August 21, 2024 • 71 mins
Can personal tragedy be a catalyst for profound transformation? Join us as we sit down with Rick Cheatham, a retired Anaheim Fire Captain, who bravely opens up about his journey through the fire service and his unwavering advocacy for firefighter mental health. With over 30 years of experience, Rick shares his significant contributions as union president and his collaboration with Counseling Team International (CTI) to ensure mental health support for his colleagues. His dedication to mental wellness in the fire service is a poignant reminder of the critical need for these provisions.
Rick's story takes an emotional turn as he recounts the devastating loss of his son, Michael, just days before Christmas in 2013. He candidly discusses the immense grief, the challenges it posed to his marriage, and the struggle to balance personal tragedy with the demands of his career. Through commitment, mentorship, and the support of a compassionate community, Rick found the strength to navigate this painful journey. His experience highlights the importance of properly addressing grief and the vital role of community support in overcoming life's toughest adversities.
From a paralyzing injury to a transformative relationship with faith, Rick's journey is a testament to resilience and the power of a positive mindset. With the unwavering support of his wife and a renewed spiritual foundation, Rick defied expectations by walking out of the hospital. He shares insights on breaking the cycle of victimhood, the healing power of forgiveness, and finding purpose through pain. Tune in to hear Rick's inspirational story of faith, resilience, and the profound impact of living a purpose-driven life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello everyone, welcome back to let's Go Podcast
.
I have a great guest for youtoday, rick Cheatham.
He is a retired Anaheim FireCaptain and is all about
firefighter mental health andjust mental health for everyone
overall, and so many otherthings that we're going to talk
about.
But before we get started, ifyou can, please like and
subscribe, go to YouTube, like,subscribe everything from
(00:30):
Instagram, facebook we're on allof them.
You could share post.
We'd really appreciate it and,without further ado, we're going
to bring in Rick right now.
Hey, rick, what's up?
My guy.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How you doing.
Good to be here, good to seeyou, my friend.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Good to see you too, dude.
Thanks for taking the time tocome on.
I know this has been somethingwe've been talking about for a
while, and the great part isanother retired fire engineer.
Right, I think it was Mike Gacy.
Isn't he the one who kind ofsuggests you?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Mike Gacy is a friend of mine,retired out here from Cal Fire
and now lives 45 minutes southof me here in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh, that's right, you guys are in Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we're in Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Hey, you made the right move.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We got out, while the getting out was good.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, yeah, hey, man, thank you so much for taking
the time to come on my co-host,jordan, he's stuck at work and I
was going to have another guy,john Vargas, from GrabLives
Podcast, but everyone, as youknow, we all have lives,
marriages, things we've got todo.
But we are going to get you onthat other podcast, which is
cool, because we do support whatyou're doing and we want to get
(01:40):
you kind of out in your story,heard and and have support
because we believe, okay, it'shappening and what you're doing.
So I'll have to say thanks fordoing what you're doing, man, I
appreciate it man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you, appreciate you as well, my friend yeah, so
hey, let's start this out.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You are retired.
How many years in the fireservice did you do?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
well, I had 30 years overall, but 24 with the city of
anaheim.
Okay, I had six years ofvolunteer work before all that
was going on with RiversideCounty, which at that time was
CDF before it became CAL FIRE,as you know, but 24 years
(02:20):
specifically with the city ofAnaheim.
I had some time with SouthPasadena as an auxiliary for a
short period of time, actuallyone year before I got hired with
Anaheim.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh wow, Is that South Pasadena?
Are they one station?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's a one station town that is divided
by a railroad track, and if youdon't get on the other side of
that track when a call comes in,you could be you could be
stranded for a bit.
Yeah, very small little town.
Beautiful city, though, just abeautiful little town.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Awesome.
And now at Anaheim, you climbedthrough the ranks.
You were a firefighter.
Did you go to?
Were you a firefighter medicand an engineer captain?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
No, I went.
I came in as a firefighter,non-medic uh, back in the days
when they hired guys like that,um and then ended up promoting
the captain and became the Unionpresident, and that's as far as
I climbed was my role as acaptain and Union president.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I guess he skipped engineer the driver yeah, I
skipped engineer.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I came on a little bit later than life.
Uh.
So when I got on the fireservice I was 30, 34, okay, okay
, by the time I got on I hadalready.
I was already behind the eightball a little bit.
So I just skipped over thedriver rank and went to captain
as soon as I was able to.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
I got to be real with you, Rick.
I promoted to engineer.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
now I've been in that position for some years.
I love it.
Oh, it's the best.
Actually, it's the bestposition in the firehouse.
Every engineer I ever workedwith that's what they told me.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I know I got asked the other day.
I was working at a differentstation over time and the chief
is a real good friend of mine,tony Espinosa.
He's close to retirement andhe's like, hey, fish, what's
going on?
When are you going to promoteto captain?
And I was kind of like you'retalking to the right guy, I'm
happy dude.
All I got to do is come to work.
We got air in the tires, waterin the tank, there's oil.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Where am I going where's my water supply?
Yep, it's an island.
Yeah, it's an island.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You're on an island all by yourself, and nobody
messes with you yeah, come tothe crew to mess with you.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
They come to the captain, so the captain takes
the heat yes and it's usuallythe fireman in the back back
seat that it all rolls down to.
They go right past you, manyeah, I, yeah, I saw everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's a beautiful thing.
We'll see Eventually, I don'tknow.
But so you're very muchinvolved with first should I say
firefighter mental health orfirst responder mental health.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Both, but specifically the firefighter
side of it.
When I was union president,that was, of course, one of the
big, major issues that we wereall dealing with is our mental
health, and once I was in theunion we arbitrated for our
members to have the mentalhealth component into our
(05:20):
contract and we ended upsecuring CTI as our counseling
team and the rest is history.
I mean, we've got that's, see Icounseling team international
okay.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
CTI perfect.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, we ended up contracting with them on and it
allowed our guys to get themental health provisions and and
treatment and help that theyneeded if they decided to take
advantage of it.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Okay, okay, and that's something ever since you
retired.
Are you still working with CTR?
Are you with other companies aswell?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, no, I haven't worked with any of the mental
health agencies in the fireservice since I retired.
I retired before years thisservice since I retired.
I retired before years thisNovember since I retired.
But there's a lot to why thatis.
I mean, I came out here andretired and I'll get into that
story as it unfolds but fivemonths after I retired I fell
(06:20):
and broke my neck.
So I've been dealing with the.
I've been dealing with the uh,the trauma of a broken neck at
c4 and five for the last threeyears, and that's four apart, c4
and five.
Yeah, c4 and five.
Keep the diaphragm alive, yeahyeah, that's what I'm saying,
(06:40):
like yo, you're alive yeah, I'muh, I'm very fortunate to be
alive and of that it's why I dowhat I do today.
And you know, as we get intothis, this podcast, you'll hear
the story as to what transpired,how it happened, what that 10
year window looked like for me,from from my early 50s to my
(07:03):
late 50 50s, and how I navigatedmy way out of that.
And then, of course, as aresult of that is why I do what
I do with men today and why Ihelp them overcome whatever
trial they have coming in theirlives to the space that we all
have it right.
I mean, we all face trauma, weall face tragedy, we, you know,
(07:24):
a degree of challenge andadversity in our lives.
That will get us to focus in onone of two things.
We'll either focus in on thenegative loop or we're focusing
on the positive loop, and it'sthe result of.
Where we end up is where I comein today and I start helping
men get back into a positiveloop system, as opposed to being
(07:46):
focused in on the negative,which is so easy to do.
When you've had trauma hit you,it's easy to get stuck in the
negative loop of trauma.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Oh, my goodness, you know what?
Yeah, it was.
That was something for me yearsago.
That was real tough for me todig myself out of for a while.
And I finally I remember just,you know, essentially,
essentially raising my hand,just being like I need help.
Yeah, I, I don't like I'mlosing control of my life.
You know, I I couldn'tunderstand how I could go to
(08:17):
work and help other people andwork as a medic, fight fires, do
all this stuff.
But when I came home, I, I washelpless.
It just blew my mind.
I'm like, dude, what is goingon here?
I can't even help myself.
Something's wrong.
And that's for me whereCounseling Team International
came in and it was a huge helpmy department, they offered to
(08:38):
us for free which is fantasticand I've gotten I don't know, I
would say roughly eight to 10other firefighters to go to seek
out help with them, give them acall, and each of them have all
said they were very happy thatthey did that.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It was a huge help for them.
Yeah, that's a huge advocate tohave in your corner the mental
health component to what we do.
And we, like you said, it'seasy.
It's easy to go to work anddeal with the problems that
other people have.
We've become, we're veryprofessional, we know what we
(09:15):
need to do, we know how to do it, we know when to do it, we know
why we're doing it.
So we focus in on otherpeople's trauma, other people's
tragedies, the worst days oftheir lives, and we do it with
such professionalism that wedon't even put ourselves in the
(09:35):
place where that could evenhappen to us.
We're the ones, we're thefixers.
People used to ask me what doyou do for a living?
And I used to, tongue in cheek,say I solve problems.
That's what firemen do.
I mean, that's what we do,firefighters.
What do you do for a living?
I solve problems.
I solve people's problems, andit's you know.
You can solve other people'sproblems, but then all of a
(09:59):
sudden you get hit with your ownand that's where you determine
real quick the ability you haveto solve other people's problems
, uh, is only superficial if youdon't know how to solve your
own first yeah, yeah it's uh.
A lot of the trauma we deal withis that we've become so
(10:22):
accustomed to helping otherpeople that we don't even know
how to help ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, it's a really weird feeling, you know, and
it's hard to.
It's hard to explain, really.
At times I remember talking totherapists.
I'm like I feel like I'm losingmy mind here because I can't
explain it to people, normalcivilians in my family and
friends who aren't in the fireservice or police or, let's say,
even military.
It's really hard to explainthat to them.
(10:48):
It's hard to explain what we seeand how what you see gets
embedded in your head and a lotof times it gets it gets put uh,
it comes out in other thingsbecause I suppress it so long,
and it would come out in myrelationship and it's like, oh
my gosh, like why am I lashingout right now?
Why am I acting ridiculous andhaving trouble sleeping?
And that's why what you'redoing, man, like hats off to you
(11:09):
, brother I mean most peoplewhen they retire, especially
firemen like we're gone right,we're gonna go do our own thing
right well, you know what that's.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Uh, that was kind of my mentality, I mean.
Uh, I mean I started off.
My journey into the fireservice was one that should have
never even taken place.
There was no way I should haveever been a fireman.
I was too white, I was too male, I was too old and affirmative
action was kicking my butt inthe early 90s, late 80s.
(11:40):
I mean.
Affirmative action was justkeeping me down and there was no
way for me to overcome thosethree character issues of myself
.
I mean, I wasn't going tochange the color of my skin, I
wasn't going to change mymaleness, and I was as old as I
was.
There was nothing I could doabout it.
So I was told it was impossible, don't even try.
(12:02):
And because of that I developeda sense of what we call the
power of commitment.
When somebody understands thepower of commitment, they are
motivated by results rather thanby rhetoric.
So when someone tells me Ican't do something or I can't be
a fireman because of thoseother qualifications that are
(12:25):
interfering, the power ofcommitment looks past the
rhetoric and says well, theresult is this.
So I'm going to do everything,I'm going to become aware, I'm
going to become intentional andI'm going to change my mindset
to become what it is that I'mcommitted to becoming.
And back then it was becoming afireman.
So 27 rejection letters and sixyears later, wham, I was hired
(12:51):
by the.
You know I'm not going to throwyou guys under the bus over
there in the county at all, butin my mind, anaheim is the best
fire department to work for inthe state of California.
So I was fortunate to have thebest fire department in the
state of California hire me andfor that they got my allegiance,
(13:13):
they got my loyalty, they got100% of who I was.
And some people say that mycareer was spent useful and
others might say I was a pain intheir butt, and I was a pain in
the butt for those who neededme to be a pain in the butt to
them for.
But it worked for me and myfocus was always on on helping
(13:36):
other people.
So I ended up having abeautiful career 24 years with
the city of Anaheim, and I don'thave any regrets.
I have none whatsoever.
However, into my career, Iended up losing my son.
So here I am.
(13:57):
I'm uh, this was in 19 or, I'msorry, 2013.
I got the, the notificationI've got, I got got the knock on
the door that every parentfears.
That knock on the door cameseven days before Christmas.
So I mean, just imagine, you'vegot your Christmas trees up,
(14:19):
You've got the house decorated,you've got this festive scene
going on decorated, you've gotthis, this festive scene going
on, and you're seven days awayfrom you know, what we as kids
always anticipated, what wealways look forward to, that was
probably the most excitingmorning of every kid's life was
waking up first this morning andfinding out what santa left us
(14:40):
right.
So here we are, we're in thiskind of uh, you know this
festive mindset and, uh, youknow, two, three o'clock in the
morning, we get this, this knockat the door and it was the
riverside county sheriff'soffice saying that, asking us if
we were the parents of michaelcheatham, and uh, that would
that.
(15:01):
That conversation that nightchanged me forever.
It.
It changed my life in a waythat I can't even put into words
, but you know, nonetheless, Igot this gut-wrenching news that
my son was killed.
And you know, when you thinkabout it, it may not be the
(15:26):
notice that you've lost a child,but every single one of us, we
all, get a notice at time or twothat completely changes the
course of our life.
We get that notice that youknow our parents have died, or
you know a divorce notice, oryou know a breakup notice, or a
(15:49):
lost job notice, a pink slip,whatever.
We're always faced withsomething that can give us cause
to just step back and take asecond look.
