are not
(15:59):
right.
um And so your brain starts trying to struggle with
Okay, I'm doing all these things I've been told my entire life is not right.
But yet over here, everybody's praising me for what I do.
um And so it starts to kind of a mental, as I call it split structural mindset of saying,okay, I'm being told it's okay, but my brain still says it's wrong.
(16:25):
So during that time, what did you do to get through that, to kind of navigate that?
Well, like said, first off, it made me feel comfortable when I was home.
So part of it was I just, for lack of better terms, enjoyed being there.
But the split forced me to start trying to rectify my life.
(16:50):
Trying to understand is my purpose because it became obvious to me that I was willing andable to do things that most people are uncomfortable with, which I knew that law
enforcement.
So my primary goals in law enforcement was death investigation um and crimes againstpeople.
Well, I quickly realized that I could work scenes that most people would not go near.
(17:15):
um And so in Iraq, the first thing that really started coming to me was I wasn't quiteunderstanding how I was splitting my mind.
um I wasn't...
It was difficult because before that I had never questioned what I did.
And so I would say probably the biggest thing was after my first deployment, I did go tochurch.
(17:42):
um And I think like most people I was going because that's what was expected.
uh And I met a B-2 pilot at church one day and um we had a short conversation about thingsand my next deployment which
I think I was home maybe two months.
(18:02):
He just started sending me books because that was one of we found out about me, you know,is I like to read.
And where I was stationed initially in Iraq, there wasn't availability of getting, youknow, a lot of books or anything.
So he would just mail me books, lots of books.
(18:24):
But he mailed me books that I would never have normally read.
faith-based books.
um
When I started reading them, it partly helped me start focus on something different thancombat.
um So when I did, let's just say have a rough day or whatever, I would come back and a lotof times I would read those books to kind of get away from it.
(18:51):
And there's something about reading about Christ and God and the things that those bookstalk about.
were starting to be things I was starting to desire in my life.
uh The sense of belonging made me want to feel like that I belong somewhere.
uh And I knew that this combat was a limited situation unless I died.
(19:18):
uh So I think that was what first started to help me was the belief that maybe there wassomething else out there besides combat.
And that was probably different than anything you've experienced.
yeah, had never, I'd never considered that I was here for any purpose.
(19:40):
m I'd never considered that there was actually, for lack of better terms, something outthere that truly desired me.
That they wanted me to be a part of them.
That loved me, because I didn't understand the word love.
I mean, quite frankly, in my mind it was
(20:02):
a lie.
By looking at and talking about things from my past, it seemed to me that love was only aselfish thing.
People wanted to make themselves feel good.
ah It was a mental concept that people created uh because people wanted to feel likesomeone loved them.
(20:22):
They would find ways to make them feel that way.
But to me, it was just a word and basically a lie that people told themselves.
What would you say as we kind of wrap up like your time in the Marine Corps, what would beyour most memorable moment ah from those deployments?
um I would think that one of my most memorable moments of the core is the whole aspect oflearning even more about the nature of humans.
(20:59):
ah My entire life I've kind of catalyzed myself outside of the human race.
As things were changing there, one of my biggest thing was I got activated a lot because Iwas a cop, a Marine.
(21:21):
And so over there they were trying to get cops and Marines and everybody to train Iraqis.
um And so that's what I started doing.
I uh literally was sitting out on my own just to go meet with what was called Mitz Pitsand work and do things with Iraqis.
So.
I kind of just went anywhere I wanted.
(21:42):
I would come back with reports to the Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel of the regiment,explaining how the Iraqis were doing, and I would help plan the operations with the
regiment.
Learning that in the midst of all that, it didn't matter whether it was an American Marinesoldier uh or an Iraqi soldier or human or civilian or whatever, um the desires were
(22:08):
pretty much the same.
They wanted their families to be safe.
They wanted their kids to grow up and be educated and find a job.
And so trying to rectify what we would, I could watch what humans could do to each other,but the same side look at, but everybody just wants to live a life.
(22:30):
And so that was probably the most memorable thing from that country.
That's definitely a different perspective to look and I feel like you kind of need tohave, know, especially with seeing all that.
And I'm sure that they appreciated what you were doing too.
Somewhere.
I can tell anybody there were some of greatest combat people I served with for Iraqis.
They were very bold, they were courageous, and were willing to fight for their country.
(22:54):
They made it very clear that they weren't fighting for their tribe, which is kind of athing over there that most people don't understand.
But they were very clear now that we're fighting for our country of Iraq.
We want our country to be uh a strong country.
How did you become a first responder?
Well, like I said, I was a reservist in Marine Corps.
(23:14):
So for the 24 years I was in the Marine Corps Reserves, I also had a career in the outsideworld.
so I, because of some of the injuries from the Marine Corps boot camp, I stayed reserveside.
And so I started college.
And because originally my plan was to go active duty, but like I said, there was somethings that happened.
(23:36):
So I wound up going reserve.
And so I decided to take advantage of the GI Bill and start college.
oh And so aside from the Marine Corps, what had sparked my interest was other things thatwere kind of journal and based.
So I wanted to become a cop.
uh I was always interested in the, for like a better term, the criminal mind, specificallythe kind that uh are serial killers and stuff.
