Loss 56/101: Loss in the role of a Police Chaplain

#112. What is it like doing chaplaincy work on the frontline with the police? Or experiencing the worst humans can do to each other up close?

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, to see if hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss.

Loss #56 of 101: Loss in the role of a Police Chaplain

Meet Jared Altic, a returning podcast guest who is here to talk to us about what it's like to work as a full-time Pastor, voluntary Police Chaplain at his local police department in Kansas City, and podcaster.

Jared Altic has over 25 years of experience serving and counselling military and law enforcement families, responding to families of crime victims and working long term with police in areas of wellness. And we spoke to him over 2 years ago in a Let's Chat episode, and now he's back as part of our list of 101 losses. 

In this episode Jared shares why why he does this kind of work, the challenges it can bring to his own wellbeing, how he makes sure his work doesn’t always get the best of him, and the toll being around death can take. 

Yet, despite all the horrendous things Jared has witnessed, he’s still a strong believer in hope... for everyone. 

To listen to Jared's podcast, ‘Hey, Chaplain’, visit: https://heychaplain.buzzsprout.com/

And we specifically recommend an episode we mentioned on compassion fatigue and you can listen to that on any podcast player or through his website: https://heychaplain.buzzsprout.com/1792621/10314453-025-what-is-compassion-fatigue-richard-hartman

To read, or listen to, Claire's top tips on how to speak to people who are grieving, visit: https://www.thesilentwhy.com/post/howtotalktothegrieving

Transcript

Jared: 0:00

Hi. My name is Jared Altic, and I'm a Chaplain with the Police Department, and I'm called out in the middle of the night to help deal with loss.

Claire : 0:12

Welcome to The Silent Why podcast, on a mission to ask if hope can exist in 101 different types of permanent loss, and to hear from those who have experienced them. I'm Claire

Chris: 0:21

And I'm Chris, and in this episode, we're talking about loss in the workplace with Police Chaplain Jared Altic from Kansas City in the US.

Claire : 0:29

Jared has more than 25 years of experience standing alongside military and law enforcement officers and their families as well as the families of crime victims,

Chris: 0:37

and he's a podcaster. He hosts a show called Hey Chaplain, which is all about police wellness, and it led to Claire recording a let's chat episode with him two years ago about his job as a chaplain as well as workplace wellbeing.

Claire : 0:50

Since then, I've been saying to Chris, I wish we'd spoken to Jared as part of our 101 loss episode list, because his experiences fit so well with the other grief, loss, death based jobs that we've explored, and Chris said,

Chris: 1:01

Let's get him back on again!

Claire : 1:03

So we did, and it was great to hear Jared share in this conversation about why he feels called to work with police officers and get involved in this, at times, pretty risky area of ministry.

Jared: 1:14

My heartfelt compassion welled up, and I just feel like people don't appreciate the sacrifices they make and the service to which they've committed themselves. I don't think that most people think about police officers at all unless they're being pulled over.

Claire : 1:30

Jared does more than police chaplaincy. He's also a full time church pastor, but it's his chaplaincy work that regularly exposes him to some of the worst things that humans can do to themselves and each other.

Jared: 1:40

I may be concerned that I've lost my sensitivity, that I am used to being around dead bodies. I counted them up here recently, and I'm pretty confident that I've passed 200 dead bodies. I'm not bothered to sit in a room in the dead body for two or three hours, and that should bother a person. I recognize that that's not normal.

Chris: 1:59

Jared not only shares in this conversation why he does this kind of work, but also the challenges it can bring to his own well being, including compassion fatigue, making sure his work doesn't always get the best of him, but his family do too, and the toll on a person when they're around death a lot,

Claire : 2:14

but despite all the horrendous things Jared has seen and felt, he's still a firm believer In the importance of hope.

Jared: 2:21

There is hope for individuals, and that gets into my religious faith, obviously, but I really don't think anybody's too far gone. And I've had people that I've gone to visit in prison where they've done heinous, unspeakable crimes, but I think there's even hope for those people.

Chris: 2:37

This is a fascinating conversation that we know you'll take a lot from and we began it by asking Jawad to introduce himself.