And you know, statisticallyspeaking, when you lose a child,
(16:09):
most marriages don't eventhey're not able to navigate
through that trauma.
And so my wife and I, havingnavigated a trauma earlier in
our marriage we've been married38 years.
Now, 10 years into our marriage, my wife told me I hate you, I
hate God, I hate the church, Iquit.
And she was walking out thedoor with my two babies, my two
(16:34):
boys, and someone else was goingto be raising my family, and
that's because of where I hadallowed my life to get, in my
marriage and in my addiction.
And all during that time when Iwas navigating through that, I
was also trying to become afireman.
(16:55):
So I had, you know, trying tolive a life of becoming a
fireman while you werestruggling with an addiction and
while you're struggling to putyour marriage back together and
while you've got two small boys.
That's enough to put a lot ofpressure on anybody.
And I was able to use the skillsthat I was taught through the
power of commitment to navigatethat scenario with my wife and
(17:18):
fortunately we found a couplethat were able to walk us
through that and became ourmentors.
And you know, I say thatbecause all of us struggle and
it's who you place yourselfaround when you struggle as to
how successful you will be whenyou navigate that struggle.
So I had to find myself a coach, I had to find myself a mentor.
(17:42):
I had to find myself somebodywho had already gone through
what I'd gone through and walkme through it.
And that's what I was able todo with marriage.
Well, now you fast forwardyears later and I'm dealing with
the loss of my son, and thatone kicked me in the gut.
That was a gut check that Iwasn't prepared for in the real
(18:08):
sense of the meaning whathappens when you lose a child.
So anyway, I started to do whatI did best is I poured myself
into work.
I just surrounded myself with abunch of other firefighters.
I surrounded myself, you know,doing union business, doing the
(18:29):
work for our brotherhood,navigating some of the most
difficult times Anaheim Fire hadever faced with, the first time
ever voted no confidence on afire chief that had never
happened in our history,confidence on a fire chief that
would never happen in ourhistory.
And as we're navigating throughall that, it took me away from
having to deal with a lot of thegrief myself.
(18:51):
So when, when Michael waskilled, I knew right off the bat
that I was going to be throwninto a crucible of life that was
going to test me at everyaspect of who I was as a man, as
a father, as a husband, as afirefighter, as a captain I mean
(19:17):
, every ounce of who I had builtmyself into being was going to
be challenged and tested, and itcertainly was that.
It was a challenge, and as Iwas going through this process,
I just remember thinking tomyself how am I ever going to be
(19:39):
the man that I once was withoutmy son, without my oldest,
without the guy who you knowtaught me how to be a parent,
taught me how to be a father,and now here he is, brutally
murdered at the age of 23.
And my life just stops, and Ihad to figure out where I was
going, and so for me, being busywas a good answer.
(20:04):
You know, we did get involvedwith the grief community.
We did do counseling sessions,we did navigate through with
other people who had lost theirchildren, so we had a good sense
of a foundation on how tonavigate it.
But when you pour yourself intowork you don't always grieve
(20:30):
properly.
And that's what I did.
I threw myself into work anddrowned out that grief, I
anesthetized myself with justwork, and you know how easy that
is to do.
When in today's fire service,when staffing levels are at an
all time low, call volumes at anall time high.
(20:54):
So you go in for a 24 hourshift.
You may be there for three,four or five days, you don't
know.
You get the mandatory call andyou might not get to go home and
see your family and so myfamily's grieving and meanwhile
I'm dealing with.
You know my work schedule, myworkload, and then on top of
that, the union business, whichis a that's like taking on a
(21:17):
second career in and of itself.
Yes, it really is.
It really is.
You put a lot at risk when youjoin the union and you put more
at risk when you become anofficer of that union.
So those types of things werecoming up for me.
But I just kept my nose to thegrindstone.
(21:39):
I kept focused.
I knew I had to plow throughthe difficulties we were faced
with as an organization andunfortunately, I think for me,
it was my family that wassuffering the most because dad
was pouring into work.
So I wasn't pouring into mysurviving son, kyle, I wasn't
(21:59):
pouring into my survivingdaughter, tori, I wasn't pouring
in as much to my wife, kelly,and you know I was more
concerned with making sure mywife was able to navigate it
than anything else.
And so, between pouring intojust Kelly and work, I kind of
watched my kids suffer a bit andit was in that suffering that I
(22:26):
went from being able to forgivethe guy that murdered my son to
.
I started to build up aresentment and a bitterness and
an anger towards him because Isaw what it was doing to my kids
.
And when I saw what washappening to them, my son Kyle,
who was 21 at the time and youknow he's just entering into
(22:46):
adulthood and his best friendwas just brutally taken from him
, the, the, the person he'd hadin his corner his entire life.
And then looking at my daughter, who had just turned 13 and
she's just becoming, you know,just entering into her puberty,
and now she's dealing with thattrauma.
So what I saw happening to themcaused me to just become more
(23:08):
angry, more bitter, moreresentful, and it turned into a
justified resentment.
I was justified to hold on tothat anger.
I was justified in my mind tohold on to the resentment.
I was justified to hold on tothat anger.
I was justified in my mind tohold on to the resentment.
And as that anger started tobuild up within me over time, I
(23:30):
found myself in Colorado, at mydaughter's house here in about
three years ago a little overthree years ago, when I've
retired to Anaheim, or retiredfrom Anaheim to Nashville, my
daughter decided to move out ofCalifornia as well.
So she moved to Denver and itwas right about that same time
(23:52):
that she moved in next door to aguy that, or a guy moved in
next door to her and he becamelike this stalker type and so he
was starting to do weird things.
And so here I am, you know, athousand miles away, and I'm
hearing my daughter tell me someof the stuff her next door
neighbor's doing and saying, andI'm getting more and more angry
(24:15):
because, you know, I wasvictimized once by somebody
taking my son.
And now I've got this guy who'sa thousand miles away from I am
and he's doing these things tomy daughter, saying these things
, and so I start to build thatresentment up.
Well, long story short, we endup going out there to help her
get settled in and this guymakes a move on my son and
(24:36):
starts talking to him and startschirping and before I know it,
him and my wife are in aconversation and they're
chirping each other.
So I get the mess.
My wife yells down hey, got toget up here, this guy's going
off on Kyle.
So I run upstairs and at thatpoint my mind is in a place
where every bit of that angerand resentment and bitterness
(24:57):
that I had built up over thecourse of the last seven years,
with the death of my son, wasnow coming out in a one-time
engagement with a guy that wastrying to victimize my daughter.
And, as it turns out, this guy,he went there with a purpose
(25:19):
and when I showed up, you know,went there with a purpose and
when I showed up, you know, andaggressively pursued him.
Um, and I mean when I sayaggressively with my, with my
tone of voice and with my bodylanguage, you know all of it,
yeah he ends up pulling a ninemillimeter on me.
And so I figured at that pointyou better, you better have the
(25:43):
courage to use it.
And of course he didn't.
So I just charged him and heran downstairs.
But when he ran downstairs heracked around, turned around and
pointed at me and I said you've, you haven't got the courage to
pull the trigger.
Man, you're, you're a bully.
You do this with ladies.
Let's see what you do with aman that's twice your age.
Let's see how you handle me.
And you know, of course hedidn't pull the trigger.
(26:11):
Obviously I'm here.
But it caused me to do a littlebit of reflection, that my anger
had got to the place, that itwas unresolved, and because of
that unresolved anger I put myfamily in a very risky position,
where now they're looking attheir father that could quite
possibly be killed at the handof a crazy lunatic who decides
(26:34):
to pull a gun on him.
And, uh, it just gave me asense of responsibility to take
a look at things.
Well, now I go home and a monthlater you know, five months
after retirement I fall andbreak my neck at C4 and five.
So that's the window, startingmy fifties with the death of my
son ending my fifties with a gunbeing pulled on me and a broken
(26:59):
neck at C4 and C5.
And when things like thathappen, it's real easy to
reflect on life happening to you.
Why is this happening to me?
Why me?
This is so unfair.
I just retired and after allthe years of putting into my
(27:19):
pension and dealing with thetrauma that life brings other
people and us responding to them, now I'm sitting in a situation
where I'm paralyzed from thechest down, don't know if I'm
ever going to walk again, don'tknow if I'll ever have the use
of my hands again, and thethoughts of why me?
(27:40):
The thoughts of this isn't fair, the thoughts of how am I going
to function the rest of my lifelike this, and it caused me to
start asking all those questions.
And those questions weredesigned to keep me stuck.
Why me?
Why, instead of what can Iaccomplish now that I'm here to
(28:04):
make it a better place for meand my family?
Those kinds of questions don'tenter in our purview when we're
suffering with pain andsuffering, the loss of my body.
Mechanics caused me to reallyreflect on some things.
And so what happened with me inthat situation is my wife, who
(28:27):
is a ICU nurse, or was at thetime.
My wife, who's a nurse, wasable to create an environment
for me in the hospital.
So for two and a half monthsI'm going through inpatient
rehab.
She created this environmentwhere I had relaxing music,
(28:49):
healing music, meditation musicplaying almost 24-7 in my
hospital room.
She had essential oils and so Iwas smelling good and she had
essential oils and so I had.
I was smelling good, you smellgood, you're going to be good.
So I had, I had essential oils.
So she made sure that myenvironment was taken care of.
(29:11):
She made sure that all my needswere taken care of.
So she was pretty much myfrontline nurse, even though I
had a nursing staff taking careof me.
My wife was my nurse while Iwas doing all this.
So I had the environment set upto where, if I put my mind to it
, the environment was right thatI could overcome it.
(29:34):
And so I poured back into thatsame mindset of when I was
trying to become a fireman youcan't do it, you'll never be
able to accomplish that.
Your affirmative action willnever allow it to happen.
And so that mindset came inwhen I was in the hospital of
okay, how am I going to get outof here?
How am I going to walk out ofhere?
(29:56):
What's that going to look like?
What is that going to take?
What kind of treatment am Igoing to need?
And so my physical therapistcame in and we developed this
game plan.
She says what do you want toaccomplish?
And I said I want to walk outof here, I don't care what it
takes, I want to walk out ofthis hospital.
And she says well, your mind'sin the right spot.
(30:17):
Now let's just see if we canget your body there.
And so we went to work and forthe next two and a half months
we put in the work to accomplishwhat my mind had already said I
was going to accomplish, whichwas to walk out of there.
And in two and a half months Iliterally walked out of the
hospital without the use of acane.
Two and a half months, two anda half months, two and a half
(30:39):
months.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Oh my gosh Rick, that is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, it was, I tell you.
You talk about motivation.
You talk about overcoming achallenge.
You talk about the victory andthe excitement that happens to
you when you get there andyou're able to accomplish it.
The only thing I can attest orI can connect it to is, like you
(31:06):
know, when we were all strivingto become firefighters, we knew
what kind of work that was, weknew what kind of challenge that
was and we all poured into itand sacrifices were made and the
work began.
And then, when we finally gotsworn in for the first time, man
, that feeling of pride, thatfeeling of victory, that feeling
of accomplishment was enough toput it in our minds where we
(31:30):
could use that over, and overand over again.
Well, that's what it was likefor me, coming out of this
paralyzed state.
Is that, even though I'm stillnumb from the chest down and I'm
still using and learning toadapt to this new normal with
how my body functions, I canwalk and I can care for myself.
I'm not an envelope.
I don't need to be cared for24-7 like a lot of people.
(31:56):
We know that fall and break C4and 5.
That's what happens to them.
They'll end up in a wheelchairfor the rest of their life, some
of them on a breathing tube.
It's the same injury thatChristopher Reeves had.
So the difference between hisand mine was his was a complete
fracture, mine was an incomplete.
So I had a little bit of a hope.
(32:16):
I had a little bit more hopethan he had at the time, and so
walking out of that hospital putme in a mindset.
Here's the problem with thattim is that if you don't put in
the work on a continual basis,your mind will automatically
revert back to where it feelsnormal and where it feels
(32:38):
comfort and where it feels uh,and where it feels comfort and
where it feels reality set in.
So when I got back home, mymindset went right back to a
victim.
(32:59):
I was in a place where I can'tdo what I used to do.
I was a USAR captain, I was atruck captain.
I had values in me that wererevolved around what I could do,
how I would perform, and nowall that's taken away.
One of the reasons it was alltaken away was because, in my
(33:32):
mind, I felt that if I can't usemy hands, I lost my identity.
And when you lose your identityas a firefighter, when you lose
your identity as a contractorwhich I was before I was a
fireman and you lose thatidentity that your body has
created for you and you're leftto just think by yourself and
(33:52):
you're alone, it starts to get alittle troublesome and your
mind can go to some dark placesand you become victimized by
your circumstances.
Now, and that's what's what.
That's what happened to me.
You know, while I was in thehospital, the environment was
created for me to be successful.
My wife created thatenvironment.
Not only that, but I had uh,anaheim firefighters were coming
(34:16):
out flying 2000 miles out to beby my bedside.
So the entire time I was in thehospital, I had a revolving
door of firefighters who werethere to make sure that my needs
were met, to make sure thatthings were going at home the
way that I needed them to go.
They were taking care of thingsaround the house, so I had all
(34:37):
this environment as I waspreparing my way out of my
injury.
What I didn't have prepared forme is when everybody went home,
when all my buddies went home,when my wife went back to work
and and she's now I'm just bymyself and my thoughts and my
thoughts went back to you know,why is this happening to me?
(34:58):
What did I do to deserve this?
Why is it that I have to burymy son at 52, 51, I think, 51 or
2 and break my neck at 58, 59?