(24:05):
mean, I was very interested in on again,
the way the mind worked.
So I went to college and got a degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology.
uh And from that, I started working uh part-time.
Well, I did an internship at the sheriff's department in Johnson County.
(24:25):
And from that, I went to work for them.
Because one, I was paying for my own college.
So that became a job while I was in college.
uh
And then based off of that, I started in fire investigations, became a certified fireinvestigator.
And from that, I started getting interested in firefighting.
um I started getting interested in being an EMT when I was a deputy because I was showingup on these medical scenes first and had no idea what to do.
(24:51):
um I knew the basics, but I mean, I'm really like frustrated because it's taken 10, 15more minutes for an ambulance to show up and I'm just kind of standing there.
So I...
went and became an EMT and the sheriff was willing to help build me a med kit that went inthe back trunk of my car.
So when I would show up on scenes, I would have oxygen and all the other trauma relatedstuff.
(25:14):
So I actually got to do things and yeah.
Yes.
I, an EMT, I almost did more work for my first probably five years as an EMT as a deputy.
then I joined the
rural fire department in Johnson County.
(25:35):
And during that process, did some EMT work, but mostly did firefighting.
And then from there, I got started working part time for Warrensburg Fire and working parttime for an EMT service at out of Holton, Missouri.
And so,
(25:56):
From all that, just started working part-time, full-time.
eventually, I switched.
After a lot of my deployments, I couldn't sit very well.
sitting in a patrol car became a problem.
And so I wind up switching from full-time law enforcement, part-time fire, to full-timefire, part-time law enforcement.
I always joke with people and tell them that I got tired of eating donuts.
(26:19):
So I joined the fire department and started making lasagna.
um
You know, that's where I kind of got my careers together.
And then towards the end of my career, I started, that's when I really got changed byChrist.
Because before that, I wasn't a guy out there to save and serve the public.
It was more of I was out there to, you know, meet bad guys and run into burning buildingsand all that stuff.
(26:46):
But as Christ changed me, I started realizing I was meeting people in the worst day oftheir lives sometimes.
And so I started really trying to make it clear to people that, you know, I was there forthem, that I wanted to be there to help them with their day.
I don't care whether I was a cop arresting you or whether I was a firefighter coming in toput your house, you know, if your house was on fire, put it out.
(27:15):
Or if I was an EMT helping you with a medical problem.
I wanted to make you understand that I cared.
So at what point did you surrender your life to God?
I know that you said you were reading some faith-based books during your deployment Butwhen was your point where you decided to give your life to Christ?
Well, initially I was asked to go to a thing called Men's Accounting down in Lubbenton,Missouri.
(27:41):
And that was probably in 2016, I think.
So I went there and it was a great experience.
initially it wasn't a big change.
What happened is my entire life, I basically never really associated emotions at all.
(28:02):
I still don't.
But one of things that started happening when I came home my last time during thesurgeries, I had several surgeries after my last deployment for some reasons.
And during that period though, I also started having some anger issues, which like I said,I'd never had any type of thing that really came out like that.
(28:25):
And so it was getting really bad.
I mean, I had pretty explosive issues, destroyed things and stuff, and it was very commonto happen easily three, four, five times a month.
So I went to this event, men's encounter.
was probably maybe a week later.
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I realized I hadn't exploded for a week.
And then the next thing I know, I'd gone another week.
After the second week, started thinking, okay, what's different?
And the only thing that had changed is I'd gone to this men's encounter event.
And so from reading, you know, the books and that happening, I started getting even morelike, okay, there really might be something to this um that can really be a part of my
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life.
So I was asked to go again.
They do it every other month.
And so I went the next time.
um This time I was a little bit more open.
to listening and stuff.
I won't say I made a big change.
After that, I came home and some things changed.
(29:36):
But the biggest thing I noticed again was that the anger explosions were even furtherapart.
uh
pulling back those layers.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you you hear a lot of people about what I call miraculousconversions, like they have something that happens and they instantly surrender the life
of God and stuff.
I think because the way I am, took the God knew it was going to take time.
(30:00):
It was going to take a slow process of showing me who He is.
So again,
You know, I was asked to go to third time and this time I was like really starting tolike, okay, I think I'm going to try to really understand.
(30:20):
And during this time, something that seemed to just come across me as I listened to a guynamed Ryan Huff, sit and give his testimony, because that's kind of what happens there.
You hear some testimonies and teachings.
Well, he had been a teacher of what was called spiritual warfare.
uh session, the first time I went.
(30:42):
um And this time he was up there giving his testimony about how he failed.
But he kept talking about every time he would come back to God, God was there.
Mm.
And for the first time, that's when I said, hey, that's the God I need.
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I need the God that every time I fail will still be there because I knew I was going tofail.
And so I went to Ryan to ask how to get that God.
Ryan later turned around, looked at me he says, I don't know what your problem is.
goes, but when you figure it out, he goes, your testimony will reach thousands.
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And so
During that period, I felt like God really wanted me to tell somebody who I was.
Every bad thing I did.
um And the only person there was a guy named Mark Watts.
And so I fought it for several hours.
Eventually I gave up and I went to Mark and I start off with looking at him like, man,you're going to hate me when you hear this.
