The Good Stuff by Travis Akins
The Good Stuff
My name is Travis Akins and I serve with Rocky Mountain Police and Fire Chaplains. I was a full time Pastor for 10 years and have been involved in law enforcement since 2002. About 11 years ago I was able to bring the two together to be an emergency responder chaplain. I serve as a chaplain for a couple of law enforcement agencies and I help lead RMPFC that supports 159 agencies and has over 300 chaplains across the Rocky Mountain region and expanding nationally.
Thank you for your support and prayers for us a Chaplains and for all those that we serve.
Many times when we meet people as Chaplains, Emergency Responders, Medical Professionals, Soldiers, or as Veterans, they want to hear the good stuff. They say, tell us about your crazy stories or the worst calls you have had; essentially many people want to live vicariously through our experiences.
As we hear the request, we immediately go to our worse calls or experiences and think to ourselves, “What can I really share? If I share what I am thinking it will traumatize them. Do I really share what they think is the good stuff, which actually is not good at all.”
Experiences like seeing or treating a badly injured person, giving CPR to someone but not being able to save them, responding to the loss of a child and hearing the cries of desperation, being asked, is my child going to heaven, investigating an assault on a child or battered woman, fighting someone, being assaulted, being shot at, seeing the atrocities of war, seeing our friend hurt or killed, sharing with our friend’s family that they will not be coming home tonight, or getting the call that our friend has taken their own life. These are just a few examples of our experiences and then we try to reconcile all of this with our beliefs about the world and about God.
Is this really the good stuff? Are these really the experiences we want to imagine?
So many times, we go out in public like a “normal” citizen, but only see the worst in people because of the experiences we have had. Sometimes we interact with others who have no understanding of what we have experienced and have no idea the truly evil we have seen, and we become frustrated. We are frustrated because the world is not the utopia like some believe and we are frustrated because we don’t know how to process what we have experienced, much less how to explain it to others. We don’t want to see what we have seen, but now you want us to relive it.
I believe that when people ask us to tell them the good stuff, they don’t really know what they are asking. This takes the responder, medical professional, soldier, veteran, or chaplain right back to that trauma all over again. The meal, or time together, can get real awkward real fast; this is especially true when we are having a bad day, or have become jaded to the world, and we do tell the horrific stories. I am told that sometimes I forget to use my filter. In our frustration and hurt, we unload on the unsuspecting person who seemingly asked an innocent and curious question.
We quickly try to think of a story that is less graphic which will satisfy the hunger for the excited person without traumatizing them. Some of us may pre-plan the stories we will share because we have experienced this in the past and have an idea of what is “kind of” ok to share. It also helps keep our mind from going to the worst places that we don’t want to go.
These experiences are also why many emergency responders have only emergency responder friends or only attend emergency responder Bible studies. We as emergency responders, or chaplains, understand the experiences of each other and can support each other in ways others can’t. We also use a lot of dark humor, or humor others don’t find funny because we are trying to cope the best way we can. There we can share the hard stories, without filters, to help process what we have gone through and find support and understanding on the other side.
Recently, two couples were sitting at dinner and one couple excitedly asked the nurse, tell us about the worst patient you have treated. The nurse just looked at them with a blank stare. The husband of the nurse noticed the pause and jumped in with a story that was interesting, but not over the top. Later, he talked with his wife about it and she had gone to a horrific situation and realized that she couldn’t share that story, but was stuck and couldn’t think about another one, not to mention that she really can’t share about patients because of HIPPA laws. She had gone right back to a place that no one should never experience, but it is etched into her mind.
Why do I tell you all of this?
An average person experiences 4-6 traumatic events in their life while the average Officer or Firefighter, in a 20 year career, will experience about 600 traumatic events.
The things we experience as responders, medical professionals, soldiers, and chaplains are not the good stuff, however we experience The Real Good Stuff because of our relationship with Jesus.
Lets not talk about the good stuff but lets talk about The REAL good stuff.
I typically listen to KLove to be encouraged and have something positive in life that points me back to Christ. However, from time to time I listen to country music and heard a song about the good stuff. I don’t know about you, but I experience God through worship and song. Music can take me away from the chaos of everything going on in life and bring me into the presence of the Lord; to remind me of His love for me, of His purpose for me, and allow me to be in awe of all He has done and all He is doing now.
As I listened to this song, it starts off by a man coming into a place and asking for the good stuff to deal with the difficulties of life and to cope with his struggles. The waiter tells him he can’t find that here.
This is a picture of my family. I’ll personalize the waiter’s response and share a little about my family.