Why is it?
Why?
Why do my 50s have to suck somuch?
Why?
Why?
This is not fair, god.
Why are you doing this to me?
(35:19):
And so life became somethingthat happened to me, and so, as
life happens to you, you startto look at life through a
different lens, and so the waythat I approach this now is that
I had two ways of looking atthings.
(35:40):
I could look at things througha positive lens, or I could look
at things through a negativelens, and when I looked at
things through the negative lens, I became a victim.
I became a victim of mycircumstances, and so, because I
was a victim of mycircumstances, negative thoughts
started coming up, thoughtslike anger, bitterness,
(36:02):
resentment, hostility,argumentation those are all
negative things that wouldhappen as a result.
So the way I look at it is likethis so we all know that life
is just energy.
We're just energy, that's allwe are.
Every thought we think isenergy, every action is energy.
We're just energy, that's allwe are.
(36:22):
Our every thought we think isenergy, every action is energy,
and so we've got all this energythat's circling around us all
the time, and when that energyis in the form of thought, if
it's negative energy, we'regoing to have a negative outcome
.
And so the way that our brainworks, the way that our brain
(36:43):
works, is that I have a thoughtcome into my head, and then that
thought creates an emotion,which then that emotion creates
an experience in our head, andthen, from that experience, we
create a belief about it, andthen, after that belief system
(37:03):
is created, we then take anaction, and then that action
gives us an experience in returnthat validates that our thought
was right.
So for me, why is thishappening to me?
I must be wrong, I must be bad,I must be being punished.
God must have something outagainst me.
I don't know why it is thatit's happened to me, but it's
(37:25):
happening to me and theconsequences suck.
I hate it, I don't like it, andso that was my thought, and
that thought created anexperience of negativity, of
emotional depletion, of anger,and as I thought more about that
, I started to attract morenegative experiences to me.
(37:47):
I would go to the refrigeratorand I would go and pick up a you
know a carton of milk and Ican't grab it with my hands and
so I would drop milk and I'dspill milk all over the counter,
I'd spill leftovers all overthe floor, and I was having all
these little experiences thatjustify poor me and why things
weren't working for me, and thatwould then create that negative
(38:11):
loop cycle, and that negativeloop cycle would then validate
that I am truly useless as a man.
My identity is gone.
I will never be the firefighterthat I once was.
I will never be the captainthat I once was.
I will never be the contractorthat I once was.
(38:32):
I will never use the hands likeI once did.
My body will never operate likeit could, and so, because all
that negativity kept cyclingthrough, I ended up creating a
system in my brain in the waythat I thought that created a
victim, and because I was avictim, everything was
(38:56):
validating that for me.
So I'd look at life andeverything I looked at validated
the fact that I was a victim,and in doing that I became more
angry.
So why do I say that?
Why do I come back to this?
Because I had to break thatcycle.
I had to break that mentality,and here's what I ended up
(39:17):
having to do, having to do.
As I was contemplating all thewhys this was happening, it
dawned on me that I had neverreally fully walked through the
grief process of losing my son,and so I was having rebound
(39:39):
trauma now.
So now not only am I dealingwith the trauma of a broken neck
, I'm now dealing with thetrauma of grief at the loss of a
son.
And so now I've got those twocompeting, those two compounding
traumas affecting my life.
And one of the things Irealized real quick and going
back and looking at my patternsand looking at my cycles, was
(40:02):
this when my son was murdered, Irealized that I was gonna have
to overcome that experiencethrough forgiving the person
that did it, but forgiving theman that murdered your child.
Those are easy words to say,but it's a difficult process to
(40:25):
attain.
And so, as I was going throughthis, after I broke my neck, and
you're sitting there thinkingand you're constantly in your
own mind going why, why, why?
I started to ask this questionwhat is keeping me from being
the man of God I need to be?
What is keeping me from beingwho I'm supposed to be?
(40:47):
Instead of why is thishappening to me, I had to change
the way I asked the question.
We're only one question awayfrom change, but you got to ask
the right questions, and toooften what we you got to ask the
right questions, and too oftenwhat we do is we ask the
questions that keep us stuck,like why is this happening to me
?
How come this happened to me?
(41:10):
Why do they do this to me?
This is not fair.
Why is this not fair?
And so, by asking the differentquestions of how or what I can
do to change that situation,where it led me to this was what
can I do to change this angerand this bitterness that's just
(41:30):
eating me alive right now andcausing me to want to
anesthetize with whether it wasdrugs or alcohol or sex or
whatever it is that weanesthetize ourselves with
instead of going there andanesthetizing, what can I do to
prevent myself from having thathappen?
And this is where I ended up.
Um, yeah, I looked at whathappened with Mike, my oldest
(41:55):
son, and the resentment that Iwas holding on to, and I
realized that I had a poisonthat was running through my
veins, similar to what you wouldexperience when a snake bites
you.
You know, you get that venomoussnake bites you and you get
this poison running through yourvein.
Well, the snake's long goneAfter he bites.
(42:18):
He's gone, he does what thesnake does and it leaves, but
it's the residual effect of thatsnake bite and the poison that
(42:42):
murdered my son.
And the poison was theresentment and the hostility and
the anger and the bitternessthat I held on to as a result of
that.
So what I had to do is I had tocome to a place where I could
literally remove all of thatfrom within me, and there's only
(43:05):
one way to do that and that'sby forgiving the unforgivable.
So it reminded me back to thedays when, you know, I'm a very
spiritual man and I rememberhearing the stories of Jesus and
as he hung on a cross, hiswords to the very people that
(43:25):
murdered him.
The words to the very peoplethat crucified him were Father,
forgive them, for they know notwhat they do.
And then it started to dawn onme how many times in my own life
have I done things that Ineeded to be forgiven of and I
wasn't.
How did that feel?
How did that make me respond?
Or how about how many timesthat I had to have asked for
(43:47):
forgiveness from my wife?
You know, when I betrayed her,I betrayed her trust, and yet
she forgave me.
So here I am now, looking atlife through that same lens of
if I'm ever going to get overthis hump, if I'm ever going to
change that paradigm of how Ithink as a victim.
(44:08):
I have to get to the placefirst where I can forgive myself
for being a victim and forgivethe person who I attributed my
victim statute to, which is theman that murdered my son.
So I ended up forgiving him,and once I let go of all of that
venom, my life started tochange, and it changed in a
(44:30):
powerful way.
Now I have the opportunity tohelp other men do the same.
So my offer nowadays are, youknow, for all men that are
struggle with whatever they'regoing through in their life,
whether that's through theirPTSD as a result of their fire
career, whether that's throughdecisions made and the conflict
(44:53):
that's going on at home becausestaffing is so short and you're
being mandatory, whether youfeel victimized in any way,
shape or form, it's going backand changing the way that we
look at the problem and solve it.
Rather than solve it throughthe negative loop cycle, we
solve it through the positiveloop cycle.
And here's the positive loopcycle.
(45:13):
The positive loop cycle islooking at it through the lens
of faith and anticipation,whereas the negative is looking
at it through the lens of doubtand anxiety.
So if we're feeling doubtful,if we're feeling anxiety, that's
because we're stuck in thatfearful loop cycle, that
negative loop cycle.
And so I looked at it from thepositive side.
And here's what I started to seeis that when I looked at my
(45:37):
injury and I looked at the deathof my son, and I was able to
find the gift in it, I was ableto find the benefit, if there is
one, to change the way that Ithought and looked at it.
So now, when I looked at myson's death.
Instead of it happening to me,I looked at okay, how can his
(46:00):
death change me in a way thatwill allow me to be a gift to
other people?
How can his death now impact mein a way to where I can have
impact on other people in apositive way?
How can his murder affect me ina way that I can help other
(46:23):
people overcome anything theyhave going in on or on in their
lives?
And that mind shift and thatmind positioning in and of
itself puts you in a faithfuloutlook, in a anticipatory
outlook.
It gets you looking in thefuture with a positive outlook.
(46:47):
And because you're doing thatnow, you start to attract
positive outcomes.
You start to attract a moreuseful positioning in your life.
You start to look at life notat through the lens of a victim
but through the lens of beingvictorious.
So when you can start to shiftyour mindset, you go from being
(47:09):
a victim to being victoriousthen everything that you do in
life starts to have the returnof being victorious rather than
being victimized.
So, starting that with Mike'sdeath, I became victorious over
Mike's death because I was ableto forgive the unforgivable, the
guy that took his life.
(47:30):
I was able to set him free ofmy own internal negative
paradigm that kept me stuck,kept me stuck in my grief, it
kept me stuck in my problems.
It kept me stuck in myrelationships of anger and doubt
.
And once I was able to breakfree of that and see the gift in
(47:54):
it, all things started tocrumble beneath my feet that
were once a barrier and I couldactually see clearly and go oh,
this is why that happened.
So Michael's death set me free,and here's how it set me free.
Number one he gave me purposeto live for.
(48:15):
One of the greatest benefitsthat I have found as a grieving
parent has been giving life backto my son by honoring him and
the life he didn't get to live.
So now my purpose is to honormy son in the life that he
(48:35):
didn't get to live.
So how am I is to honor my sonin the life that he didn't get
to live.
So how am I going to honor him?
Am I going to honor him bybeing a victim of my
circumstance, or am I going tohonor him by being victorious
over my circumstance?
And I've chosen to bevictorious over the circumstance
.
So now that when I look at myson's death.
I look at it through the lensof me being victorious over that
, so that I could help otherpeople navigate their own grief,
(48:59):
their own trauma, their owntrials, their own tribulations,
their own problems, their ownadversities.
And just think about this whohere that's listening to this
podcast, has never experiencedtrauma, trial tribulation?
Who here has never experiencedtrauma trial tribulation?
(49:21):
Who here has never experiencedthe type of grief that is a
gut-wrenching kick in the gut,to where it just freezes you in
your tracks?
See, not everybody's had todeal with it from the loss of a
son, but I guarantee you you'vehad the grief.
From the loss of a career, theloss of a son, but I guarantee
you you've had the grief fromthe loss of a career, the loss
of a promotion, the loss of arelationship, wherever that is,
(49:44):
we all are faced with.
It's the same questions that weask to get the same result.
It's just the circumstances arealways changing.
They're always different.
Mine was the murder of my son.
Yours might be the loss of arelationship that you once held
dear.
Yours might be, you know,whatever else I already
(50:05):
mentioned.
You know it could be anything.
And as we learn to navigate that, we end up navigating life
through one of two lenses eitherthe fear or the faith.
And I have chosen to take faithover fear every time now.
And so now I anticipatewhatever problem I have, I
already anticipate that it'salready solved.
(50:26):
I just got to start asking theright questions and I've got to
get myself with the rightcoaching and the right mentors
so that we can navigate ittogether, and the right mentors
so that we can navigate ittogether.
And as we start to see thingsunfold, we see other options and
other opportunities.
And then we start to make thoselittle mind shifts, those
(50:48):
little changes that, before youknow it, it doesn't matter what
kind of victim you were.
Victory runs in your vein andyou could overcome it with just
one small different choice inhow you think.
And so my choices now of how Ithink is I go for that positive
loop cycle where I operate outof faith rather than operating
(51:08):
out of fear.
And when we do that, I'mtelling you, tim, life changes
forever for anyone.
And if I can overcome the deathof my son and overcome the
breaking of my neck at C4 and 5,I guarantee you you could
overcome staffing issues.
You could overcome maritalproblems.
(51:31):
You could overcome.
You know issues with yourchildren.
You could overcome issues atwork.
You could overcome anything.
You know issues with yourchildren.
You could overcome issues atwork.
You could overcome anythingthat comes your way.
You just have to be taught howto ask the right questions, and
that's what I do now.
I teach people how to navigatesome of the most terrifying and
(51:51):
debilitating life issues thatthey're facing at that time with
the confidence and the clarityto know how to navigate with
purpose and how to navigate withpassion and get to the place
where you're on the other side.
You're fulfilled and you'reable to be a help and service to
other people as they go throughthe same thing.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Gosh, rick, you have um boy I don't know what to say
right now because you have mealmost in tears a few times.
Then you have me angry with you, then you have me like wanting
to shout with you and then backto like, oh, I'm going to cry,
but you've hit on so manypowerful things that I have also
just gone through over the pastI would say five years and, um
(52:36):
God, I wish we had more time,cause we're getting close on
time.
But I want to tell you, is youknow, I gave my life back to
Jesus, I would say about twoyears ago now, prodigal son.
Awesome and I went down such adark path and you know to see
where my life has come nowcompared to where it was.
(52:56):
To me it's just a miracle and itshows me God's grace and his
love and what he's done for allof us and how I felt like I was
suffering and making so many baddecisions, went through a
divorce and you know I was like,oh, my life is over.
Like even to the point where,like you said, when you're
dealing with PTSD and you know,we got to put this face on.
When we go to work and beprofessional, we we show up.
(53:19):
We show up for our brothers,our sisters in the fire service
and we show up for the citizensthat we serve, and then I can't
show up for myself.
It is like you're losing yourmind and you can see where
people go these down these darkpaths, where it's like, hey, you
know what, maybe I don't needto be here anymore.
If I want to tell that, I wantto say to anybody is that is
such an absolute lie.
(53:40):
You were fearfully, wonderfullymade.
You were here on this earth fora reason and you are so loved
and you're so unique.
We're all unique in our ownways and hearing your story is
so similar.
I think we've talked about thisbefore.
My father, my family, we lost mybrother in a car accident in
2004.
He was 18 and the same thing my.
You know.
I've never seen so much pain inmy family, especially my
(54:02):
parents.