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Mark looked at me and goes, nope, I love you.
So for the next almost three hours, I told this man, and every time I was like, you'regoing to, I know you hate me, Mark would go, nope, I love you.
So after all that happened, he had gotten another guy that was kind of similar to me withsome issues that I had been through.
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They said, hey, until you're ready to give this up and you're willing to come to God andpray and ask for him to take this, you're going to fight it.
So they convinced me to go get prayed upon.
They went and they got some of them in there that still this day, the impact of my life, Ijust, I wish I could talk more to them, but know, life separates you and I've got, I don't
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go like I used to.
And so they prayed over me and I came home and Mark kept talking to me.
I started getting more involved in church and started letting people kind of talk to meand get things changed in my life.
Man, it's just been one crazy ride after I started changing.
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mean, it wasn't like instantly everything was great.
I struggled for probably two years of trying to figure out who God wanted me to be.
One of the biggest reasons, like I said, again, I didn't understand love.
And when you don't understand love, it's hard to know who God is.
So it took me a long time to get that figured out.
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And Mark probably had a big impact on your life.
Yes.
um Initially, I didn't know how big of an impact Mark had, um Mark wound up getting cancerand dying.
ah Sorry to hear that.
That was during COVID.
ah It really was.
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It's a hard thing for me to again, to understand because he was such a man of faith.
And you hear people talk, literally people had told me that God could heal all my medicalproblems.
Cause like I said, I have a lot of nerve damage.
I have a lot of issues.
oh But they would tell me if you had enough faith, he'd heal you.
(34:07):
And so I struggled with that initially, but when Mark died,
I was absolutely convinced at that point that that was not true.
Because there's no way that man and his wife and family did not have enough faith.
um
(34:30):
He died during COVID and his wife asked me to do a video to share who Mark Watch was.
So I tried to do the video several times and I just couldn't get it going.
Well, I finally got to the point where I absolutely had to get it done.
mean, know, the funeral's happening and she needs a video on.
(34:51):
So I just start talking.
And it was during that video.
I realized.
something that Mark had done that I think was one of the most impactful things in my lifewas I had heard so many times as I was changing, well, Christ loves you.
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Christ loves you.
But that was often told to me when I would tell people I was struggling with something andI felt like I didn't really deserve any of love.
um And I really didn't believe anybody would ever love me.
And as I sat there and started talking about Mark, that's when I realized that it wasn'tMark looking at me saying, well, Christ loves you for those three hours.
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It was this great big guy, cause Marvin's a bigger guy, sitting there going, man, I loveyou.
No matter what I said, how, and it was horrible.
I've done some pretty bad things.
And the fact that that guy kept looking at me saying, nope, I love you.
Mm-hmm.
realizing that He really meant that, that it wasn't just something He was saying, made merealize that people could actually love me.
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No matter how much I didn't understand it, that people could.
And so that, to some degree, is part of my ministry.
I tell his wife all the time that when I help someone come to Christ, I will let her knowthat Mark got another one.
Because I tell people, I truly believe that what helps me bring people to Christ is doingthe same thing.
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I tell people Christ loves them at times, but when I initially meet you, I want you tounderstand that I love you.
And that's probably exactly what you needed to hear too.
I mean, with everything that you went through, through your childhood and combat and allthat.
yeah, I had no understanding of love.
I had no belief that anybody loved me.
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ah Mom, dad, you know, all that stuff.
I struggle with that kind of relationship.
uh Me and my mom, which is crazy, have built a huge relationship.
My dad and me never got to.
He died before that happened.
um You know, and it's hard for people to understand that to me, like when my dad died andI look at him, it's just a person in a box.
(37:23):
I don't have this sense of loss or uh stuff like most people describe.
um But, you know, just like with my mom, I don't have what people talk about like thisemotional connection.
I mean, I have more of emotional responses now than ever have.
And quite honestly, I don't understand it.
(37:46):
To me, I just feel uncomfortable, good or bad.
It's still the same thing.
I'm uncomfortable and I want to change it.
um God's teaching me that it's okay to be uncomfortable.
I can look at somebody and be uncomfortable and tell them, love you.
So your journey of faith in Christ, how is your relationships with people and how have youchanged?
(38:10):
Well, first and foremost is my family's been very gracious.
I've been able to come back and develop relationships with all of them.
uh My mom literally, uh when she left her husband, that was abusive.
She left him oh one night when he took her down to the marina at a river and playedRussian roulette with her.
(38:32):
Yeah.
So she showed up my house terrified, but said she couldn't do it anymore.
um
And so again, just the way things work out as a deputy, um I one night was out patrollingand sure enough, I wound up getting behind a vehicle that my stepdad was driving.
(38:56):
Like I he was an alcoholic.
So I pulled him over from the way he was driving.
He was really drunk.
And then he started talking about how he was looking for mom and he was gonna, yeah.
for lack better terms, solve some problems that he thought was there.
And I looked at him and I made very clear that he was going to jail.
um And for a few minutes, things got a little tense because I told him he was going oneway or the other.
(39:24):
um But he decided not to fight and he wound up going to jail.
um And then just for quick reference of how things went is a few, after he got out, waslike maybe
Two weeks later, he got up and walked into the front room of the house and his heartexploded and he died.