Jared: 2:47

Yeah, my name is Jared Altic, and I'm a chaplain with the police department in Kansas City, Kansas. I have a day job where I am the pastor at a church. I work there six days a week, but some weeks I'm on call with the police department, and they will page me out, and I will jump into a police car, and I will drive to a scene of a homicide, a suicide or an accidental death, and I will deal with the family, and that is my first role, is to help the family and help them through the crisis of the moment, and then I turn my attention to the officers, because they see these crises every day. And so I am interested in officer wellness and Officer support, trying to help reduce the rate of suicide and alcoholism and divorce.

Claire : 3:38

Thank you for joining us again, because I've spoken to you before on a let's chat episode, but we wanted to get you back because we've been looking at careers that face a lot of loss in our 101 list. Why don't you just give us a synopsis for those that don't know - what is your role exactly? What are you there to do? And what do you provide

Jared: 3:53

A police Chaplain wears two hats. One hat is to be a short term spiritual and psychological first aid provider that for people who are going through something traumatic, like the death of a loved one, an accident, a crime scene, if we provide on scene care for those people that may be anything from crisis counseling to prayer, and some people very much prefer one over the other, and so we provide that, and that that's a short term relationship. The other hat we wear is a long term relationship with the police officers, because police officers will go through hundreds of critical incidences in their career. A critical incident may be, you know, a death of a loved one, a death of any human right in front of you, you know, discovering a dead body, things like that, those kinds of traumas most people only experience just a handful of those in their entire lifetime. Some police officers experience that number every week of every year for their entire career.

Claire : 4:55

And when you become a chaplain, or you go into any kind of ministry, you know, you have options. Humans, you could sort of almost have a much safer role in a church, or you could go into a hospital where you're going to face, you know, some probably quite nasty situations at times with death and illness and that sort of thing. Or, like you, you could put yourself, you know, on the front line of what is probably some of the worst things humans can do to each other. So what was it that drew you into that particular area.

Jared: 5:20

God kept putting police officers in my church, and I realized that I was insufficient to the task. I was not really well equipped. I'm not a police officer. I don't come from a police or a military background, and so I didn't know how to really help them well, but I befriended them, and over several years, I learned a lot, and then I committed to like, Okay, well, I'm gonna actually go to them. Instead of waiting for them to come to me, I'm gonna go to them. And so I went and got training, and it just developed this passion in me for these officers. My heartfelt compassion welled up, and I just feel like people don't appreciate the sacrifices they make and the service to which they've committed themselves. I don't think that most people think about police officers at all unless they're being pulled over, and so it just moved me, and I care about these young, 25 year old patrol officers driving around my city. Sometimes they don't always, you know, some, many of them are not spiritually minded. Most of them, they've not grown up in religion of any kind, in church at all. And sometimes they can be difficult to love because they're a little rough around the edges, and they work a very hard job that encourages cynicism and rough talk and rough behavior, but I love them, and so I'm doing what I want to do, and I don't see that change anytime soon. I'm committed to just trying to help these young officers be as healthy as they can be. I love working in the church, and as an extension of that, I love working with the local police officers in my community. And so if I can do that until I'm just too old to do it anymore, that would be a dream come true.

Chris: 7:08

It's one thing talking about this. You know, when the lights are on, middle of the day, sun shining, you know it's it's a lightest subject to talk about, but three o'clock in the morning, dead of night, all is quiet. Your phone goes and there's a call out, the feelings, the heart rate, all quite different to what it might be now. So what might your first memories have been of encountering death, crime, nastiness, back when you first started, compared to how they are now, how have you developed