Yeah, it was life-changing forall of us, especially for them.
No parent should ever have tobury their child.
But to see what god has done inour family, because my parents
still chose to put Christ infront of everything, even their
pain, and to offer their painand even be angry.
It's almost like Job.
(54:22):
We can have these angry prayers.
It's totally okay.
My prayers are way differentthan they used to be.
I tell God exactly how I feel,even when I'm mad, but I'm
telling him, I'm communicatingwith him, having that
relationship.
And now you see our family.
We have eight nieces andnephews.
I'm about to have my first kid.
My parents have been married 42years.
(54:43):
You know, it's amazing how youknow God doesn't waste anything.
He doesn't.
There's a purpose behind it andsometimes our pain leads us to
a higher level of getting closerto him and trusting in him, and
it's also a testimony to others.
I mean just hearing you speakright now, so encouraging.
I mean, my goodness, man,you've been through a lot, dude,
(55:04):
even with your son, and it'slike it brought back a lot of
emotion for me.
I'm trying to listen to you andnot be emotional, but you know,
I've been there, man.
And Rick, I know a feeling youknow.
And Rick, I know a feeling youknow.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, you have experienced the loss at a level
that many don't, and when youlose your brother.
When my son lost his brother,it was like he lost his
navigation, he lost his compass.
I mean, it was his olderbrother, it was all he knew.
It was the one guy that hecould go to and talk to about
anything and they were equals.
They weren't oh, don't let momyou know it wasn't.
(55:40):
You can't go and tell mom anddad everything, but you can go
tell your brother just aboutanything and that's what he lost
back to God.
I think you nailed it.
(56:00):
It's easy for us in those tryingtimes, those moments of
tribulation, where we could askthe wrong questions.
You know the why me questions.
We can become victimized in it.
We can auger in, we couldanesthetize those emotions with
drug, alcohol, sex, whatever youwant to anesthetize it with.
But they're not going anywhere.
They're always going to bethere.
It's just going to come up someother place in your life.
And so, by looking at thepositive side of things, here's
(56:24):
the thing that is so fascinatingto me Just by the mere fact
that we are here and we'rebreathing and we have this
beautiful blessing called lifemeans that you were one in 400
(56:47):
trillion chance of survival.
You made it out of all, all ofthem, all of them.
You know all of thoseopportunities that were swimming
upstream to be part of thatfetus.
You won.
You were the number one.
You did it out of everybody.
So when you say we're fearfullyand wonderfully made, that
(57:09):
we're created in his image, thatwe have a purpose, we all have
a purpose.
But what life does is life doeswhat it's supposed to do.
It happens, and it's how wenavigate it that determines
where our focus will be.
If life is happening to you,you become victimized.
(57:30):
If life is happening for you,you don't have failure, you have
feedback and you have theinformation you need.
Now.
Okay, now I can go thisdirection, and so that's all
life is.
And so if you're stuck in thatnegative loop, if you're stuck
in that negative cycle wherethings are happening to you,
you're not happy, you're notcontent, you don't, you know
it's painful, you're suffering,then the reality is that you
(57:56):
will seek all those things tovalidate that state of mind.
So you'll start to seek it andit'll start to come back, and
then it will validate thatyou're worthless, that you're
useless.
But God doesn't do that.
He doesn't use that type ofmentality.
He says you got to overcomethat fear and have faith in me,
(58:17):
have faith that all things arepossible and they work together
for his good.
It's okay to have that feelingthat you're scared.
It's okay to have that feelingthat you're hurt, that you're
anxious, but understanding thatwe've got to overcome that fear
with faith.
And when we do anything,anything can happen, including
(58:40):
the miraculous.
I didn't think I was going tobe able to walk out of that
hospital, but I knew my faithwas in a position where, if it
could be done, I'm going to putall the intention and all the
action on everything that needsto be done to do it and then let
the blessing happen.
And it didn't take long beforeI could start to say hey, man,
(59:01):
this is working, I'm actuallymoving my hands now, I can
actually move my arms, I canactually move my foot, and I
started to see things come back,slowly but surely.
But even after all of it saidand done, and you could
experience that super high, thatvictory, it doesn't take much
for the rubber band to go backdown to its natural state and we
(59:22):
lose the tension and before youknow it, we're victimized again
by life, and that's whathappened to me.
It happened to me again go fromzero to hero in a way that I
had never really experiencedbefore.
When you can take your mindsetfrom that point of reference and
start navigating your way outof it, on the other side of it
(59:44):
there's so much hope, there's somuch joy, there's so much peace
, there's so much tranquility,there's so much excitement and
anticipation for the life thatyou have left to live.
Now I get to do that by bringinghonor to my son, michael, by
bringing honor to his name forwhat he sacrificed so that I
(01:00:05):
could have the life that I nowhave, which is one that's
totally free from pain andsuffering.
That keeps me in a victimmentality.
And that's what this life isall about, and that's what I
offer you and all your gueststhat hear this podcast, is that
(01:00:26):
when you saddle up with theright people, you know when the
student's ready, the teacherwill appear.
So when you're ready, theteacher will appear.
And when that teacher appears,it's up to you to make a choice.
And when that teacher appears,there's three levels of
relationship.
There's the first level, whichit's all about me and we know
(01:01:04):
those guys in the fire serviceall the self-centered ones that
everything's about them, and I'mjust going to make a funny joke
here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
They usually promote 100%, oh my gosh, 100%, it's
always those guys, it's alwaysthose guys, right?
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Yeah, hello, messy.
And then there's that secondlevel, which it's all about the
win-win.
You know 50-50.
You know I'll make you, I'llscratch your back, you scratch
my back, and it's alltransactional, and that's the
politics side of the fireservice, it's all transactional.
That's how we go intonegotiations, that's how we find
(01:01:39):
out which, which city councilwe're, we're, we're going to
have in our corner.
And you know we start tonavigate through the win, win
situation.
But even in those two situationsyou have a lot of conflict.
Because the minute we look atlife and you know, wait a minute
, we're not winning now, thisisn't 50-50.
(01:02:01):
You're not holding up your endof the bargain.
We create this conflict andwith self-centeredness we always
have conflict.
You're always fighting upagainst those.
But there's the third step tothe dimension of that
relationship that I find mostpowerful, and that's the third
step, which is your need is myneed.
So when we approach life withyour need is my need, we go to
(01:02:23):
the essence of who God is.
And in the essence of who Godis, he serves the needs of those
who are hurting and sufferingthe most and I get to become an
instrument in that healingprocess.
That's all this is about.
We become the essence of God'sunity, his character, his love.
We become servant leaders, inour crews, or on our crews, in
(01:02:49):
our department, on our unionboards, we start serving the
needs of others because theirneeds are our needs, and that
mind shift in and of itself,starts to develop a victorious
mindset rather than a victimmindset.
So for me, like you said, justthat essence of going back to
(01:03:11):
Christ, going back to God andwho he was and what he
represents is a is a huge mindshift, although I'm not a very
religious man I don't go tochurch, I'm not, I'm not
somebody who, uh, pretends to bereligious.
I've given up religiosity forthe spirituality and the
(01:03:32):
principles that are taught.
And so when I go to church, Ilook at what you and I are doing
right now is church when two ormore are gathered in my name.
There I am in their presence,and so every day I wake up with
the mindset of I'm going tochurch today, lord, who can you
put in my life that I can be ofservice to in their darkest
(01:03:57):
moments?
Or, lord, in my darkest moments, who can you put into my life
to help me navigate?
And that's how your need is.
My need was born for me.
Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah, well, I would say I'm the same too, rick.
I wouldn't say I attend churchtoo much, but you know cause?
I was raised in a very strictreligious home and once, I you
know, my life fell apart and Iwas on my knees and I was like
Lord, I need your help, you know, and I kind of came to this
realization and started readingthe Bible and I understood that
it's about a relationship.
(01:04:29):
It's not about four walls andhaving the greatest worship band
and some, you know, amazing,all the light shows, yeah.
I mean, look, all that's great,but when it comes down to it, he
just wants to get you.
He wants that relationship.
And once I learned of hisrelationship, it changed
everything for me, because Ialways thought it was just rules
(01:04:50):
and God's on the throne, right,waiting to just destroy you,
you know, for your sin, andthat's not it.
He loves you, waiting to justdestroy you for your sin, and
that's not it.
He loves all of us so much anda love that is unmatched by
anything on this earth His grace.
We can't even understand thedepths and the width of his
grace and what he's done for us.
And once I gave my life back tohim, man, and I really had that
(01:05:12):
openness in the communication.
I learned I didn't have to makethis ritual of praying, like I
just straight talk to him hey,dude, I don't like this right
now.
This is not cool, what'shappening?
Or, oh, this is great, thankyou, like thanks for letting
this happen.
And um, and I started to learn,like where the Bible even tells
us you know, lay everything onhis feet, he wants to take it
for you, he wants to help you.
(01:05:33):
So when I started struggling,it's like I took the step and
started getting therapy, but Ialso put it at Christ's feet,
man, it was like overdrive hitand things started changing
mentally.
Physically, I was able to sleep,I didn't feel as down, I mean,
man, and I just kept thatcommunication open and we're to
the point where it's like I'mpraying daily, man, and it's not
(01:05:54):
this weird thing where it'slike oh Lord, and raising hands,
like it's just not me.
I'm not that type of person.
To me it's deeper.
I just sit there and talk whileI'm driving.
I talk to him, what's going on?
Praying for my wife, prayingfor my child.
Hey, I'm stressed out with thissituation, you know.
And so it's just changed.
(01:06:18):
And what's great is I've come torealize so much is how much God
loves us, that he gives us asecond chance over and over and
over and over, and that really,our time here is but a moment.
It's like, as it says, but avapor.
We're here and gone.
There's going to be a timewhere we're all going to meet
the end, and I tell you whatit's not going to be.
How far did you promote?
How much money is in your bankaccount, rick?
I've never seen a U-Haul behinda hearse.
(01:06:39):
Did you love me?
He just wants your heart.
That's the biggest thing I cansay to people.
But if anything, man, if peoplewant to get a hold of you, how
do they do that?
Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Yeah, you can get a hold of me via email.
My email address isrkconsulting292 at gmailcom.
That's rkconsulting292 atgmailcom.
You can reach out to me onFacebook at Rick Cheatham, or
Instagram, ricky C-A-F-D that'sR-I-C-K-Y-C-A-F-D.
(01:07:12):
As in Anaheim fire department.
Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Second best, I'm just kidding.
First best, second best I gotto throw a little jab in there,
dude.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
You can only cause.
You can throw it in there,that's okay.
I love working with you guys.
I love working with y'all.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
No, thank you so much , rick, for being so open, and I
.
Your story is amazing and, likeyou know, as you, so much, rick
, for being so open.
And your story is amazing and,like you know, as you know, our
pain is not wasted.
The Lord uses it for so manydifferent things.
I mean, I've been just soencouraged talking to you right
now and I definitely want tohave you back on because I feel
like there's so much more totalk about.
Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Oh, we can go.
We can go down some rabbitholes, tim, if you want.
I mean there's there's so much,there's so much out there that
we could talk about when itcomes to mindset and and how we
process what's happening to us,and you know even just the work
of God and how, how God works inour lives.
I mean, I, I just hope your,your, your listeners know that
(01:08:13):
God is never there to judge usor condemn us.
He doesn't.
He's not out, he's not avengeful God, he's not out there
with a checkbook.
Ah, you screwed up here and youscrewed up there, although we
have a lot of people that lookat God through that lens.
But no, just remember, he's theGod that got hung on a cross
and he said forgive them, forthey know not what they do.
(01:08:33):
If there's anything into thecharacter of God, it's that
statement alone Forgive them,for they know not what they do.
He is a God of love,unconditionally.
There are no situations whereyou could do something where he
won't love you.
He's going to give you thegrace necessary to where you get
(01:08:57):
through and understand that itwas never about you to begin
with.
It was all about you becomingof service to him in a way that
you serve other people and theirneeds, and that's my life.
Now.
I offer that service to othermen who are struggling so that
together we create a betterplace to live, not only in our
home, but also in our firestations.
(01:09:18):
And not only in our firestations but also in our
departments, and not only in ourdepartments but in our
communities.
Need is my need.
We're going to see this worldchange in a way that we've yet
to have happen, and it's goingto be powerful.
(01:09:46):
But it all starts where youstand.
It all starts where you standwhen you're faced with the
consequences of an entirely youknow a mass casualty event.
Where do you start?
You start where you stand.
Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Right.
You know what?
I just sent this verse out to acouple of firemen who've been
confiding in me, but I thoughtthis was pretty good for you.
Right now I want to end on this.
It's in.
I think this is definitely foryou.
It's Psalms 31, 24.
It says be strong and let yourheart take courage, all you who
wait for the Lord.
So Rick thank you so much forcoming on, man.
(01:10:19):
Man, I I'm just floored andblown away.
Man I I'm going to recommendyou to many other podcasts who
would like to have you on.
So let's do it.
Keep your schedule open, but wewant you back.
I wish we had more time, but Iappreciate it, but I do want to
uh, I do want to pray for youbefore we leave.
Okay, let's do it.
Heavenly father, thank you formy friend rick and for having on
the podcast.
Lord, he's been through so much, but he's used it for good and
(01:10:41):
for your glory.
Father, continue to guide himand strengthen him and just
thank you for his son's life,who was taken too soon, lord,
and what you've done throughthat and how you don't waste
anything and that you loved hisson.
You love him, you love hisfamily.
Father, continue to bless him,open doors and just continue to
guide him.
I'm so encouraged by Rick andwhat he's done, and, lord, let
(01:11:03):
him touch more people In Jesusname, amen.