(39:45):
So my mom did live to him till death did him apart.
But that cause a huge thing in her life and I won't go into her story, but that wassomething that haunted her for a long time.
But my mom and me started becoming someone that talked a lot.
(40:07):
I tried to build the relationship with her.
Initially it was rough.
uh She was so afraid of me, she really wouldn't call me.
It took like three years before she would be willing to call me on the phone.
um But eventually she and me got to the point where I was actually building a kind of abarn of indium in my backyard that she was gonna live in half of.
(40:32):
She went from being that afraid of me to where she's living in my backyard.
And, you know, during one of the periods where me and my mom were talking, I shared mytestimony because, like I said, she was kind of haunted by feeling like she couldn't be
forgiven because of her husband dying, because she left, in her mind.
(40:52):
So I felt it was necessary to give her the testimony that I was giving to thousands ofmen, because that's men's encounter.
uh Initially, when I was going there, there were just hundreds.
I was giving my testimony too, but...
The last few times I went, there were over a thousand that was getting my testimony.
And Ryan was right.
(41:13):
I mean, literally I've given my testimony, probably the best I've figured over to over10,000 people.
So I had to give my mom that because I want her to understand if God could forgive me thethings I had done, he could definitely forgive her.
So one of the questions that I wanted to ask her is I give
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You were so afraid of me, why did you come to my house instead of my other brothers thatwere there?
oh And her response was she didn't know anybody meaner than Rick but me.
So.
Good or bad, that's why she showed up.
(41:54):
So again, that's how much Christ was changing things in my life.
So me and my mom, talk a lot, we have a lot of God conversations, but I just enjoy it.
I have learned, I feel like my ministry is to teach men and women that developing brothersand sisters in Christ, and I mean significant ones, when you're young and even when you're
(42:18):
old, but learning to find them and love them unconditionally.
And how can someone do that?
know, we go to church, but how can you have another, uh how can you have an authenticrelationship with another brother or sister in Christ?
Well, the authentic relationship first comes with what you always hear, being willing tobe vulnerable, being willing to be honest, and being willing to do it when you need to.
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The problem with, I see most men is if we start to fail, most of time we don't reach out.
We try to tell ourselves that I can do this, I can stop this myself.
um And I try to understand that that real brother,
you're going to have problems with.
There's going to be times you probably want to hit him in the face, um which is why I tellthem if you can learn to develop this relationship with a real brother before you get
(43:12):
married, well, when you get married, loving that beautiful woman is a lot easier once yourealize that you can love that stupid guy.
And that relationship should be one that just builds you.
It should be one that allows you to be told, hey, dude, you're a negative person.
You need to fix that.
(43:33):
because negativity is lack of faith, you know?
um Or he's willing to tell you, hey, you're being an angry person.
We need to work on that.
um They're willing to be honest.
They love you so much they don't care about your feelings.
They love you enough that they care about your eternity.
And so, yeah, you go through the heartaches.
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There's gonna be times, because there's gonna be times when you're being honest withpeople, there's gonna be times they're gonna upset you.
There's gonna be times when you're just hanging out.
It's not gonna be fun.
something's gonna happen and you're gonna get, you know, in disagreements.
But it's through this process, just like with your wife, your children, it doesn't matter,that builds that bond that makes you realize that they care so much about you, that they
(44:21):
will always be there.
I tell people that kind of brother is the kind that at three o'clock in morning when theirphone rings and it's you, they don't wait for you to even say what's going on.
They've already grabbed the car keys and they're driving towards your house.
They can always turn around.
But if you're calling at three in the morning, they already know something's going on.
(44:42):
So I tell you that you need at least two or three of those.
Um, partly because you can never rely upon one person cause they will fail you.
We're human.
Every brother will fail you.
having two or three is necessary.
So you got more than one to count on.
Um, proximity matters.
(45:03):
I can develop that lifelong.
mean, and I do, have some brothers that we've committed to each other for life.
Now it doesn't mean we live in the same house.
Doesn't mean I see him every week.
We talk on the phone every week.
We try to see each other at least monthly, but every week we're on the phone.
We can, you know, hey, what's going on in your life?
How's things going?
(45:25):
So for our lifetime, I know I've got these brothers.
Now, some that I've developed move away, because I live in a transient world here, becauseI live in an air base, a white and Air Force base is close to where I live.
I have a college where I live.
So I meet a lot of people that are moving.
(45:45):
So I don't shy away from committing to somebody.
But I know that...
When they move on, my commitment and minor actions in their life is gonna be a lot less.
So I tell people proximity matters.
You gotta have people that are your brothers in Christ where you can reach out and touchthem.
(46:07):
And I do mean literally touch them.
The other thing that I've learned is uh kind of weird for me, but uh is that hugs matter.
Authentic hugging somebody says more than you will ever say to them.
not like a physical touch person when you were
No, physical touch, um again, because things that my childhood and I think and a lot ofother stuff, oh to me, physical touch is disgusting.
(46:38):
I don't want to say disgusting in the aspect that...
I don't like physical touch.
um Not because I'm trying to be a tough guy or whatever, it's simply because it makes mefeel pretty um weird.
ah I really don't know how to explain it completely, but it's just not something that mybrain likes.