Jared: 7:34

Every call is different, and that is that does keep it interesting if you get into first responder chaplaincy, whether it's for the fire department or the police department, you're going to never quite know what to expect, no matter how well trained you are. And so yes, I've had calls where I was doing a death notification, and I approached this house and the officers, I walked up to the police car and spoke to the officer to get all the correct information. So this person in this house. They had a sibling who died in prison, and this was far away, and they had radioed us and told us, hey, we need to notify the next of kin. And so I said, Okay, I'm gonna go up and approach this house. You guys come with me. They said, Well, I want you to know this is a known drug house. And so like, oh, okay, so it's, you know, three o'clock in the morning. They're probably awake, and I'm going to go up and knock on this door, and I knock on the door, and I do this, police Knock, knock, knock. You know, very aggressive, very firm. You may be waking somebody up. And as I've already knocked, I looked over my shoulder, and the officer's not there. The officers, three or four of them, are positioned tactically around the corners and back. They don't want to stand in front of a doorway, because it is possible someone could shoot a gun through a doorway. And so I'm standing in front of the door by my lonesome, and they're taking up tactical positions. I'm like, am I the bait in the trap? I think I'm the cheese in the mouse trap. And it turned out the person that we were looking for answered the door just a crack that they did not invite me in. They did not offer me a cup of tea or anything else. They they just opened the door crack and I gave the information, and they shut the door in my face. And that was, that was it. They did not want the police to come in and, and that's their right, but, uh, but it was a little bit tense, a little bit dangerous, but, but that's, that's how it goes. I had another call recently where there was a homicide. An individual went to go kill his friend, and the friend met him at the front door and killed him first. And so the potential murderer is the dead body on the sidewalk in front of a house. I get called out to the scene, and the tape has been set up around the yard of this house. The dead body is laying out front, and there are relatives showing up at both ends of the street around this yellow tape. And so I come up and check, and they haven't verified the name of the deceased yet. And so that's all still in process. The crime scene investigators are on scene, and they've got their cameras and their lasers. Scanners, and they're doing all that work. The detective is figuring out, well, who is our person? How did they die? What do we know? Do we have any witnesses? They're working all that stuff out. But meanwhile, we have a lot of angry relatives and neighbors and friends around the perimeter, and so part of my job is to be the liaison to those people. I'm going to go and explain where we're at in the process, and the family members can see their loved one and they recognize his clothes. I know that's him, even though they're a distance away. They know that that's him, but we haven't confirmed that yet. Do we know for sure that he didn't change clothes this morning with another person? You know that they traded perhaps, or some other weird circumstance, and so they're mad at us for not confirming that that's their loved one dead over there, but I can't confirm that yet. Not yet were we working as fast as we can, but I can't confirm that. So they're calling me every name in the book, and there's lots of sketchy characters with their hands in their pockets staring me down like they're gonna produce a weapon and try to hurt me, which, I mean, who am I? I'm just a chaplain. Oh, you don't need to hurt me, you know, I'm just, I don't shoot the messenger, but, but there's some very tense moments like that where I'm a little nervous. I don't wear a bulletproof or stab proof vest, and many chaplains do in major cities that have jobs like mine, and so I have strongly considered that was just the summer that that happened, just recently, and I thought, you know, maybe I should go get a vest. It's quite a it's quite an expense, it's quite a purchase. But you know what, I I think my wife would be happier if I wore a vest while I'm talking to these folks. It would be probably a little bit safer, but yeah, the situations, the situations vary. Some of them are very mundane. Many times I am present long after the excitement has died down. I'm just there to provide support to the victims, the family of the victims, and the first responders who are helping the victims, and that often happens hours or even days or weeks later. So my job is actually pretty boring most of the time, but sometimes it can be. I can find myself a little bit in the middle of the action. Yeah,

Claire : 12:13

When it gets exciting, it gets really exciting. By the sound of it.

Jared: 12:16

yes, it does. And it gets exciting before you realize it's exciting, then it's just scary. Yeah, yeah,

Claire : 12:20

You must, you've obviously had some stuff that will have been some stuff you get used to, and you like, Okay, I'm kind of getting to the point of getting used to delivering, you know, bad news or doing death notifications, even though I imagine they're always different and hard. Is there some stuff that you just can't get used to or that you really kind of dread coming up on your phone?