Amen.
Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Rick, thank you so much, man.
Yeah, man, I'm glad we got thisdone.
I'm glad we did it.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
We'll see you next time, dude.
All right, brother.
Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
Take care, see you, brother, bye-bye.
Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Thank you so much for listening in.
If you liked what you justlistened to, please leave us a
five-star review on ApplePodcasts and on Spotify.
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And a big shout-out to StephenClark, our sound editor.
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(01:11:45):
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Bye, everybody.
Hello everyone, welcome back to let's Go Podcast
.
I have a great guest for youtoday, rick Cheatham.
He is a retired Anaheim FireCaptain and is all about
firefighter mental health andjust mental health for everyone
overall, and so many otherthings that we're going to talk
about.
But before we get started, ifyou can, please like and
subscribe, go to YouTube, like,subscribe everything from
(00:30):
Instagram, facebook we're on allof them.
You could share post.
We'd really appreciate it and,without further ado, we're going
to bring in Rick right now.
Hey, rick, what's up?
My guy.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How you doing.
Good to be here, good to seeyou, my friend.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Good to see you too, dude.
Thanks for taking the time tocome on.
I know this has been somethingwe've been talking about for a
while, and the great part isanother retired fire engineer.
Right, I think it was Mike Gacy.
Isn't he the one who kind ofsuggests you?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Mike Gacy is a friend of mine,retired out here from Cal Fire
and now lives 45 minutes southof me here in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh, that's right, you guys are in Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we're in Tennessee.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Hey, you made the right move.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We got out, while the getting out was good.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, yeah, hey, man, thank you so much for taking
the time to come on my co-host,jordan, he's stuck at work and I
was going to have another guy,john Vargas, from GrabLives
Podcast, but everyone, as youknow, we all have lives,
marriages, things we've got todo.
But we are going to get you onthat other podcast, which is
cool, because we do support whatyou're doing and we want to get
(01:40):
you kind of out in your story,heard and and have support
because we believe, okay, it'shappening and what you're doing.
So I'll have to say thanks fordoing what you're doing, man, I
appreciate it man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you, appreciate you as well, my friend yeah, so
hey, let's start this out.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You are retired.
How many years in the fireservice did you do?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
well, I had 30 years overall, but 24 with the city of
anaheim.
Okay, I had six years ofvolunteer work before all that
was going on with RiversideCounty, which at that time was
CDF before it became CAL FIRE,as you know, but 24 years
(02:20):
specifically with the city ofAnaheim.
I had some time with SouthPasadena as an auxiliary for a
short period of time, actuallyone year before I got hired with
Anaheim.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh wow, Is that South Pasadena?
Are they one station?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's a one station town that is divided
by a railroad track, and if youdon't get on the other side of
that track when a call comes in,you could be you could be
stranded for a bit.
Yeah, very small little town.
Beautiful city, though, just abeautiful little town.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Awesome.
And now at Anaheim, you climbedthrough the ranks.
You were a firefighter.
Did you go to?
Were you a firefighter medicand an engineer captain?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
No, I went.
I came in as a firefighter,non-medic uh, back in the days
when they hired guys like that,um and then ended up promoting
the captain and became the Unionpresident, and that's as far as
I climbed was my role as acaptain and Union president.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I guess he skipped engineer the driver yeah, I
skipped engineer.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I came on a little bit later than life.
Uh.
So when I got on the fireservice I was 30, 34, okay, okay
, by the time I got on I hadalready.
I was already behind the eightball a little bit.
So I just skipped over thedriver rank and went to captain
as soon as I was able to.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
I got to be real with you, Rick.
I promoted to engineer.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
now I've been in that position for some years.
I love it.
Oh, it's the best.
Actually, it's the bestposition in the firehouse.
Every engineer I ever workedwith that's what they told me.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I know I got asked the other day.
I was working at a differentstation over time and the chief
is a real good friend of mine,tony Espinosa.
He's close to retirement andhe's like, hey, fish, what's
going on?
When are you going to promoteto captain?
And I was kind of like you'retalking to the right guy, I'm
happy dude.
All I got to do is come to work.
We got air in the tires, waterin the tank, there's oil.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Where am I going where's my water supply?
Yep, it's an island.
Yeah, it's an island.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You're on an island all by yourself, and nobody
messes with you yeah, come tothe crew to mess with you.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
They come to the captain, so the captain takes
the heat yes and it's usuallythe fireman in the back back
seat that it all rolls down to.
They go right past you, manyeah, I, yeah, I saw everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It's a beautiful thing.
We'll see Eventually, I don'tknow.
But so you're very muchinvolved with first should I say
firefighter mental health orfirst responder mental health.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Both, but specifically the firefighter
side of it.
When I was union president,that was, of course, one of the
big, major issues that we wereall dealing with is our mental
health, and once I was in theunion we arbitrated for our
members to have the mentalhealth component into our
(05:20):
contract and we ended upsecuring CTI as our counseling
team and the rest is history.
I mean, we've got that's, see Icounseling team international
okay.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
CTI perfect.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, we ended up contracting with them on and it
allowed our guys to get themental health provisions and and
treatment and help that theyneeded if they decided to take
advantage of it.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Okay, okay, and that's something ever since you
retired.
Are you still working with CTR?
Are you with other companies aswell?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
No, no, I haven't worked with any of the mental
health agencies in the fireservice since I retired.
I retired before years thisservice since I retired.
I retired before years thisNovember since I retired.
But there's a lot to why thatis.
I mean, I came out here andretired and I'll get into that
story as it unfolds but fivemonths after I retired I fell
(06:20):
and broke my neck.
So I've been dealing with the.
I've been dealing with the uh,the trauma of a broken neck at
c4 and five for the last threeyears, and that's four apart, c4
and five.
Yeah, c4 and five.
Keep the diaphragm alive, yeahyeah, that's what I'm saying,
(06:40):
like yo, you're alive yeah, I'muh, I'm very fortunate to be
alive and of that it's why I dowhat I do today.
And you know, as we get intothis, this podcast, you'll hear
the story as to what transpired,how it happened, what that 10
year window looked like for me,from from my early 50s to my
(07:03):
late 50 50s, and how I navigatedmy way out of that.
And then, of course, as aresult of that is why I do what
I do with men today and why Ihelp them overcome whatever
trial they have coming in theirlives to the space that we all
have it right.
I mean, we all face trauma, weall face tragedy, we, you know,
(07:24):
a degree of challenge andadversity in our lives.
That will get us to focus in onone of two things.
We'll either focus in on thenegative loop or we're focusing
on the positive loop, and it'sthe result of.
Where we end up is where I comein today and I start helping
men get back into a positiveloop system, as opposed to being
(07:46):
focused in on the negative,which is so easy to do.
When you've had trauma hit you,it's easy to get stuck in the
negative loop of trauma.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Oh, my goodness, you know what?
Yeah, it was.
That was something for me yearsago.
That was real tough for me todig myself out of for a while.
And I finally I remember just,you know, essentially,
essentially raising my hand,just being like I need help.
Yeah, I, I don't like I'mlosing control of my life.
You know, I I couldn'tunderstand how I could go to
(08:17):
work and help other people andwork as a medic, fight fires, do
all this stuff.
But when I came home, I, I washelpless.
It just blew my mind.
I'm like, dude, what is goingon here?
I can't even help myself.
Something's wrong.
And that's for me whereCounseling Team International
came in and it was a huge helpmy department, they offered to
(08:38):
us for free which is fantasticand I've gotten I don't know, I
would say roughly eight to 10other firefighters to go to seek
out help with them, give them acall, and each of them have all
said they were very happy thatthey did that.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It was a huge help for them.
Yeah, that's a huge advocate tohave in your corner the mental
health component to what we do.
And we, like you said, it'seasy.
It's easy to go to work anddeal with the problems that
other people have.
We've become, we're veryprofessional, we know what we
(09:15):
need to do, we know how to do it, we know when to do it, we know
why we're doing it.
So we focus in on otherpeople's trauma, other people's
tragedies, the worst days oftheir lives, and we do it with
such professionalism that wedon't even put ourselves in the
(09:35):
place where that could evenhappen to us.
We're the ones, we're thefixers.
People used to ask me what doyou do for a living?
And I used to, tongue in cheek,say I solve problems.
That's what firemen do.
I mean, that's what we do,firefighters.
What do you do for a living?
I solve problems.
I solve people's problems, andit's you know.
You can solve other people'sproblems, but then all of a
(09:59):
sudden you get hit with your ownand that's where you determine
real quick the ability you haveto solve other people's problems
, uh, is only superficial if youdon't know how to solve your
own first yeah, yeah it's uh.
A lot of the trauma we deal withis that we've become so
(10:22):
accustomed to helping otherpeople that we don't even know
how to help ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, it's a really weird feeling, you know, and
it's hard to.
It's hard to explain, really.
At times I remember talking totherapists.
I'm like I feel like I'm losingmy mind here because I can't
explain it to people, normalcivilians in my family and
friends who aren't in the fireservice or police or, let's say,
even military.
It's really hard to explainthat to them.
(10:48):
It's hard to explain what we seeand how what you see gets
embedded in your head and a lotof times it gets it gets put uh,
it comes out in other thingsbecause I suppress it so long,
and it would come out in myrelationship and it's like, oh
my gosh, like why am I lashingout right now?
Why am I acting ridiculous andhaving trouble sleeping?
And that's why what you'redoing, man, like hats off to you
(11:09):
, brother I mean most peoplewhen they retire, especially
firemen like we're gone right,we're gonna go do our own thing
right well, you know what that's.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Uh, that was kind of my mentality, I mean.
Uh, I mean I started off.
My journey into the fireservice was one that should have
never even taken place.
There was no way I should haveever been a fireman.
I was too white, I was too male, I was too old and affirmative
action was kicking my butt inthe early 90s, late 80s.
(11:40):
I mean.
Affirmative action was justkeeping me down and there was no
way for me to overcome thosethree character issues of myself
.
I mean, I wasn't going tochange the color of my skin, I
wasn't going to change mymaleness, and I was as old as I
was.
There was nothing I could doabout it.
So I was told it was impossible, don't even try.
(12:02):
And because of that I developeda sense of what we call the
power of commitment.
When somebody understands thepower of commitment, they are
motivated by results rather thanby rhetoric.
So when someone tells me Ican't do something or I can't be
a fireman because of thoseother qualifications that are
(12:25):
interfering, the power ofcommitment looks past the
rhetoric and says well, theresult is this.
So I'm going to do everything,I'm going to become aware, I'm
going to become intentional andI'm going to change my mindset
to become what it is that I'mcommitted to becoming.
And back then it was becoming afireman.
So 27 rejection letters and sixyears later, wham, I was hired
(12:51):
by the.
You know I'm not going to throwyou guys under the bus over
there in the county at all, butin my mind, anaheim is the best
fire department to work for inthe state of California.
So I was fortunate to have thebest fire department in the
state of California hire me andfor that they got my allegiance,
(13:13):
they got my loyalty, they got100% of who I was.
And some people say that mycareer was spent useful and
others might say I was a pain intheir butt, and I was a pain in
the butt for those who neededme to be a pain in the butt to
them for.
But it worked for me and myfocus was always on on helping
(13:36):
other people.
So I ended up having abeautiful career 24 years with
the city of Anaheim, and I don'thave any regrets.
I have none whatsoever.
However, into my career, Iended up losing my son.
So here I am.
(13:57):
I'm uh, this was in 19 or, I'msorry, 2013.
I got the, the notificationI've got, I got got the knock on
the door that every parentfears.
That knock on the door cameseven days before Christmas.
So I mean, just imagine, you'vegot your Christmas trees up,
(14:19):
You've got the house decorated,you've got this festive scene
going on decorated, you've gotthis, this festive scene going
on, and you're seven days awayfrom you know, what we as kids
always anticipated, what wealways look forward to, that was
probably the most excitingmorning of every kid's life was
waking up first this morning andfinding out what santa left us
(14:40):
right.
So here we are, we're in thiskind of uh, you know this
festive mindset and, uh, youknow, two, three o'clock in the
morning, we get this, this knockat the door and it was the
riverside county sheriff'soffice saying that, asking us if
we were the parents of michaelcheatham, and uh, that would
that.
(15:01):
That conversation that nightchanged me forever.
It.
It changed my life in a waythat I can't even put into words
, but you know, nonetheless, Igot this gut-wrenching news that
my son was killed.
And you know, when you thinkabout it, it may not be the
(15:26):
notice that you've lost a child,but every single one of us, we
all, get a notice at time or twothat completely changes the
course of our life.
We get that notice that youknow our parents have died, or
you know a divorce notice, oryou know a breakup notice, or a
(15:49):
lost job notice, a pink slip,whatever.
We're always faced withsomething that can give us cause
to just step back and take asecond look.
And you know, statisticallyspeaking, when you lose a child,
(16:09):
most marriages don't eventhey're not able to navigate
through that trauma.
And so my wife and I, havingnavigated a trauma earlier in
our marriage we've been married38 years.
Now, 10 years into our marriage, my wife told me I hate you, I
hate God, I hate the church, Iquit.
And she was walking out thedoor with my two babies, my two
(16:34):
boys, and someone else was goingto be raising my family, and
that's because of where I hadallowed my life to get, in my
marriage and in my addiction.
And all during that time when Iwas navigating through that, I
was also trying to become afireman.
(16:55):
So I had, you know, trying tolive a life of becoming a
fireman while you werestruggling with an addiction and
while you're struggling to putyour marriage back together and
while you've got two small boys.