(47:04):
But as I've done it, because I feel like that's what God has called me to do, is to showpeople
I accept you for who you are, whether I know you or not.
Matter of fact, what I tell people is true, heartfelt loving somebody and telling them Iaccept you fully for who you are.
(47:27):
It's easier to do it with a stranger than with a person you know.
Matter of fact, I think that's part of what makes marriage so mysterious.
If you go into a house and you've been married for somebody, to somebody for 10, 15 years,five years sometimes, for you to authentically walk up to that person and take them in
(47:53):
your arms and say, I love you for who you are right now, at this moment, you gotta let goof everything from the past and you gotta not worry about a thing in the future.
You gotta look at them as the beautiful creation Christ has them.
Powerful.
And it's hard.
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To me, it's one of the hardest things that people do when they're married, is to bewilling to continue to see them the way Christ sees them.
So because of all that, yes, touching is hard, but I hug everybody.
And yes, when I hug you for the first time, I love you as much then as I do when I hug youthe hundredth time.
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I believe that's part of what helps me change people's lives.
I personally feel I can have watched my desire to hug somebody make them willing to talkabout Christ because they realize I care.
And that must be for people that know you from your childhood too, to see you hug people.
(49:06):
I'm sure that that's pretty interesting for people to see too.
Yes, my family, that was very difficult.
um Now I will also admit for a lot of them, it was very difficult because of things I'ddone in the past with them and other people that was kind of made them uncomfortable.
There's things about me that still scare people.
(49:28):
think certain ways I'll act if something happens.
that really is, there's people who watched me from my law enforcement firefighter careerum that have
even told me that some of them are in church and in Christ because they watched the changein me.
Because yes, if I could start doing the things I was doing, then there had to be somethingto it.
(49:53):
So looking back from your time in combat and overseas, and now that you've beentransformed by Christ, how can you kind of deal with the stuff that you've seen over there
in the PTSD?
Yeah, there's a lot of things that when I first came back that started showing me how tohandle some things different.
(50:14):
I went to the thing uh called the men's charge, uh or excuse me, I went to what wasoriginally, it's called men's counter.
So that one's in Lebanon, Missouri.
And then as I've continued to be involved, that one of my friends who went to that alsohas created something similar called the men's charge that he does uh locally.
um And so that.
(50:37):
involvement continues to help me because the more I continue to follow Christ and worktowards loving and helping other people, it helps me.
um I've been blessed by being put around men who dealt with stuff like that uh and dealwith it.
I work for a company called Strategos International that does a lot of training tomilitary law enforcement civilians in learning how to handle weapons, but as well as
(51:06):
We teach how to set up church security and, you know, active school shooting and all thisstuff.
So we're being taught how to use what we've used, what we've learned, how to apply it andhelp other people.
And again, as Christians, we make it clear to them how we love them.
Many people tell us like off our range, we've literally had people come to Christ on therange because they see how we love them.
(51:32):
You know, they want to know why are you guys so different?
And so we let, know, then we love to tell them who Christ is.
um So that helps a lot because I get to continue reminding myself that when all the badfrom my past starts coming at me, because it does, um sometimes a whole lot worse than I
(51:53):
want it to, because I still struggle with feeling like I deserve to have this life.
I don't deserve to feel this good.
And I don't, but Christ...
in me allows me to have that and it's because of Him because if I'm doing it right, I'mnot living for me, I'm living for Christ.
(52:15):
And so I don't have to carry all the shame, the guilt.
Matter fact, like I tell most people, I wouldn't carry it.
I reached a point where I, even after I came to Christ, I reached a point where I didn'tfeel like I was able to go the right way.
Again, because of the love issue, I was trying to serve people but
I was serving them out of obligation, feeling like, well, Christ says, hey, you gotta godo this, you gotta do that.
(52:39):
And yeah, you can do a lot of good things, but if it's not a God thing, if God's notsending you there, it's not gonna work out.
um So eventually I had to pray to learn how to what love is, and for three years God'sbeen trying to teach me that.
m And through that process, I realized that by accepting love
(53:04):
based off of who Christ says it is.
God didn't come serve us first.
In John 3.16 he said, so loved the world.
He loved us first.
Then He came to serve us by saving us.
And so that is where I started realizing that my job isn't to go serve people out ofobligation.
(53:29):
My job was to learn to love people and then serve them.
And so through that, I feel like there's times where God does, sends me to love a personand accept them and do whatever I can to help them.
And all that allows me to, when the time comes and the shame and the guilt and all thethings, I mean, I've literally had people look at me after I give my testimony and say,
(53:54):
how do you justify being alive?
Well, I reached that point and I had to question that.
um
I won't go into the whole thing, but God did a crazy thing that kind of kept me from doingit uh because I had told God that I was going let Him have the last thing I refused to
(54:14):
give to Him because I'd give Him my money and all this other stuff, but my home, mysolitude, I didn't want to give up, but eventually I did.
um And He wound up moving a whole family in my house for several months.
And it was kind of during that month period I was...
Not because of them, but before they moved in, I decided that whenever I paid off myhouse, then I my mom was set, and I was going to kill myself because I felt like I was
(54:43):
going go backwards, that I was going to start hurting people again.