Jared: 12:39

I think that I I think that I dread the calls before I know what they are, when my phone first goes off and I know it's the county calling me. I, I think that I have a moment of regret and anger and frustration because I'm usually just going about my business, if I'm with my family or I'm at work and, and I'm going to be interrupted, and I'm upset that I'm being interrupted and, and that bothers me to some degree, but as soon as I find out what it is, I'm very much in work mode and, and I know that I'm going to go spend the next two or three hours standing next to a dead body after the investigation is complete, but, but you know, I'm going to be next to that body until that body's transported. I may be involved in putting that body into the body bag and carrying that body to a gurney, and pulling that Gurney out of the house and to a vehicle to transport it to the corner. I i am very likely going to see death and gore and that kind of thing. And I think that you know, thinking of your show in particular and the losses that we incur, I may be concerned that I've lost my sensitivity to some of that, that I am used to being around dead bodies. I counted them up here recently, and I'm pretty confident that I've passed 200 dead bodies, and a lot of those are naturals. They're not all homicides. There are people, you know, someone woke up in the morning and found that grandma had had died in her sleep. And I go and spend the morning with them, until we've confirmed that this unattended death was not, you know, they didn't poison grandma or something like that. She just died of natural causes. And many times, like I said, it's very mundane, very boring, but I'm not bothered to sit in a room in the dead body for two or three hours, and that should bother a person, and I feel like I've lost a little bit of that. And like I said, I do a lot of things to try to stay healthy emotionally, but I recognize that that's not normal.

Claire : 14:39

Yeah, yeah, that's difficult. And I'm guessing there's quite a few careers that have got to that point of like, this is my norm. I don't know if it should be, and yet we need people where it is a bit more than norm, because if you break down crying every time you turn up, you're of no use to anybody. So it's sort of a it's a difficult sort of tension to hold, I guess?

Jared: 14:56

Which is funny, because I feel like as I get older, I get more and more sensitive. I'm in my late 40s. I just had my wife, and I just had our first grandchild was born last year, and I find myself moved to tears over commercials on television and so and so. I find that I'm more sensitive than I used to be, but, but the big stuff, the big stuff, I go into work mode and and I need to be alert to how my officers are responding emotionally to whatever is happening. How are they, I mean, they go into a scene. They don't know what's going to happen when, when there's a dead body, they have to go clear the house and make sure there are not additional dead bodies, to make sure there's not a danger somewhere. And so they go in, guns drawn sometimes and and don't know what's around the corner. So when I arrive, they've just completed that task, and even though it is now safe, there was just the one dead body. They're coming down emotionally and psychologically from that sudden surge of adrenaline. And so I have to pay attention to that, and I'm trying to watch that. I'm trying to compare that to each officer's individual baseline. I mean, how grumpy are they normally, you know? And it's that changed now that they've just had this incident, and and I just go into that mode, and I ignore the fact that we're standing next to somebody who's DRT dead right there. And and the even that phrase, we, we, we just casually that that's shorthand to say, look, I'm not bothered that there's a body right here. We should be bothered a little bit, but at the same time, we have to compartmentalize and do our jobs and be professional and be good helpers. And so it's a coping mechanism. It's a little bit of a, you know, self preservation kind of thing, but it comes at a cost.

Claire : 16:49

So how did you get on with training as a chaplain and learning about love and compassion and drawing alongside people? And then you step into a police station, and, you know, we know they've got a different sense of humor. It's a bit darker. It's how they cope. We've spoken to people on the podcast about it. There's different coping mechanisms, and that's one of them, which is totally understandable, but it doesn't look like it marries up with what you would have been taught as to how you deal with other people. So how did you handle that?

Jared: 17:16

It is interesting, a police officer will push you away to see if you can be pushed away, and that's not unusual. I think you'll see that in military veterans. I think you'll see that in some other first responders. I think you'll see that in doctors. They don't want someone to to offer help unless they're going to follow through and actually provide that help. And they've had anybody that is in this area of life and death and loss and grief. They know there's people who talk a good game, and they offer, they say, Oh yeah, I'll be there for you. Call me anytime, but then they're not really available, and so and so a police officer will do the same thing. They'll say, you know, you just, you just prove to me that you're going to keep coming back. You prove to me that you're going to learn our jargon and our policies and our procedures. You prove that to me. And if you, if you prove that you will come back, if you prove that, that you're going to be reliable, then eventually, maybe after a year or two, we will start to open up to you. That's obviously different than what I experienced in church. In church, most people have already gone through that process before they walk into a church for the first time. They've already decided, hey, I'm looking for something spiritual, I'm looking for some answers. I'm ready to hear answers a police officer's not, maybe even anywhere close to that. And so it's a very different mindset for me. It's a very different job for me to go into the police station and love officers who might be deliberately trying to be unlovable.