The good stuff is celebrating 25 years of marriage this year with Brandi. The good stuff is seeing my kids come to their personal relationship with Christ. The good stuff is watching Jordan be successful and working on things in the Space Industry. The good stuff is walking Alexis down the aisle, giving her away, and the honor of baptizing them in their new marriage. The good stuff is seeing Alexis and Andrew explore their callings in nursing and acceptance into flight school in the military. The good stuff is seeing Katelyn pursue her own journey into law enforcement to help others. The good stuff is watching Jonathan graduate high school and attend college as he goes after his dreams. The good stuff is seeing Addison overcome her past and pursue her future.
The good stuff can’t be found in a bottle, cannot be found in worldly pursuits like money, fame, or a job.
The real good stuff is found in our relationship with Christ, in the relationships He provides us with, and in our pursuit of doing His will.
This photo is a group of our chaplains at the Colorado state capital in January. The Colorado Congress recognized us as Emergency Responder Chaplains on the house and senate floor for the impact that has been made over the past 10 years. Some of our chaplains get to pray at the capital on a regular basis. Over the 10 years of RMPFC we have grown from a handful of Chaplains in a couple of agencies to impacting thousands of people across 10 states.
The real good stuff is seeing men and women that we serve ask questions, come to faith, study the Bible, get Baptized, support each other, and be the light of Christ to those they come into contact with. They find their purpose and identity outside of their job and in the calling God has for them.
The Good Stuff in Chaplaincy is helping others see the Real Good Stuff through their experiences on the job, experiences at home, and the way God is working in their life. I lead a Bible study for emergency responders and it is honestly one of the things I look forward to the most each week. We spend time together talking about the hard calls, things at work, what’s going on at home, going through Scripture together to apply what we learn to our job and life, and praying for one another. It is a very special time for all of us that attend.
This is one reason chaplaincy is so important. As chaplains, we are God’s Ambassadors of Hope.
We provide spiritual, emotional, physical, and practical support to the community we serve. We are representatives of His Holiness in a dark and fallen world. We are a reminder of a person’s humanity when much of what we see is a loss of humanity. We are a safe place, a trusted confidant, that a person can open up to about what they are struggling with. We are servants of Christ who deeply care for those who serve us.
Through Rocky Mountain Police & Fire Chaplains, we serve in a few ways. The first is to mentor, train, and provide support for Chaplains. Emergency Responder and Military Chaplaincy is much different than other types of chaplaincy and ministry in general. We aim to provide the structure, guiding principles, and resources needed to help chaplains be the best they can be.
We also come along side agencies that either don’t have a chaplain program and want to start one or help them develop a chaplain program into a vital aspect of a wellness program.
We serve those that serve us. We serve the nurses, doctors, EMTs, police officers, firefighters, dispatchers, soldiers, veterans, and their family. 80-90% of all we do is build relationship with those that we serve in preventative chaplaincy. We support them in times of need, knowing the names of their spouses, kids, praying for the needs and concerns that they have, providing guidance in finances, relationships, and everyday stresses of life.
The remaining 10-20% of our time is spent in those critical or traumatic events. We help lead debriefs to help normalize the abnormal and bring in resources for those that need longer or in-depth care. We respond to those are planning to take their life and them get the help they need. We respond to the family who just lost a loved one and needs help planning a funeral. We also help with the celebrations in life. We officiate weddings, baby dedications, baptisms, birthdays, and so on.
What does it mean to be an Ambassador of Hope? What do we do?
We share about a few things; we talk about:
Where our Comfort comes from.
Many of us experience moral injuries. “Moral Injuries challenge our beliefs or values that we hold about ourselves, humankind, our Faith, and how we reconcile traumatic events with our core beliefs.” We have experienced, done, or could not prevent something that goes against the very fabric of our beliefs and struggle to understand how something so wrong could be possible.
This leads many people to ask, if there is a God, how could He allow these things to happen. Some will walk away from their faith, some will lose hope, some will turn to anger, and others turn to unhealthy coping methods, trying to numb their thoughts and feelings.
God’s ways are not our ways. God uses the pain in our life to strengthen our relationship with Him, to allow us to experience the ways He provides for us, and to come out on the other side of trauma stronger than we were before.
Then God can uses these experiences of Him to share with others in their times of need, struggle, and desperation. As Chaplains, we come along side our responders and their family to help provide the perspective of God’s work in and through us. Yes, we do experience evil in this world because we have turned from God. However, the story does not end there and how exciting it is to share the end of the story with those that don’t know it yet.
Where our peace comes from.
As responders and soldiers we are trained to be hypervigilant. We are to be keenly aware of our surroundings and always be prepared for the “what ifs.” In the mental health world this is actually a diagnosis that can be given to people struggling, yet as responders or soldiers we are trained this way to keep ourselves and our peers alive. The bigger problem is when our responders can’t turn off the hypervigilance and it spills over at home. They lose the ability to wind down and be “normal,” whatever that means these days.