And I would rather go to hell than take somebody else with me again.
So I was all set in my mind that was going to happen like in December.
In October, this family moved in.
They're supposed to move in for just a few weeks, and they didn't move out till March.
um
(55:03):
And so, I'm not going to lie, things went really bad with them, um but it doesn't matterto me.
I love them.
I love all of them.
The husband, the wife, the kids, they're still my family.
But God did that and made me realize that I don't have to carry it.
(55:27):
And when I'm afraid I'm going go backwards, I don't have to do anything but look at Godand just try to follow where He's taking me.
And so, yeah, when I wake up and I start thinking that's where my brothers come in, I callthem, I'm like, hey, dude, I just need to know that I'm not worthless, that I have a
(55:50):
purpose, that there's a place for me.
And I tell everybody that my goal is that the day I die, if I'm sitting by myself in arocking chair, reading the red letters, I know that's because it's enough.
Because I told my family was graceful, but one of my brothers and me really didn't have arelationship.
(56:13):
Because when I was a deputy, he has a drug issue.
got to a point he was going to kill me and I didn't care.
But then he started telling people he was going to just kill any deputy if couldn't findme.
So back in the old Pager's days, my Pager lit off and I started calling these people thatwere mutual relationships of ours.
(56:35):
And he started telling me that.
So I went to the sheriff, said I'm gonna go find my brother.
Sheriff didn't like that idea, but I didn't care.
So he made me take at least another deputy with me.
So I wound up finding my brother about an hour later.
um Let's just say I was faster on the draw than he was.
ah So he decided not to finish drawing the gun he had in his waistband.
(56:57):
ah I wound up arresting him.
He went to prison for about three or four years, something like that.
So we didn't really like have a great relationship.
um But God told me to go love him.
And so I did.
um And we had a really rough time for the first year and a half because he was goingthrough some court.
(57:19):
related issues and he was still dealing with drugs.
um And we had a lot of rough times where our paths came up.
But I started finding out that he fell alone, that nobody cared.
So I've been trying to prove to them that Christ cared.
And so every time, everything I've done for him, I make it clear to him, hey, it's not me,it's Christ.
(57:43):
um But he's clean right now.
We have a relationship.
It's still hard because we don't see eye to eye.
But I love him like crazy.
And God can transform any relationship.
It doesn't matter how messy it is.
(58:04):
Me and him have had God conversations.
He has literally done the sinner's prayer with me, even though that everybody says that wewere all saved when we were kids.
I tell them I don't care.
I wanted to hear it.
I want to know that you know you're saved.
I got baptized again when I was a few years after I changed because I wanted to know forsure that I let people know who my Lord and Savior was.
(58:31):
So,
It's just amazing to watch Christ move in my life.
it's, like I said, I gave you my house and for two and a half years somebody's lived in myhouse.
And it's not been easy.
I mean, there's been some really serious issues with some of the people that have livedthere, but it doesn't matter.
(58:51):
You know, it's not my house and I love them.
And that's what has to prevail.
And I think that's an encouragement for other people too, because the Lord wantseverything that we have.
And if we're still holding on to any aspect of it, ah then we need to really assess somethings for sure.
Yeah, but I also tell people, learning to know, like I said, the difference between goodthings and bad things, learning to know when you're called by Christ to do something and
(59:21):
be willing to accept that it's not going to be easy.
That if I could do this on my own, then Christ ain't doing it.
have to be...
Like I when I hug somebody, I know that's Christ.
When I go love my brother, I know it's Christ.
When I let someone move in my house,
I know it's Christ.
All of those things are not who I am or who I was.
(59:46):
All those things are hard for me.
I want to be, I'm a naturally selfish person.
I don't want to give up anything, but I will give up.
I give up money constantly.
I'm not going to try to go talk about what I do because I don't want it to look like it'sme.
I don't want people seeing that, well, look what he thinks he's doing good things.
Look, people, I have.
(01:00:07):
I fight with the same things constantly still.
I'm still selfish.
Sometimes I still want to hurt somebody because they irritate me.
But all that dies less and less.
The power all that has is getting less and less.
I once was told by somebody that because of the way I've lived my life, the reason why Ican relate to everybody is because the sin of my past is like Walmart.
(01:00:33):
You could just walk in and pull whatever sin it is off the shelf.
and me and you can talk about it, because I've done it.
um And I don't often talk lot about how bad I was.
I keep saying I'm bad.
It's not because I'm trying to make me sound like I'm this, because sometimes the problemwith most of us is we want to glorify our past sins.
(01:00:54):
I don't want that.
I say that because I want you to understand that there's nothing Christ can't free youfrom.
And yes, if you need to come talk to me,
because you want someone who will understand your sin, then come talk to me, because I'llunderstand it.
But the biggest thing I'm gonna do is let you know Christ understands it.
(01:01:18):
So what would you say to people that are first responders right now?
What would be some practical uh faith based wisdom that you would have them do?
For anybody, first responders, military, know, people talk a lot about PTSD.
I tell everybody that there's so many different types you don't understand.
(01:01:38):
There are acute PTSDs where something significant happens in your life.
um PTSD often requires you to have a sense of hopelessness.