Claire : 18:53

There must be moments when some of these guys start to open up to you a little bit where inside you're just like, jumping for joy, because you're like, I got one!

Jared: 19:01

Yeah, yeah, I'm not a person you would expect to see do a backflip, but, but emotionally, emotionally, I am doing backflips. I am thrilled when they finally do text back, or maybe I'm walking out of the police station in the middle of night and they follow Me out and want to talk to me in the parking lot that that that is so meaningful, because it takes such investment to get that far. And, and not all of them. Just because they ask for help, it doesn't mean they'll receive help. Sometimes that's going to be a long relational process before they're ready to to to really do healthier things and, and, you know, face the truth of what they've been through or who they are. You know, sometimes it goes back to childhood. It's got nothing to do with the job. The job is just provoking the things that happened to them years and years ago that are now coming to the surface and affecting their their attitudes and their relationships. But, but yeah, when they finally say yes, when they find. They say, Yeah, okay, I want to ask for help. Or or chaplain, will you help point me in the right direction to get some, some type of help? Because it could be health, it could be, you know, psychology, it could be whatever, and it may not be something I specifically provide, but I'll come along as an advocate and help them find those things, those resources and and so once they ask for help. I'm I'm elated. I'm on I'm on cloud nine.

Chris: 20:23

So often, we'll speak to people that have friends, family, that have suffered tremendous loss, and so often you hear the stories of I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to help. And we'll share experiences that do range from talking to listening to just sitting with for you in your role as a chaplain. Is it predominantly about talking, or do you just find times where it is just about sitting with, just being quiet, being still? Are there other techniques and things that you might employ?

Jared: 20:52

Yeah, my nature is to be a talker. I'm a type a problem solver. I want to brainstorm and criticize and pull all the pieces apart and find what went wrong and fix it. However, as a chaplain that won't work these these police officers, they are dealing with complex situations that sometimes don't have an answer and and the best thing that I can do is to to do like what you find like in the Jewish community, where when someone dies, the friends will come sit Shiva with them. They will come in and just spend time. We're just gonna, I'm just gonna sit here in your living room and be with you for the next several hours. And that ministry of presence is where a chaplain really makes progress. And so as much as I want to do problem solve and talk and provide answers, I am much better served when I can just keep my mouth shut and I can just experience it well some one of the best things I ever did was a homicide scene I went to a maybe a drug deal or something had gone badly, and a person had been been interacting with another individual in a car, and they were shot and killed and left in the parking lot of this apartment complex. Well, a snowstorm was moving in, and so I drove over to the apartment complex. I could barely see 10 feet in front of me because of the driving snow, and it was just warm enough that it was kind of coming down as like ice pellets, and so it's raining on you, but it's a rain that kind of hurt when it hit you, and it was accumulating and slushy and building up, and it's freezing cold and windy. And so I get there to the scene, and they again, have set up the perimeter, and some of these younger officers, they're not the detectives, they're not doing the work of investigation. They are just protecting the scene, so they're standing at the yellow tape. And one of the best things I did is I just stood there for a couple hours in the freezing snow, and me and this other officer, we were miserable together, and just snow building up on our hats. We can't feel our hands or our feet, and it's just miserable. But I was out there with my jack and said Chaplain on it, and they're out there, and their best said police on it, and we just stood there and guarded that yellow tape. And so that presence, it wasn't me talking, it wasn't me doing anything, but sharing in the misery. And a lot of these officers are moved when they know that you know they know what the they know that you know what the dead body smells like. They know what it's like to be in a in a house, in a domicile that is is filthy. Just filthy. It's something TV shows and movies can never really convey. Is the filth that some people like somebody's addicted to drugs, they're in an abusive situation, they're not taking care of themselves, and their home reflects that. It is hard to convey unless you've stepped into one of those homes and officers see that, and they feel like they're the only ones who see that. And so if a chaplain can go be present and experience that with them, that goes a long way.

