Hope

By Luke Cleghorn

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.”

This quote from Frodo Baggins in Return of the King has been bouncing around in my head recently. How do you pick up your life were you left off when you have been hurt to deeply to ever heal completely? Quite simply you cannot. There are hurts that fundamentally change us from which there can be no going back to the way it was before. The death of a loved one, a traumatic accident, a broken relationship, the betrayal of a friend or the horrors witnessed by those who protect others change who we are. Remember September 11, 2001? I dare say that none of us who watched that event unfold were ever quite the same as we were before. Even at my young age I can look back over my last few years working Fire/Rescue and EMS and pull out specific events that changed my life and my outlook on life. Does this have to be a bad thing? No. God uses our experiences to shape who we become if we let Him, and these experiences good and bad are what shape us into the person we are. Now, that doesn’t change the intense sorrow and pain many go through. It doesn’t rid us of the ghosts in our heads or the pain in our hearts and it certainly doesn’t eradicate the memories that you wish you could forget. What it does show us is that there is always hope. As Samwise Gamgee says,

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the Sun shines it will shine out all the clearer.”

There are times when we don’t want to know how our story will end because we cannot think of a way that it could be happy. We don’t see how things could ever be the way they were because we have been so jaded by the evil that we have been confronted with. We fail to realize that while there is God there is hope, and God isn’t going anywhere. Whatever you may be going through, it is but a passing shadow. Though it may be darker than and bigger than you feel you can handle, it will one day pass, a new day will come and the sun will shine again. For a Christian, though we may never see a “happy ending” in this world, the worst that can happen is we will be in the presence of Christ sooner than we anticipated. And that is not something we dread.

“Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.

What are we holding on to, Sam?

That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”

Sam again was absolutely right. In times of adversity, it becomes absolutely necessary to hold on to something. If you have no motivation, if you have nothing to hold on to, you will eventually give up and fail. What do you hold on to? As with Sam and Frodo, you may be holding on to the fact that there are things in this life worth fighting for. You may be fighting to protect yourself, your neighbor or your country. While these are indeed worthy causes, as believers, we are ultimately to hold on to Christ; He is the source of our blessed hope. As the song says,

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness

If we base our hope in Almighty God, there is nothing that we cannot do and no hurt we cannot overcome with His help. While we may never be the same after we are hurt, that hurt is part of what makes us who we are. It shapes the way we view the world and the way we react to it. It is what makes us us, and sets us apart from everyone else. While in times of hurt and discouragement we may feel totally alone, we need to remember one simple fact.

You are loved more than you will ever know

By someone who died to know you

So whatever battles you are fighting, if you are feeling hurt, lonely, discouraged, or like the whole world is falling around you, find someone to talk to, cry out to Jesus and know that there is always hope.

Sometimes I Wonder If This Job is Worth It

By Luke Cleghorn

All of us who work in EMS, Fire/Rescue, and Law Enforcement have asked ourselves this question at one point…

Is a career in emergency response truly worth it? Will I ever be able to sleep without fear of what I will dream about? A night of needed sleep can quickly change into a montage of all the things I wish I could forget, but know I will never be able to…

The anguished look on the face of a mother as she puts the lifeless body of her baby girl into my arms — fully believing I will be able to make everything better.

The sense of failure when we are unable to get the child back after working the code for a full hour.

The chilling scream of that mother when the ER doc tells her that she will never be able to hold her baby again.

The elderly patient who died the other morning, her husband of over 60 years holding her hand and silently weeping as her heart ceased beating.

Or the young man who believed life was not worth living and took a pistol and blew his brains onto the garage wall. And then there was the look on the face of his mother who found him.

So, is it worth it?

Is it worth it to never be able to drive down a road without memories of the mangled bodies from that last call?

Is it worth it to wake in the middle of the night and rush to an accident to find a truck that had been travelling over 100 MPH has struck a tree and killed all the occupants?

Is it worth it to never be able to forget the smell of the talcum powder from the airbags, mixed with the metallic tang of blood and the overpowering smell of alcohol rising from the pools of coagulating blood?

Is it worth it to never forget the sight of abused, malnourished children living in absolute squalor?

Is it worth it to be called away from a Thanksgiving dinner, twice in the same day, to see the faces of family members as you perform CPR on their mother, wife and sister who had laid down for a nap after a good Thanksgiving dinner and never woke up?

Is it worth it to be filled with anger and hate at the midwife whose lies and incompetence caused a family to lose their child, and almost lose their mother?

Is it worth it to never be able to forget the blank stare on the face of that 5-year-old who just witnessed his father being crushed to death?

Is it worth it to be spit on and urinated on, and have your family and friends cursed by the ungrateful patient who fails to realize that it is your sworn and sacred duty to help them in their hour of greatest need?

Is it worth it to feel devastated whenever a brother or sister firefighter, EMT, paramedic, or law enforcement officer is killed?

Is it worth it to always wonder if your patient would have lived had you simply noticed a symptom a minute earlier, or started an intervention a few seconds earlier?

Worst of all, is it worth it to no longer feel sadness at the death and sorrow you see, but only numbness?

When this is all I see, I must come to the conclusion that this career is not worth what it has done to me.

But then I consider the good side… Does it balance out the sorrow and evil we are confronted with?

Is it worth it when that kind note is received from the patient you had forgotten about?

Is it worth it when you see that look of relief and joy on the face of the husband and father when you tell him his wife and newborn baby will be alright?

Is it worth it when you have that great conversation, including wise life advice, with an elderly patient on a simple inter-facility transport?

Is it worth it when you unexpectedly meet a former patient and don’t recognize them because the traumatic injuries from the first and only time you saw them have healed? But they recognize you, give you a huge hug and excitedly tell everyone around how you helped bring them back from the brink of death.

Is it worth it when you see the grateful face of the child you helped rescue from an abusive home?

Is it worth it when you find you have won the respect of those you work with?

Is it worth it when you know that those you work with would die for you without a second thought, and that you would do the same for them?

Is it worth it when you realize that you have life experience and confidence far beyond your years?

As firefighter Mark Bezos said, “Not every day is going to offer us the chance to save somebody’s life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one.”

We cannot heal this world; that is a work reserved for God Almighty.

It is only after we accept these truths and realize that we cannot rid the world of evil, merely help to mitigate the impact it has, that we can become more effective providers, and realize that yes, it is worth it.