So like you can go to combat and you can watch a friend get killed and you'll feelhopeless about what you couldn't do anything to help them.
emergency responders, sometimes it's a career long hopelessness that through your careeryou see things that upset you because you just see how there's nothing you could have done
(01:02:04):
um from seeing, you know, young children in bad situations to seeing your own friends andfamily go through stuff.
I tell everybody that the significance of your hope is Christ.
And it has to start somewhere with you submitting to Christ.
(01:02:26):
And that is what will change your life.
And yes, it may not be done in 30 seconds.
It may not be done in three hours or three days and three months.
But start.
Look at Christ.
Give Him a chance.
Because the peace you're seeking, the freedom you're seeking, will only come from Him.
(01:02:53):
You have to be willing to give Him it.
And that's what gets the changes when you start learning how to give Christ everything.
Everybody talks about, He wants us, He freed us from our sins.
Yes, but that's such a small part.
Yes.
(01:03:14):
It's great and it's huge in the aspect that that's what gives us our righteousness, thechance to be right with God, the chance to be able to go spend eternity with God who loves
me more than I can even imagine.
That Christ took, but Christ also says, me your whole burden.
A burden is something you can't solve.
(01:03:36):
I think
Often we mistake the difference between what's called a burden and your load.
To me, a burden is when you can't fix it.
Like my brother was having some legal issues and financial issues, my brother couldn't fixthat.
Christ could.
He sent me to do some things that my brother could do.
I had to help carry the burden my brother could not carry.
(01:03:59):
But there's things that are my brother's load, and he has to carry those.
And I have to know when to let him do that and to step back.
oh
As a professional people, even in normal type jobs, you pick up burdens and you're notgoing to be able to carry them.
Well, those burdens even other people can't carry.
(01:04:20):
Only Christ can carry.
And so when those burdens of my past come and I feel weighed down like I can't go anotherday, and there's times where I don't feel like God's sitting there beside me.
There's times I feel like I'm the only person in world and I'm still the worst person.
Thank
(01:04:41):
I still know that I can just grab the Bible.
The promises are for me.
The promises are for you.
God loves you.
That's never changed.
He's there for you, whether you feel it or not.
I can hold on to the promises.
If nothing else, I can hold on to that Bible.
(01:05:04):
I know it's true.
Why do I know it's true?
Because I've seen it work.
I've seen the power of those red letters.
I've seen the faithfulness of Christ.
I may not always feel it, but I know it's true.
And if nothing else, I'm going to hold on to that promise.
(01:05:28):
And someday I know I will be back where I know my Lord and my Savior's sitting with me.
I'll know it because I will feel it again.
But if I don't, I don't quit.
I pray, I seek, I go to my brothers, I get reminded, I do all the things that I know arewhat's needed.
(01:05:50):
I read the red letters.
But yeah, there's still some nights where all I can do is...
Lay in bed and just keep telling myself, I'm not letting go of you.
What a beautiful way to explain it.
That's such great advice.
I really appreciate that.
I think I want to dive into a little bit of uh your time as a death investigator, kind ofwhat that was like and uh how you were able to bring closure to some of the families.
(01:06:17):
Yeah, that was really unique for me, again, to show how God used me when I wasn't evenchanged yet, um and the significance of that.
So, first and foremost, one of the biggest things I learned was, yes, that's the lastthing the Bible will ever do for you on this earth, is to figure out how you died, because
(01:06:39):
sometimes it's not in good ways.
um And sometimes it's a powerful thing that God can do for people.
ah
I've investigated a lot of SIDS death, uh Sudden Infant Death Syndrome that people havehad.
And I've watched it change people's lives.
(01:07:00):
It's mothers and fathers who lose their kids that way.
I can't imagine.
I never had my own kid.
I can't imagine how hard that is.
uh My mom lost my brother when I was 18.
My uh brother Ray was killed in a car train accident.
which really changed my dad too.
But I watched that happen.
(01:07:24):
um I watched mothers as their kids.
I had a friend kill himself in my backyard and I watched what that did to his mom andfather.
So as a deputy, I learned that a mother and father knowing that there was nothing theycould do, that their child...
(01:07:47):
died because of bad things of the brokenness of this world.
I've watched how that's helped them understand and work through that death.
Now, as adults, same thing.
I've watched where people have had to deal with issues um with people being uh killed bysomeone else.
(01:08:12):
I've watched young, when people commit suicide, it's hard for families.
um Because of back then my, uh let's just say disconnect.
from emotions, I've been able to sit with families and explain to them issues like whysome people do it um and try to get them understand that, you know, when someone does
(01:08:40):
that, there's nothing you could do.
I basically feel like they're not in the right mind.
m That's why I don't believe when someone says like when they commit suicide, they'recondemned to hell.
I don't believe that.
I believe that by the time someone reaches that point, they are mentally not at the pointwhere they are understanding truthfully what they do.
(01:09:04):
um And so I think when I've helped people understand that, it again helps them workthrough it.
By no means have I have a wisdom.
Even back then, I knew that I wasn't saying something that was...
drastically changing things.
I think what I was saying was just giving them a chance to start to understand.