Claire : 24:02

One of the things we ask all our guests is around the why question, normally have they asked the question, Why? Why am I going through this? I'm not quite sure how to put it with you, because I'm thinking, there's quite a lot of different areas it could apply. It'd be interesting if you've had any moments of, why am I doing this as a job? But also, did the police ask that? Have you got them saying, Why am I doing this? Because there must be times when it feels very fruitless. And like we've said before, they, you know, they go into a role thinking that they're going to be the heroes of a lot of situations and saving people who need it, and helping people. And quite often, the frustration of that is it's not the reality. And then you've got things like some bad policeman in red commerce give it a bad name across the country as a whole. And that must be very hard, even locally, when they start to see maybe people being a bit more abusive towards them, that must be like, Why are we going through this? Why do we bother so when you think about the question, why? I don't know which one of those questions you want to take, what do you think?

Jared: 24:53

Well, let me briefly talk about the why that the officers deal with. They the officers when. See somebody come out of the police academy when they're a recruit becoming a brand new officer, you ask them why they became an officer. Why did you want to be a police officer? So many people don't want to do that these days. Why did you want to do this? They always say something like, I want to serve my community. And they give some answer like that, and everybody you know, they roll their eyes and like, sure, whatever, you just haven't been beaten down by the cynicism of this job yet. And and they and, and they do change their answer in the first year or so. They do get beaten down by the repeated trauma that they witness. They get beaten down by just the drudgery that no idea watching police TV shows that most of the job is going to be writing reports and and there's so much there that is just drudgery and standing at the yellow tape and driving endlessly around town without a call. There's a lot of boredom and and cynicism and pessimism and those kinds of things begin to build. And so they often lose that sense of identity that, well, I became a police officer so I could be a hero, so I could help solve crime, catch the bad guy, save the victim. And what they find out is, most of the time they get called, The battle's already been lost and and they are not there to to rescue anybody. They're just there to pick up the pieces. And that's that's really difficult, and that increases the cynicism, that increases the despair that they might feel. And it's often not until much later in their career, when they have children or grandchildren, that they begin to reacquire that idealism like, No, I'm making I know that that little bit that I did is making some good in this world. I can't solve all the problems, but I can fix this one little corner, and I'm going to do that for the people that I love. And so they start out idealistic, they become cynical, then they become idealistic again. Sometimes, if they can overcome the cynicism, I don't have that same trajectory, because I walked into this assuming the worst. I was already a pastor in a church I already, you know, did pastoral counseling, and I knew that people were broken, and that sin exists in the world, and you can call that maybe you don't call by theological terms, but you know, the bad stuff happens, and bad stuff happens quite a bit more than we realize, because typically, we shelter ourselves from it, and I don't want to know the bad things that are happening at my neighbor's place that's behind closed doors, and I'm just not going to Look well somebody like a first responder has to go look. And so they realize, oh, wow, this isn't something that happens once in a while. This is something that's happening behind every third or fourth door. There's a tragedy happening that we're just not aware of yet. And so they have to encounter that cynicism, that that pessimism, very suddenly, I already knew that I feel like I feel like I went into it assuming that, I assume that my officers are struggling. I assume that they're having trouble finding themselves isolated from their families because of what they see, that they don't even want to tell their family, they don't want to upset their family with the stuff that they see, and so they shelter their family and isolate themselves further, and so so I assume that they're struggling, and so I don't quite have that same trajectory, like I said. It does still affect me. Everything I do still comes at a cost, just like it would for any human being, but, but I came into it much later in life. I didn't start this at 21 years old. I didn't become a chaplain until I was in my 40s, so and so I came in a little bit more mature. I saw and experienced a little bit more before I was exposed to the really gritty details, and I was expecting those details to be bad. And so my expectations shelter me from that to some small degree.

Chris: 29:00

I would expect that with church leadership, that when you recognize there are problems within, let's say, the system, you have a certain amount of power to be able to change that organization, to explore what's going wrong, what we can change to make things better, to offer better support in your role. Well, certainly in this in this country, in Britain, more and more we're hearing friends coming out of the major institutions, you know, whether it's teaching nursing, because they're finding those employers were built for another era and now they're just struggling too much. And we hear this, this phrase repeatedly, which is, it's just not worth it anymore. So you know, you have a clear heart to offer support and compassion, to love, to help, not just those you're working with, but you know you through your podcast, you want to literally reach every police officer in the States. How do you deal with frustration that, or do you deal with frustration that there's much that you would love to see change within the institution, within the organization? Situations that is just too big. It's, it's, it's one Chaplain against a huge machine. Is that something for you to deal with?