In Romans 15 Paul is sharing with the Romans about the weak and strong believers and gives them a blessing in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” It is Paul’s hope and prayer that each of us will be filled with joy, peace, and the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can serve others, being an Ambassador of Hope of Jesus Christ
Many of our responders also fear the repercussions of the things they have done in their life. Like many of us, they say, well after I get things right I can go to God or think about faith. Sarcastically they say, If I go into a church I am sure I will be struck by lightening.
John says in 1 John 4:18, “Perfect love drives out all fear.” What we want to convey is the truth about God’s love for each of us and His desire for a reconciled relationship. Yes, we all need to turn from our sin and follow the ways of Christ, however, God is a God of mercy and grace as much as He is a God of Justice.
Another encouragement for us and for us to share with others is from Paul’s writing in Philippians 4:6-7 which says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” The peace that we desire can only come from God, the author of peace. We cannot find it through the world.
Where our strength comes from?
The strength that we are speaking of here is not just physical, but mental, emotional, and spiritual. Yes, physical strength is important for our responders and soldiers, however without mental strength we will crumble. Paul faced may trials and persecutions during his missionary journey, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and beaten.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 he talks about the thorn in his flesh after he pleaded for God to take it from him. It says, “But he (GOD) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
We also share about the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18 to stand against the schemes of the Devil. Satan wants nothing more than to destroy our witness and our desire to bring more people to the salvation of Jesus.
It says, “10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”
Where we process grief and loss?
Responders, medical professionals, soldiers, and their families experience loss and grief in profound ways. The immediate ways we think of are those lost on duty or those injured and unable to return to service. However they also experience loss and grief through missed experiences like the birth of a child, the many firsts of their child’s life, family holidays, or anniversaries. Many work long and unusual shifts to keep our country and community safe, lack of or disrupted sleep, lack a healthy diet, miss workouts, and don’t have outside hobbies because of the work shifts and stress.
They also experience grief and loss when they respond and cannot save a person’s life or when they have to take the life of another person. As Chaplains, we help those we serve process all of these things and more. I honestly don’t know how those that don’t know Christ are able to process the things they experience.
Jesus says in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
And in Matthew 11:28-30, “28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”.
These are not light sayings, but are promises that we can hold on to.
As believers we experience grief and loss. We also have the hope and promises of the future. Though losing a loved one is hard, we know that we will see them again. Though we see our friend pass away from cancer or through a traumatic event, we know they are no longer in pain and are celebrating life in heaven. Though life seems to always be hard, Jesus gives us peace and joy through it all.
As we journey through our own periods of grief, those around us see us and we can share why we can grieve differently than those without hope or without a perspective of how God is using our pain for good.
Where our hope comes from?
Those we serve as chaplains struggle in significant ways. Numerous times I have been called by those who have given up hope and are contemplating taking their own life. One of the most important aspects of being a Chaplain is being there for those who cannot see clearly or have lost perspective in life.
The hope of Christ and who he is, is the anchor from which we can stand. In the Psalms, they speak of the cries of the heart, the desire for justice, and for God who makes all things right.
Psalm 121 says, “ I lift my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
There is only one that is the God of Hope, The God of Comfort, The God of Justice, The God of Salvation, The God of Peace, and the God of Strength. That is Jesus Christ. He is our only source of hope and when we try to find it apart from Him, we are only left with disappointment and hopelessness.
As we surrender our life to Him, we receive salvation and eternal life.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”
This is the Good News, This is the REAL Good Stuff!
So what does this mean for all of us?
We are ALL Ambassadors of Hope!
Together we can offer a different perspective of the world. A perspective that provides hope, a way to grieve, and where true strength comes from. A perspective that shares truth in grace and love. A perspective that shares hope and salvation. A perspective that points others to Jesus and the redemption only He can provide.
Together we can:
Pray for our responders, soldiers, medical professionals, and Chaplains.
Those we serve need our prayers. We are not only in physical battles, but emotional, mental, societal, and spiritual battles.
Look for opportunities to serve and care for those that serve us.
This can be as easy as anonymously buying a meal for someone or writing letters of encouragement.
Ask for ways we can support them and how God is working in their life.
If you are in relationship with a responder, medical professional, soldier, or dispatcher, you may have a specific idea of the things that they need or need support with. They may need help with childcare do to shift work, they may need help with taking their dog for a walk or letting them out when they have to stay after for a long call, or they may get called in for an emergency and need their kids picked up from school. The important thing is to let them know you are their for them and offer specific ways that you can come alongside them when they need it the most.
Thank and encourage them for all they do.
Some don’t like to receive attention for what they do but everyone wants to be appreciated. There may not always be an opportunity to thank those that serve us, but when there is, then take advantage of it.
Make Disciples wherever we are.
Jesus says in Matthew 28:19-20, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
And Paul says in Galatians 6:9, ““Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Thank emergency responders: police, firefighters, EMTs, nurses, doctors, those currently serving in our military and our veterans.
Thank you to your family as well for their sacrifice and service.