That's enough to put a lot ofpressure on anybody.
And I was able to use the skillsthat I was taught through the
power of commitment to navigatethat scenario with my wife and
(17:18):
fortunately we found a couplethat were able to walk us
through that and became ourmentors.
And you know, I say thatbecause all of us struggle and
it's who you place yourselfaround when you struggle as to
how successful you will be whenyou navigate that struggle.
So I had to find myself a coach, I had to find myself a mentor.
(17:42):
I had to find myself somebodywho had already gone through
what I'd gone through and walkme through it.
And that's what I was able todo with marriage.
Well, now you fast forwardyears later and I'm dealing with
the loss of my son, and thatone kicked me in the gut.
That was a gut check that Iwasn't prepared for in the real
(18:08):
sense of the meaning whathappens when you lose a child.
So anyway, I started to do whatI did best is I poured myself
into work.
I just surrounded myself with abunch of other firefighters.
I surrounded myself, you know,doing union business, doing the
(18:29):
work for our brotherhood,navigating some of the most
difficult times Anaheim Fire hadever faced with, the first time
ever voted no confidence on afire chief that had never
happened in our history,confidence on a fire chief that
would never happen in ourhistory.
And as we're navigating throughall that, it took me away from
having to deal with a lot of thegrief myself.
(18:51):
So when, when Michael waskilled, I knew right off the bat
that I was going to be throwninto a crucible of life that was
going to test me at everyaspect of who I was as a man, as
a father, as a husband, as afirefighter, as a captain I mean
(19:17):
, every ounce of who I had builtmyself into being was going to
be challenged and tested, and itcertainly was that.
It was a challenge, and as Iwas going through this process,
I just remember thinking tomyself how am I ever going to be
(19:39):
the man that I once was withoutmy son, without my oldest,
without the guy who you knowtaught me how to be a parent,
taught me how to be a father,and now here he is, brutally
murdered at the age of 23.
And my life just stops, and Ihad to figure out where I was
going, and so for me, being busywas a good answer.
(20:04):
You know, we did get involvedwith the grief community.
We did do counseling sessions,we did navigate through with
other people who had lost theirchildren, so we had a good sense
of a foundation on how tonavigate it.
But when you pour yourself intowork you don't always grieve
(20:30):
properly.
And that's what I did.
I threw myself into work anddrowned out that grief, I
anesthetized myself with justwork, and you know how easy that
is to do.
When in today's fire service,when staffing levels are at an
all time low, call volumes at anall time high.
(20:54):
So you go in for a 24 hourshift.
You may be there for three,four or five days, you don't
know.
You get the mandatory call andyou might not get to go home and
see your family and so myfamily's grieving and meanwhile
I'm dealing with.
You know my work schedule, myworkload, and then on top of
that, the union business, whichis a that's like taking on a
(21:17):
second career in and of itself.
Yes, it really is.
It really is.
You put a lot at risk when youjoin the union and you put more
at risk when you become anofficer of that union.
So those types of things werecoming up for me.
But I just kept my nose to thegrindstone.
(21:39):
I kept focused.
I knew I had to plow throughthe difficulties we were faced
with as an organization andunfortunately, I think for me,
it was my family that wassuffering the most because dad
was pouring into work.
So I wasn't pouring into mysurviving son, kyle, I wasn't
(21:59):
pouring into my survivingdaughter, tori, I wasn't pouring
in as much to my wife, kelly,and you know I was more
concerned with making sure mywife was able to navigate it
than anything else.
And so, between pouring intojust Kelly and work, I kind of
watched my kids suffer a bit andit was in that suffering that I
(22:26):
went from being able to forgivethe guy that murdered my son to
.
I started to build up aresentment and a bitterness and
an anger towards him because Isaw what it was doing to my kids
.
And when I saw what washappening to them, my son Kyle,
who was 21 at the time and youknow he's just entering into
(22:46):
adulthood and his best friendwas just brutally taken from him
, the, the, the person he'd hadin his corner his entire life.
And then looking at my daughter, who had just turned 13 and
she's just becoming, you know,just entering into her puberty,
and now she's dealing with thattrauma.
So what I saw happening to themcaused me to just become more
(23:08):
angry, more bitter, moreresentful, and it turned into a
justified resentment.
I was justified to hold on tothat anger.
I was justified in my mind tohold on to the resentment.
I was justified to hold on tothat anger.
I was justified in my mind tohold on to the resentment.
And as that anger started tobuild up within me over time, I
(23:30):
found myself in Colorado, at mydaughter's house here in about
three years ago a little overthree years ago, when I've
retired to Anaheim, or retiredfrom Anaheim to Nashville, my
daughter decided to move out ofCalifornia as well.
So she moved to Denver and itwas right about that same time
(23:52):
that she moved in next door to aguy that, or a guy moved in
next door to her and he becamelike this stalker type and so he
was starting to do weird things.
And so here I am, you know, athousand miles away, and I'm
hearing my daughter tell me someof the stuff her next door
neighbor's doing and saying, andI'm getting more and more angry
(24:15):
because, you know, I wasvictimized once by somebody
taking my son.
And now I've got this guy who'sa thousand miles away from I am
and he's doing these things tomy daughter, saying these things
, and so I start to build thatresentment up.
Well, long story short, we endup going out there to help her
get settled in and this guymakes a move on my son and
(24:36):
starts talking to him and startschirping and before I know it,
him and my wife are in aconversation and they're
chirping each other.
So I get the mess.
My wife yells down hey, got toget up here, this guy's going
off on Kyle.
So I run upstairs and at thatpoint my mind is in a place
where every bit of that angerand resentment and bitterness
(24:57):
that I had built up over thecourse of the last seven years,
with the death of my son, wasnow coming out in a one-time
engagement with a guy that wastrying to victimize my daughter.
And, as it turns out, this guy,he went there with a purpose
(25:19):
and when I showed up, you know,went there with a purpose and
when I showed up, you know, andaggressively pursued him.
Um, and I mean when I sayaggressively with my, with my
tone of voice and with my bodylanguage, you know all of it,
yeah he ends up pulling a ninemillimeter on me.
And so I figured at that pointyou better, you better have the
(25:43):
courage to use it.
And of course he didn't.
So I just charged him and heran downstairs.
But when he ran downstairs heracked around, turned around and
pointed at me and I said you've, you haven't got the courage to
pull the trigger.
Man, you're, you're a bully.
You do this with ladies.
Let's see what you do with aman that's twice your age.
Let's see how you handle me.
And you know, of course hedidn't pull the trigger.
(26:11):
Obviously I'm here.
But it caused me to do a littlebit of reflection, that my anger
had got to the place, that itwas unresolved, and because of
that unresolved anger I put myfamily in a very risky position,
where now they're looking attheir father that could quite
possibly be killed at the handof a crazy lunatic who decides
(26:34):
to pull a gun on him.
And, uh, it just gave me asense of responsibility to take
a look at things.
Well, now I go home and a monthlater you know, five months
after retirement I fall andbreak my neck at C4 and five.
So that's the window, startingmy fifties with the death of my
son ending my fifties with a gunbeing pulled on me and a broken
(26:59):
neck at C4 and C5.
And when things like thathappen, it's real easy to
reflect on life happening to you.
Why is this happening to me?
Why me?
This is so unfair.
I just retired and after allthe years of putting into my
(27:19):
pension and dealing with thetrauma that life brings other
people and us responding to them, now I'm sitting in a situation
where I'm paralyzed from thechest down, don't know if I'm
ever going to walk again, don'tknow if I'll ever have the use
of my hands again, and thethoughts of why me?
(27:40):
The thoughts of this isn't fair, the thoughts of how am I going
to function the rest of my lifelike this, and it caused me to
start asking all those questions.
And those questions weredesigned to keep me stuck.
Why me?
Why, instead of what can Iaccomplish now that I'm here to
(28:04):
make it a better place for meand my family?
Those kinds of questions don'tenter in our purview when we're
suffering with pain andsuffering, the loss of my body.
Mechanics caused me to reallyreflect on some things.
And so what happened with me inthat situation is my wife, who
(28:27):
is a ICU nurse, or was at thetime.
My wife, who's a nurse, wasable to create an environment
for me in the hospital.
So for two and a half monthsI'm going through inpatient
rehab.
She created this environmentwhere I had relaxing music,
(28:49):
healing music, meditation musicplaying almost 24-7 in my
hospital room.
She had essential oils and so Iwas smelling good and she had
essential oils and so I had.
I was smelling good, you smellgood, you're going to be good.
So I had, I had essential oils.
So she made sure that myenvironment was taken care of.
(29:11):
She made sure that all my needswere taken care of.
So she was pretty much myfrontline nurse, even though I
had a nursing staff taking careof me.
My wife was my nurse while Iwas doing all this.
So I had the environment set upto where, if I put my mind to it
, the environment was right thatI could overcome it.
(29:34):
And so I poured back into thatsame mindset of when I was
trying to become a fireman youcan't do it, you'll never be
able to accomplish that.
Your affirmative action willnever allow it to happen.
And so that mindset came inwhen I was in the hospital of
okay, how am I going to get outof here?
How am I going to walk out ofhere?
(29:56):
What's that going to look like?
What is that going to take?
What kind of treatment am Igoing to need?
And so my physical therapistcame in and we developed this
game plan.
She says what do you want toaccomplish?
And I said I want to walk outof here, I don't care what it
takes, I want to walk out ofthis hospital.
And she says well, your mind'sin the right spot.
(30:17):
Now let's just see if we canget your body there.
And so we went to work and forthe next two and a half months
we put in the work to accomplishwhat my mind had already said I
was going to accomplish, whichwas to walk out of there.
And in two and a half months Iliterally walked out of the
hospital without the use of acane.
Two and a half months, two anda half months, two and a half
(30:39):
months.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Oh my gosh Rick, that is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, it was, I tell you.
You talk about motivation.
You talk about overcoming achallenge.
You talk about the victory andthe excitement that happens to
you when you get there andyou're able to accomplish it.
The only thing I can attest orI can connect it to is, like you
(31:06):
know, when we were all strivingto become firefighters, we knew
what kind of work that was, weknew what kind of challenge that
was and we all poured into itand sacrifices were made and the
work began.
And then, when we finally gotsworn in for the first time, man
, that feeling of pride, thatfeeling of victory, that feeling
of accomplishment was enough toput it in our minds where we
(31:30):
could use that over, and overand over again.
Well, that's what it was likefor me, coming out of this
paralyzed state.
Is that, even though I'm stillnumb from the chest down and I'm
still using and learning toadapt to this new normal with
how my body functions, I canwalk and I can care for myself.
I'm not an envelope.
I don't need to be cared for24-7 like a lot of people.
(31:56):
We know that fall and break C4and 5.
That's what happens to them.
They'll end up in a wheelchairfor the rest of their life, some
of them on a breathing tube.
It's the same injury thatChristopher Reeves had.
So the difference between hisand mine was his was a complete
fracture, mine was an incomplete.
So I had a little bit of a hope.
(32:16):
I had a little bit more hopethan he had at the time, and so
walking out of that hospital putme in a mindset.
Here's the problem with thattim is that if you don't put in
the work on a continual basis,your mind will automatically
revert back to where it feelsnormal and where it feels
(32:38):
comfort and where it feels uh,and where it feels comfort and
where it feels reality set in.
So when I got back home, mymindset went right back to a
victim.
(32:59):
I was in a place where I can'tdo what I used to do.
I was a USAR captain, I was atruck captain.
I had values in me that wererevolved around what I could do,
how I would perform, and nowall that's taken away.
One of the reasons it was alltaken away was because, in my
(33:32):
mind, I felt that if I can't usemy hands, I lost my identity.
And when you lose your identityas a firefighter, when you lose
your identity as a contractorwhich I was before I was a
fireman and you lose thatidentity that your body has
created for you and you're leftto just think by yourself and
(33:52):
you're alone, it starts to get alittle troublesome and your
mind can go to some dark placesand you become victimized by
your circumstances.
Now, and that's what's what.
That's what happened to me.
You know, while I was in thehospital, the environment was
created for me to be successful.
My wife created thatenvironment.
Not only that, but I had uh,anaheim firefighters were coming
(34:16):
out flying 2000 miles out to beby my bedside.
So the entire time I was in thehospital, I had a revolving
door of firefighters who werethere to make sure that my needs
were met, to make sure thatthings were going at home the
way that I needed them to go.
They were taking care of thingsaround the house, so I had all
(34:37):
this environment as I waspreparing my way out of my
injury.
What I didn't have prepared forme is when everybody went home,
when all my buddies went home,when my wife went back to work
and and she's now I'm just bymyself and my thoughts and my
thoughts went back to you know,why is this happening to me?
(34:58):
What did I do to deserve this?
Why is it that I have to burymy son at 52, 51, I think, 51 or
2 and break my neck at 58, 59?
Why is it?
Why?
Why do my 50s have to suck somuch?
Why?
Why?
This is not fair, god.
Why are you doing this to me?
(35:19):
And so life became somethingthat happened to me, and so, as
life happens to you, you startto look at life through a
different lens, and so the waythat I approach this now is that
I had two ways of looking atthings.
(35:40):
I could look at things througha positive lens, or I could look
at things through a negativelens, and when I looked at
things through the negative lens, I became a victim.
I became a victim of mycircumstances, and so, because I
was a victim of mycircumstances, negative thoughts
started coming up, thoughtslike anger, bitterness,
(36:02):
resentment, hostility,argumentation those are all
negative things that wouldhappen as a result.
So the way I look at it is likethis so we all know that life
is just energy.
We're just energy, that's allwe are.