Jared: 30:06

Yeah, for a self abowed cynic, I'm actually quite hopeful. And so yes, I believe things are bad. I believe that every person has the capacity to do really, really awful things, and whether that makes them an ax murderer or just a jerk, I expect that they're going to be bad, but that expectation also comes with the belief that it's also as bad as it can be, that things can be better and that there is hope for individuals. And that gets into my my religious faith, obviously, but I really don't think anybody's too far gone, and I've had people that I've gone to visit in prison where they've done heinous, horrible, unspeakable crimes, but I think there's even hope for those people. So yes, I assume you know I meet you for the first time, and I think, Well, you probably got some deep, dark secrets that you'd rather me not know about. And I just assume that. But I also think that no matter how bad your secret is, that there's still hope for you and that you could have better days ahead of you, either in this life or beyond. And so I'm optimistic. I'm actually pretty hopeful. I understand that people go in thinking that they're going to change the world, and then the system is so corrupt and broken. They were unable to affect the change they had, and they feel beaten down by that, but, but I would still encourage people. I mean, yes, your particular agency that you work work for may not be great but, but there is still a chance to do good. Anywhere that we can do good, we ought to do it. And I feel like there's great hope there. I feel like your show, you know, it's one of the few podcasts in the world that has really touched my heart, because you guys are looking at what people don't want to look at, and saying, look, there's still hope. There's still something. There's still healing, even when you feel you're so broken you could never heal. There's still hope here. And that's what I am trying to bring to police officers and to victims of crime, that no matter how bad it is, this world's only just as bad as it can be. And there's hope in the future.

Claire : 32:11

I love that, that the ax murderer is our pinnacle for the worst thing that people do. When did we last? So even for the ACT murderer, there is hope. But part of what I'm thinking with this is, you know how like, if you I've heard women who have married builders and things say that they're very good at their own job, at work, and they fix all this stuff, but around the house, there's a whole load of stuff that they don't bother to get fixed, and it's annoying because the customers get the best of them job wise. But you might know where I'm going to go with this. It's gonna be a very personal question, but so you deal with all this stuff in your work capacity. Does that affect how you deal with your own grief and loss and things at home personally? Is there a temptation to to not deal with that because you're dealing with so much that other people have? Or are you better at dealing with that because you've been dealing with it at work?

Jared: 32:58

Both there are certainly days where I am emotionally exhausted, I have compassion fatigue, and it is not possible to give anymore. I've been giving all day, and my family's very sensitive to that. They're very understanding. They realize, boy, you know, Dad just needs to eat dinner and go to bed because he's just worn out. So there are times where that is absolutely true at the same time, there's no crisis my family can go through that I've not already lived through at least secondarily, at least a few times, and so I feel pretty well equipped to handle a crisis and to be helpful. I have a lot of hard earned wisdom for rare situations, because I get invited into people's rare situations, both in my church job and as a chaplain. And so my family, you know, I spoke earlier about being, you know, maybe overly acclimated to death. My family's probably overly acclimated to crisis counseling and problem solving and that kind of thing. You know? They know, okay, what's our game plan? How are we going to move forward out of this particular problem? Because that's what I live in all the time, and they've picked that up from me. My fourth oldest son is about to leave for college, and he surprised us, and we don't know what his plans are. There's no expectations or anything said on him, but he surprised us when he said, Dad, I'd like to go into counseling and and he'd like to go help people in a way similar to what I do. And so I feel like my family has, they were very good people that were very good support to me, and I think that my career choices have, in some small ways, benefited them and even informed where they're going to each go in their future. I have five children, and so going in in each their own direction, I think that they are recreating a part of what they experienced growing up with me as their dad, and they're going to go find a way to. Help and to encourage people in their own way.