(01:09:27):
it was, and I know for most of them it's probably through Christ that got them through it.
But I also learned that when I did that, there were things about being around dead peoplethat I think again changed my life.
(01:09:50):
And as I came through Iraq, I had a pastor, one of my last deployment that was anexceptional guy.
has a crazy story, the way God used him.
But when he came back, he started a program where he talked about people having what hecalled was death's shadow.
(01:10:11):
And he talked about when Moses had the people stay outside the camp when they came backfrom combat, from war.
to be cleansed because he were unclean.
He talks about and points to things in the Bible where he feels like that when we dothings that cause people their life um and when we are around people who have passed, that
(01:10:39):
there is a thing that he calls death shadow that we pick up, a sense of death that comesupon us um that we need to get rid of.
Like we talk about getting rid of shame and guilt and fear and all that stuff.
Well, he kind of believes that's something else that we pick up is this thing that deathputs around you.
(01:11:00):
um
through all that as I look back to my law enforcement career, my military career, I dobelieve that that's a truth because I see how it changes you and changes people when
they're around that kind of thing.
So I believe, especially now, and still at times in the situation where I've been aroundthat, um I firmly believe that's something I have to come to Christ to and let go of is to
(01:11:28):
give up what I consider the weight.
of being around that.
Because I don't want to carry that, even when someone in my family, my dad passed.
I believe that was something I had to go to Christ and let him take the weight.
And some of it was like for me the shame and guilt that people look at me and like, whyaren't you upset like the rest of your family?
(01:11:52):
And so, but I also felt like, yes, that there's things about that that people want tocarry the rest of their life.
And I don't want that.
I want to let it go.
Alrighty, so in closing, why should someone follow Jesus and have a relationship
In closing, there any way to put it?
(01:12:13):
I think the biggest thing I can tell you is, again, the peace and freedom that everybodywants.
And I don't care what anybody tells me.
I know there's times where people think, I just want it to stop.
I want the things that I tell myself that aren't good.
(01:12:36):
I want the craziness in my head to stop.
Well, that's where Christ comes.
And there's times when people just think, just want to know somebody cares.
Christ cares.
I just want hope.
(01:12:57):
I want to know there's a reason to wake up tomorrow.
There is, it's called Christ.
It's called the mission he has for you to reach other people.
You see that when you stop looking at yourself,
to start looking out and seeing what Christ sees, seeing the people who need to be loved.
(01:13:22):
You have a purpose.
The purpose is to go out and to do your mission, to look outward.
It's hard to feel like you can't be loved when you're sharing the love of Christ withpeople.
I think the easy way to tell most people is the more you do what Christ calls you to do,the more you give, the more you know what Christ is like.
(01:13:50):
The more love I give people, the more I understand how much God loves me.
the more grace, the more mercy, the more forgiveness I give people, the more I know howmuch God is giving me.
As he continues to fill me, I get to understand who he is.
(01:14:15):
That is changing me.
That is where my hope lies.
Yeah, I have rough days, but that's where I tell you that the red letters, the promisesare true.
And if you have nothing else, you have the promise.
Read the red letters.
(01:14:36):
They're true.
And so when you're in the military, in your emergency services, I don't care if you'refacing war,
Divorce, having a new baby, getting married.
You see, Christ doesn't want just all the bad.
He wants the good.
He wants you to be willing to look and see what Christ is doing in your life.
(01:15:02):
All the good, all the bad, it doesn't matter.
He wants all of you.
And so don't just look for the bad that Christ is taking from you.
Look at the good that He's given you.
Even when you're single, go live the life Christ says for you.
(01:15:25):
You see, sometimes the worst thing that anybody can do when they're in emergency servicesis to look around and constantly see the bad that they deal with.
Even in the midst of the worst situation, Christ is there and doing amazing things.
(01:15:45):
Look for Christ.
Look for where he's at in your life.
Because when you don't think he's there, he's there.
I know, and I call it a journey, I know there's times where Christ helps me walk back tomy childhood and those visions that are there that aren't good.
(01:16:06):
I used to think to myself that that's why I have to be the way I am.
Let's see, can't blame everybody.
I made decisions.
But one thing I do know is when Christ walks me back there, I get to see where Christ wasstill there.
(01:16:26):
Even though I didn't know it, even though it didn't seem like it, He was there.
This world's screwed up.
It's broken.
But I don't get to be broken for an excuse.
Mm-hmm.
I know that things are gonna be hard, but I know Christ won't walk away from me and he'llget me through it.
(01:16:54):
So I don't care what job you do, but if you do something that makes your life feel veryheavy, find Christ.
He's the answer.
Thank you so much.
That was very well said and I've just had a blast just getting to be able to talk with youand all the wisdom that you shared was just very powerful.
(01:17:17):
So I just, I really, really can't thank you enough.
I appreciate you letting me be here.
I love being able to talk about Christ.
Thank you very much.
Thanks again for listening to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
If you're a first responder or in the military and have a story you'd like to share, emailme at faithinthelineofduty.com.
(01:17:37):
You could be a guest on a future episode.
To continue the conversation, visit my Facebook and Instagram page.
Thanks again for tuning in and join me next time for another encouraging story of Faith inthe Line of Duty.
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