Every thought we think isenergy, every action is energy.
We're just energy, that's allwe are.
(36:22):
Our every thought we think isenergy, every action is energy,
and so we've got all this energythat's circling around us all
the time, and when that energyis in the form of thought, if
it's negative energy, we'regoing to have a negative outcome
.
And so the way that our brainworks, the way that our brain
(36:43):
works, is that I have a thoughtcome into my head, and then that
thought creates an emotion,which then that emotion creates
an experience in our head, andthen, from that experience, we
create a belief about it, andthen, after that belief system
(37:03):
is created, we then take anaction, and then that action
gives us an experience in returnthat validates that our thought
was right.
So for me, why is thishappening to me?
I must be wrong, I must be bad,I must be being punished.
God must have something outagainst me.
I don't know why it is thatit's happened to me, but it's
(37:25):
happening to me and theconsequences suck.
I hate it, I don't like it, andso that was my thought, and
that thought created anexperience of negativity, of
emotional depletion, of anger,and as I thought more about that
, I started to attract morenegative experiences to me.
(37:47):
I would go to the refrigeratorand I would go and pick up a you
know a carton of milk and Ican't grab it with my hands and
so I would drop milk and I'dspill milk all over the counter,
I'd spill leftovers all overthe floor, and I was having all
these little experiences thatjustify poor me and why things
weren't working for me, and thatwould then create that negative
(38:11):
loop cycle, and that negativeloop cycle would then validate
that I am truly useless as a man.
My identity is gone.
I will never be the firefighterthat I once was.
I will never be the captainthat I once was.
I will never be the contractorthat I once was.
(38:32):
I will never use the hands likeI once did.
My body will never operate likeit could, and so, because all
that negativity kept cyclingthrough, I ended up creating a
system in my brain in the waythat I thought that created a
victim, and because I was avictim, everything was
(38:56):
validating that for me.
So I'd look at life andeverything I looked at validated
the fact that I was a victim,and in doing that I became more
angry.
So why do I say that?
Why do I come back to this?
Because I had to break thatcycle.
I had to break that mentality,and here's what I ended up
(39:17):
having to do, having to do.
As I was contemplating all thewhys this was happening, it
dawned on me that I had neverreally fully walked through the
grief process of losing my son,and so I was having rebound
(39:39):
trauma now.
So now not only am I dealingwith the trauma of a broken neck
, I'm now dealing with thetrauma of grief at the loss of a
son.
And so now I've got those twocompeting, those two compounding
traumas affecting my life.
And one of the things Irealized real quick and going
back and looking at my patternsand looking at my cycles, was
(40:02):
this when my son was murdered, Irealized that I was gonna have
to overcome that experiencethrough forgiving the person
that did it, but forgiving theman that murdered your child.
Those are easy words to say,but it's a difficult process to
(40:25):
attain.
And so, as I was going throughthis, after I broke my neck, and
you're sitting there thinkingand you're constantly in your
own mind going why, why, why?
I started to ask this questionwhat is keeping me from being
the man of God I need to be?
What is keeping me from beingwho I'm supposed to be?
(40:47):
Instead of why is thishappening to me, I had to change
the way I asked the question.
We're only one question awayfrom change, but you got to ask
the right questions, and toooften what we you got to ask the
right questions, and too oftenwhat we do is we ask the
questions that keep us stuck,like why is this happening to me
?
How come this happened to me?
(41:10):
Why do they do this to me?
This is not fair.
Why is this not fair?
And so, by asking the differentquestions of how or what I can
do to change that situation,where it led me to this was what
can I do to change this angerand this bitterness that's just
(41:30):
eating me alive right now andcausing me to want to
anesthetize with whether it wasdrugs or alcohol or sex or
whatever it is that weanesthetize ourselves with
instead of going there andanesthetizing, what can I do to
prevent myself from having thathappen?
And this is where I ended up.
Um, yeah, I looked at whathappened with Mike, my oldest
(41:55):
son, and the resentment that Iwas holding on to, and I
realized that I had a poisonthat was running through my
veins, similar to what you wouldexperience when a snake bites
you.
You know, you get that venomoussnake bites you and you get
this poison running through yourvein.
Well, the snake's long goneAfter he bites.
(42:18):
He's gone, he does what thesnake does and it leaves, but
it's the residual effect of thatsnake bite and the poison that
(42:42):
murdered my son.
And the poison was theresentment and the hostility and
the anger and the bitternessthat I held on to as a result of
that.
So what I had to do is I had tocome to a place where I could
literally remove all of thatfrom within me, and there's only
(43:05):
one way to do that and that'sby forgiving the unforgivable.
So it reminded me back to thedays when, you know, I'm a very
spiritual man and I rememberhearing the stories of Jesus and
as he hung on a cross, hiswords to the very people that
(43:25):
murdered him.
The words to the very peoplethat crucified him were Father,
forgive them, for they know notwhat they do.
And then it started to dawn onme how many times in my own life
have I done things that Ineeded to be forgiven of and I
wasn't.
How did that feel?
How did that make me respond?
Or how about how many timesthat I had to have asked for
(43:47):
forgiveness from my wife?
You know, when I betrayed her,I betrayed her trust, and yet
she forgave me.
So here I am now, looking atlife through that same lens of
if I'm ever going to get overthis hump, if I'm ever going to
change that paradigm of how Ithink as a victim.
(44:08):
I have to get to the placefirst where I can forgive myself
for being a victim and forgivethe person who I attributed my
victim statute to, which is theman that murdered my son.
So I ended up forgiving him,and once I let go of all of that
venom, my life started tochange, and it changed in a
(44:30):
powerful way.
Now I have the opportunity tohelp other men do the same.
So my offer nowadays are, youknow, for all men that are
struggle with whatever they'regoing through in their life,
whether that's through theirPTSD as a result of their fire
career, whether that's throughdecisions made and the conflict
(44:53):
that's going on at home becausestaffing is so short and you're
being mandatory, whether youfeel victimized in any way,
shape or form, it's going backand changing the way that we
look at the problem and solve it.
Rather than solve it throughthe negative loop cycle, we
solve it through the positiveloop cycle.
And here's the positive loopcycle.
(45:13):
The positive loop cycle islooking at it through the lens
of faith and anticipation,whereas the negative is looking
at it through the lens of doubtand anxiety.
So if we're feeling doubtful,if we're feeling anxiety, that's
because we're stuck in thatfearful loop cycle, that
negative loop cycle.
And so I looked at it from thepositive side.
And here's what I started to seeis that when I looked at my
(45:37):
injury and I looked at the deathof my son, and I was able to
find the gift in it, I was ableto find the benefit, if there is
one, to change the way that Ithought and looked at it.
So now, when I looked at myson's death.
Instead of it happening to me,I looked at okay, how can his
(46:00):
death change me in a way thatwill allow me to be a gift to
other people?
How can his death now impact mein a way to where I can have
impact on other people in apositive way?
How can his murder affect me ina way that I can help other
(46:23):
people overcome anything theyhave going in on or on in their
lives?
And that mind shift and thatmind positioning in and of
itself puts you in a faithfuloutlook, in a anticipatory
outlook.
It gets you looking in thefuture with a positive outlook.
(46:47):
And because you're doing thatnow, you start to attract
positive outcomes.
You start to attract a moreuseful positioning in your life.
You start to look at life notat through the lens of a victim
but through the lens of beingvictorious.
So when you can start to shiftyour mindset, you go from being
(47:09):
a victim to being victoriousthen everything that you do in
life starts to have the returnof being victorious rather than
being victimized.
So, starting that with Mike'sdeath, I became victorious over
Mike's death because I was ableto forgive the unforgivable, the
guy that took his life.
(47:30):
I was able to set him free ofmy own internal negative
paradigm that kept me stuck,kept me stuck in my grief, it
kept me stuck in my problems.
It kept me stuck in myrelationships of anger and doubt
.
And once I was able to breakfree of that and see the gift in
(47:54):
it, all things started tocrumble beneath my feet that
were once a barrier and I couldactually see clearly and go oh,
this is why that happened.
So Michael's death set me free,and here's how it set me free.
Number one he gave me purposeto live for.
(48:15):
One of the greatest benefitsthat I have found as a grieving
parent has been giving life backto my son by honoring him and
the life he didn't get to live.
So now my purpose is to honormy son in the life that he
(48:35):
didn't get to live.
So how am I is to honor my sonin the life that he didn't get
to live.
So how am I going to honor him?
Am I going to honor him bybeing a victim of my
circumstance, or am I going tohonor him by being victorious
over my circumstance?
And I've chosen to bevictorious over the circumstance
.
So now that when I look at myson's death.
I look at it through the lensof me being victorious over that
, so that I could help otherpeople navigate their own grief,
(48:59):
their own trauma, their owntrials, their own tribulations,
their own problems, their ownadversities.
And just think about this whohere that's listening to this
podcast, has never experiencedtrauma, trial tribulation?
Who here has never experiencedtrauma trial tribulation?
(49:21):
Who here has never experiencedthe type of grief that is a
gut-wrenching kick in the gut,to where it just freezes you in
your tracks?
See, not everybody's had todeal with it from the loss of a
son, but I guarantee you you'vehad the grief.
From the loss of a career, theloss of a son, but I guarantee
you you've had the grief fromthe loss of a career, the loss
of a promotion, the loss of arelationship, wherever that is,
(49:44):
we all are faced with.
It's the same questions that weask to get the same result.
It's just the circumstances arealways changing.
They're always different.
Mine was the murder of my son.
Yours might be the loss of arelationship that you once held
dear.
Yours might be, you know,whatever else I already
(50:05):
mentioned.
You know it could be anything.
And as we learn to navigate that, we end up navigating life
through one of two lenses eitherthe fear or the faith.
And I have chosen to take faithover fear every time now.
And so now I anticipatewhatever problem I have, I
already anticipate that it'salready solved.
(50:26):
I just got to start asking theright questions and I've got to
get myself with the rightcoaching and the right mentors
so that we can navigate ittogether, and the right mentors
so that we can navigate ittogether.
And as we start to see thingsunfold, we see other options and
other opportunities.
And then we start to make thoselittle mind shifts, those
(50:48):
little changes that, before youknow it, it doesn't matter what
kind of victim you were.
Victory runs in your vein andyou could overcome it with just
one small different choice inhow you think.
And so my choices now of how Ithink is I go for that positive
loop cycle where I operate outof faith rather than operating
(51:08):
out of fear.
And when we do that, I'mtelling you, tim, life changes
forever for anyone.
And if I can overcome the deathof my son and overcome the
breaking of my neck at C4 and 5,I guarantee you you could
overcome staffing issues.
You could overcome maritalproblems.
(51:31):
You could overcome.
You know issues with yourchildren.
You could overcome issues atwork.
You could overcome anything.
You know issues with yourchildren.
You could overcome issues atwork.
You could overcome anythingthat comes your way.
You just have to be taught howto ask the right questions, and
that's what I do now.
I teach people how to navigatesome of the most terrifying and
(51:51):
debilitating life issues thatthey're facing at that time with
the confidence and the clarityto know how to navigate with
purpose and how to navigate withpassion and get to the place
where you're on the other side.
You're fulfilled and you'reable to be a help and service to
other people as they go throughthe same thing.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Gosh, rick, you have um boy I don't know what to say
right now because you have mealmost in tears a few times.
Then you have me angry with you, then you have me like wanting
to shout with you and then backto like, oh, I'm going to cry,
but you've hit on so manypowerful things that I have also
just gone through over the pastI would say five years and, um
(52:36):
God, I wish we had more time,cause we're getting close on
time.
But I want to tell you, is youknow, I gave my life back to
Jesus, I would say about twoyears ago now, prodigal son.
Awesome and I went down such adark path and you know to see
where my life has come nowcompared to where it was.
(52:56):
To me it's just a miracle and itshows me God's grace and his
love and what he's done for allof us and how I felt like I was
suffering and making so many baddecisions, went through a
divorce and you know I was like,oh, my life is over.
Like even to the point where,like you said, when you're
dealing with PTSD and you know,we got to put this face on.
When we go to work and beprofessional, we we show up.
(53:19):
We show up for our brothers,our sisters in the fire service
and we show up for the citizensthat we serve, and then I can't
show up for myself.
It is like you're losing yourmind and you can see where
people go these down these darkpaths, where it's like, hey, you
know what, maybe I don't needto be here anymore.
If I want to tell that, I wantto say to anybody is that is
such an absolute lie.
(53:40):
You were fearfully, wonderfullymade.
You were here on this earth fora reason and you are so loved
and you're so unique.
We're all unique in our ownways and hearing your story is
so similar.
I think we've talked about thisbefore.
My father, my family, we lost mybrother in a car accident in
2004.
He was 18 and the same thing my.
You know.
I've never seen so much pain inmy family, especially my
(54:02):
parents.
Yeah, it was life-changing forall of us, especially for them.
No parent should ever have tobury their child.
But to see what god has done inour family, because my parents
still chose to put Christ infront of everything, even their
pain, and to offer their painand even be angry.
It's almost like Job.
(54:22):
We can have these angry prayers.
It's totally okay.
My prayers are way differentthan they used to be.
I tell God exactly how I feel,even when I'm mad, but I'm
telling him, I'm communicatingwith him, having that
relationship.
And now you see our family.
We have eight nieces andnephews.
I'm about to have my first kid.
My parents have been married 42years.
(54:43):
You know, it's amazing how youknow God doesn't waste anything.
He doesn't.
There's a purpose behind it andsometimes our pain leads us to
a higher level of getting closerto him and trusting in him, and
it's also a testimony to others.
I mean just hearing you speakright now, so encouraging.
I mean, my goodness, man,you've been through a lot, dude,
(55:04):
even with your son, and it'slike it brought back a lot of
emotion for me.
I'm trying to listen to you andnot be emotional, but you know,
I've been there, man.
And Rick, I know a feeling youknow.
And Rick, I know a feeling youknow.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, you have experienced the loss at a level
that many don't, and when youlose your brother.
When my son lost his brother,it was like he lost his
navigation, he lost his compass.
I mean, it was his olderbrother, it was all he knew.
It was the one guy that hecould go to and talk to about
anything and they were equals.
They weren't oh, don't let momyou know it wasn't.
(55:40):
You can't go and tell mom anddad everything, but you can go
tell your brother just aboutanything and that's what he lost
back to God.
I think you nailed it.
(56:00):
It's easy for us in those tryingtimes, those moments of
tribulation, where we could askthe wrong questions.
You know the why me questions.
We can become victimized in it.
We can auger in, we couldanesthetize those emotions with
drug, alcohol, sex, whatever youwant to anesthetize it with.
But they're not going anywhere.
They're always going to bethere.
It's just going to come up someother place in your life.
And so, by looking at thepositive side of things, here's
(56:24):
the thing that is so fascinatingto me Just by the mere fact
that we are here and we'rebreathing and we have this
beautiful blessing called lifemeans that you were one in 400
(56:47):
trillion chance of survival.
You made it out of all, all ofthem, all of them.
You know all of thoseopportunities that were swimming
upstream to be part of thatfetus.
You won.
You were the number one.
You did it out of everybody.
So when you say we're fearfullyand wonderfully made, that
(57:09):
we're created in his image, thatwe have a purpose, we all have
a purpose.
But what life does is life doeswhat it's supposed to do.
It happens, and it's how wenavigate it that determines
where our focus will be.
If life is happening to you,you become victimized.
(57:30):
If life is happening for you,you don't have failure, you have
feedback and you have theinformation you need.
Now.
Okay, now I can go thisdirection, and so that's all
life is.
And so if you're stuck in thatnegative loop, if you're stuck
in that negative cycle wherethings are happening to you,
you're not happy, you're notcontent, you don't, you know
it's painful, you're suffering,then the reality is that you
(57:56):
will seek all those things tovalidate that state of mind.
So you'll start to seek it andit'll start to come back, and
then it will validate thatyou're worthless, that you're
useless.
But God doesn't do that.
He doesn't use that type ofmentality.
He says you got to overcomethat fear and have faith in me,
(58:17):
have faith that all things arepossible and they work together
for his good.
It's okay to have that feelingthat you're scared.
It's okay to have that feelingthat you're hurt, that you're
anxious, but understanding thatwe've got to overcome that fear
with faith.
And when we do anything,anything can happen, including
(58:40):
the miraculous.
I didn't think I was going tobe able to walk out of that
hospital, but I knew my faithwas in a position where, if it
could be done, I'm going to putall the intention and all the
action on everything that needsto be done to do it and then let
the blessing happen.
And it didn't take long beforeI could start to say hey, man,
(59:01):
this is working, I'm actuallymoving my hands now, I can
actually move my arms, I canactually move my foot, and I
started to see things come back,slowly but surely.
But even after all of it saidand done, and you could
experience that super high, thatvictory, it doesn't take much
for the rubber band to go backdown to its natural state and we
(59:22):
lose the tension and before youknow it, we're victimized again
by life, and that's whathappened to me.
It happened to me again go fromzero to hero in a way that I
had never really experiencedbefore.
When you can take your mindsetfrom that point of reference and
start navigating your way outof it, on the other side of it
(59:44):
there's so much hope, there's somuch joy, there's so much peace
, there's so much tranquility,there's so much excitement and
anticipation for the life thatyou have left to live.
Now I get to do that by bringinghonor to my son, michael, by
bringing honor to his name forwhat he sacrificed so that I
(01:00:05):
could have the life that I nowhave, which is one that's
totally free from pain andsuffering.
That keeps me in a victimmentality.
And that's what this life isall about, and that's what I
offer you and all your gueststhat hear this podcast, is that
(01:00:26):
when you saddle up with theright people, you know when the
student's ready, the teacherwill appear.
So when you're ready, theteacher will appear.
And when that teacher appears,it's up to you to make a choice.
And when that teacher appears,there's three levels of
relationship.
There's the first level, whichit's all about me and we know
(01:01:04):
those guys in the fire serviceall the self-centered ones that
everything's about them, and I'mjust going to make a funny joke
here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
They usually promote 100%, oh my gosh, 100%, it's
always those guys, it's alwaysthose guys, right?
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Yeah, hello, messy.
And then there's that secondlevel, which it's all about the
win-win.
You know 50-50.
You know I'll make you, I'llscratch your back, you scratch
my back, and it's alltransactional, and that's the
politics side of the fireservice, it's all transactional.
That's how we go intonegotiations, that's how we find
(01:01:39):
out which, which city councilwe're, we're, we're going to
have in our corner.
And you know we start tonavigate through the win, win
situation.
But even in those two situationsyou have a lot of conflict.
Because the minute we look atlife and you know, wait a minute
, we're not winning now, thisisn't 50-50.
(01:02:01):
You're not holding up your endof the bargain.
We create this conflict andwith self-centeredness we always
have conflict.
You're always fighting upagainst those.
But there's the third step tothe dimension of that
relationship that I find mostpowerful, and that's the third
step, which is your need is myneed.
So when we approach life withyour need is my need, we go to
(01:02:23):
the essence of who God is.
And in the essence of who Godis, he serves the needs of those
who are hurting and sufferingthe most and I get to become an
instrument in that healingprocess.
That's all this is about.
We become the essence of God'sunity, his character, his love.
We become servant leaders, inour crews, or on our crews, in
(01:02:49):
our department, on our unionboards, we start serving the
needs of others because theirneeds are our needs, and that
mind shift in and of itself,starts to develop a victorious
mindset rather than a victimmindset.
So for me, like you said, justthat essence of going back to
(01:03:11):
Christ, going back to God andwho he was and what he
represents is a is a huge mindshift, although I'm not a very
religious man I don't go tochurch, I'm not, I'm not
somebody who, uh, pretends to bereligious.
I've given up religiosity forthe spirituality and the
(01:03:32):
principles that are taught.
And so when I go to church, Ilook at what you and I are doing
right now is church when two ormore are gathered in my name.
There I am in their presence,and so every day I wake up with
the mindset of I'm going tochurch today, lord, who can you
put in my life that I can be ofservice to in their darkest
(01:03:57):
moments?
Or, lord, in my darkest moments, who can you put into my life
to help me navigate?
And that's how your need is.
My need was born for me.
Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah, well, I would say I'm the same too, rick.
I wouldn't say I attend churchtoo much, but you know cause?
I was raised in a very strictreligious home and once, I you
know, my life fell apart and Iwas on my knees and I was like
Lord, I need your help, you know, and I kind of came to this
realization and started readingthe Bible and I understood that
it's about a relationship.
(01:04:29):
It's not about four walls andhaving the greatest worship band
and some, you know, amazing,all the light shows, yeah.
I mean, look, all that's great,but when it comes down to it, he
just wants to get you.
He wants that relationship.
And once I learned of hisrelationship, it changed
everything for me, because Ialways thought it was just rules
(01:04:50):
and God's on the throne, right,waiting to just destroy you,
you know, for your sin, andthat's not it.
He loves you, waiting to justdestroy you for your sin, and
that's not it.
He loves all of us so much anda love that is unmatched by
anything on this earth His grace.
We can't even understand thedepths and the width of his
grace and what he's done for us.
And once I gave my life back tohim, man, and I really had that
(01:05:12):
openness in the communication.
I learned I didn't have to makethis ritual of praying, like I
just straight talk to him hey,dude, I don't like this right
now.
This is not cool, what'shappening?
Or, oh, this is great, thankyou, like thanks for letting
this happen.
And um, and I started to learn,like where the Bible even tells
us you know, lay everything onhis feet, he wants to take it
for you, he wants to help you.
(01:05:33):
So when I started struggling,it's like I took the step and
started getting therapy, but Ialso put it at Christ's feet,
man, it was like overdrive hitand things started changing
mentally.
Physically, I was able to sleep,I didn't feel as down, I mean,
man, and I just kept thatcommunication open and we're to
the point where it's like I'mpraying daily, man, and it's not
(01:05:54):
this weird thing where it'slike oh Lord, and raising hands,
like it's just not me.
I'm not that type of person.
To me it's deeper.
I just sit there and talk whileI'm driving.
I talk to him, what's going on?
Praying for my wife, prayingfor my child.
Hey, I'm stressed out with thissituation, you know.
And so it's just changed.
(01:06:18):
And what's great is I've come torealize so much is how much God
loves us, that he gives us asecond chance over and over and
over and over, and that really,our time here is but a moment.
It's like, as it says, but avapor.
We're here and gone.
There's going to be a timewhere we're all going to meet
the end, and I tell you whatit's not going to be.
How far did you promote?
How much money is in your bankaccount, rick?
I've never seen a U-Haul behinda hearse.
(01:06:39):
Did you love me?
He just wants your heart.
That's the biggest thing I cansay to people.
But if anything, man, if peoplewant to get a hold of you, how
do they do that?
Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Yeah, you can get a hold of me via email.
My email address isrkconsulting292 at gmailcom.
That's rkconsulting292 atgmailcom.
You can reach out to me onFacebook at Rick Cheatham, or
Instagram, ricky C-A-F-D that'sR-I-C-K-Y-C-A-F-D.
(01:07:12):
As in Anaheim fire department.
Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Second best, I'm just kidding.
First best, second best I gotto throw a little jab in there,
dude.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
You can only cause.
You can throw it in there,that's okay.
I love working with you guys.
I love working with y'all.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
No, thank you so much , rick, for being so open, and I
.
Your story is amazing and, likeyou know, as you, so much, rick
, for being so open.
And your story is amazing and,like you know, as you know, our
pain is not wasted.
The Lord uses it for so manydifferent things.
I mean, I've been just soencouraged talking to you right
now and I definitely want tohave you back on because I feel
like there's so much more totalk about.
Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Oh, we can go.
We can go down some rabbitholes, tim, if you want.
I mean there's there's so much,there's so much out there that
we could talk about when itcomes to mindset and and how we
process what's happening to us,and you know even just the work
of God and how, how God works inour lives.
I mean, I, I just hope your,your, your listeners know that
(01:08:13):
God is never there to judge usor condemn us.
He doesn't.
He's not out, he's not avengeful God, he's not out there
with a checkbook.
Ah, you screwed up here and youscrewed up there, although we
have a lot of people that lookat God through that lens.
But no, just remember, he's theGod that got hung on a cross
and he said forgive them, forthey know not what they do.
(01:08:33):
If there's anything into thecharacter of God, it's that
statement alone Forgive them,for they know not what they do.
He is a God of love,unconditionally.
There are no situations whereyou could do something where he
won't love you.
He's going to give you thegrace necessary to where you get
(01:08:57):
through and understand that itwas never about you to begin
with.
It was all about you becomingof service to him in a way that
you serve other people and theirneeds, and that's my life.
Now.
I offer that service to othermen who are struggling so that
together we create a betterplace to live, not only in our
home, but also in our firestations.
(01:09:18):
And not only in our firestations but also in our
departments, and not only in ourdepartments but in our
communities.
Need is my need.
We're going to see this worldchange in a way that we've yet
to have happen, and it's goingto be powerful.
(01:09:46):
But it all starts where youstand.
It all starts where you standwhen you're faced with the
consequences of an entirely youknow a mass casualty event.
Where do you start?
You start where you stand.
Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Right.
You know what?
I just sent this verse out to acouple of firemen who've been
confiding in me, but I thoughtthis was pretty good for you.
Right now I want to end on this.
It's in.
I think this is definitely foryou.
It's Psalms 31, 24.
It says be strong and let yourheart take courage, all you who
wait for the Lord.
So Rick thank you so much forcoming on, man.
(01:10:19):
Man, I I'm just floored andblown away.
Man I I'm going to recommendyou to many other podcasts who
would like to have you on.
So let's do it.
Keep your schedule open, but wewant you back.
I wish we had more time, but Iappreciate it, but I do want to
uh, I do want to pray for youbefore we leave.
Okay, let's do it.
Heavenly father, thank you formy friend rick and for having on
the podcast.
Lord, he's been through so much, but he's used it for good and
(01:10:41):
for your glory.
Father, continue to guide himand strengthen him and just
thank you for his son's life,who was taken too soon, lord,
and what you've done throughthat and how you don't waste
anything and that you loved hisson.
You love him, you love hisfamily.
Father, continue to bless him,open doors and just continue to
guide him.
I'm so encouraged by Rick andwhat he's done, and, lord, let
(01:11:03):
him touch more people In Jesusname, amen.
Amen.
Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Rick, thank you so much, man.
Yeah, man, I'm glad we got thisdone.
I'm glad we did it.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
We'll see you next time, dude.
All right, brother.
Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
Take care, see you, brother, bye-bye.
Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Thank you so much for listening in.
If you liked what you justlistened to, please leave us a
five-star review on ApplePodcasts and on Spotify.
Please follow us on YouTube, onInstagram and on Facebook.
And a big shout-out to StephenClark, our sound editor.
He's a huge part of this teamthat is unseen.
It's 8ix9ine Barbers, our firstsponsor.
Look good, feel good, be great.
That's two locations Orange,california, and Long Beach,
(01:11:45):
california.
Book your appointment online8ix9inebarberscom.
Bye, everybody.
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