Chris: 35:03

You know, listening to you talk, one of the things that I'm reminded of at times in the past, where Claire and myself through different seasons, where, you know, health hasn't been great, going out to work, coming home, you know, we've had to have conversations where we've wanted to recognize that the most important thing is that we put the best of ourselves into our marriage, that, you know, Claire gets the best of me, that I get the best of Claire. Sometimes in our workplaces, they require the best of us, and certainly in what you're describing, what's it like doing the work of a chaplain, church leader, you know, all of that pouring out. You know, you mentioned compassion fatigue, but then also being able to give the best of you to your wife, to your children, not being exhausted and just coming home and collapsing in a heap.

Jared: 35:49

Yeah, again, managing expectations, understanding that the way that that we, you know, put food on the table is by my work at the church, and that comes at a cost, and let's not kid ourselves that working in a church can be sometimes toxic. It can be difficult the family feel like they live in a fishbowl where everyone can observe everything about them and usually judge them very hypocritically about that. So you manage expectations to start with, and then you find ways to protect yourself. When I was younger, I did not do a good job of keeping boundaries between work and home, and I would just work seven days a week and never take a vacation, and I just felt like I had to keep going, going, going, going going, and to keep my head above water. And I've been at the same church now for 23 years, almost 24 years, and that is not true anymore. I have a decent amount of respect, and I've got, you know, I've built up margins. That's not, we're not one tiny mistake from everything falling apart, we're we're not one crisis from losing everything. We're we've we're okay. And so I've had to relearn, as I've gotten older, to to be careful about spending time with my wife, to date her and romance her in a way that would be meaningful to her, that that would would matter to her and and part of it is that we've started taking vacations, just the two of us, which our kids, you know, are not thrilled with we take them. We take them occasionally, but, but my wife has some illnesses and some difficulties, and so to be able to take the two of us and to go somewhere warm, to go to the Caribbean or something like that, that's very meaningful to us. We love to spend seven or 10 days together, just the two of us, and we understand that that can't happen all the time back at home, and that is a cost that we have embraced and are willing to pay, but we are going to carve out time to build this relationship. And as much as we love our children, our marriage is one of the most important gifts that we can give to our kids, that we would be healthy, that we would I like your phrase, that we would give the best of ourselves to each other. That is giving the best to my children. We we have not done everything with our kids that some other families have done. Some families just exhaust themselves to have their kid in every single activity. We've held back from a lot of that, and instead, what energy we do have and what resources we do have, we put into keeping the marriage relationship between mom and dad healthy, and that, I think, is a good gift for our children.

Chris: 38:33

One of my best friends was inspired by a talk he heard at church. I think it was an American sort of conference speaker preacher called Bob Goff, who the idea was that you would write a letter of resignation to your boss, and then you would give that letter in a stamp addressed envelope to your husband or wife and give them the responsibility to you know, if ever comes a time where you think it's time to call it a day, You send this letter, yeah, if you if you had given your wife the letter to your Chaplain boss, you know, 910, years ago, when you first began, would she do you think she would have sent it by now? Or even maybe not chaplain, maybe even just church leadership, would there have been times where she had been tempted, should have been tempted to send it

Jared: 39:20

To the church resignation letter she would have sent many times, many times, yes, yeah. And we, we work in a wonderful church, but, but it's been hard. It's been hard for her, and she has absolutely paid a price to some degree. She may not say that, but, but I know it's true. It's cost her for me to have the career that I've had, and even though that provides for her, and like I said, I try to date her and romance her, that what I do comes at a cost. And so yeah, she would have sent the letter to the church several times over. But in the end, now that we've been together, we've been together almost 30 years. Dollars. Well, we've been married 28 so we've been together over 30 years. The relationship is such now that she would not send a letter that takes away from me what I am and what I'm called to do. She she maybe sometimes has a better sense of my calling than I do and and so she knows what is meaningful and what brings significance to our lives, so she would have sent that letter when she was younger, but But now, now that I'm doing what I'm doing, I think that she would probably stop me from sending the letter, knowing that, hey, a hard day is not a reason to completely turn our lives upside down.

Claire : 40:40

So you do your podcast and you're trying to reach all of these cops. If you had a couple of minutes when you knew every cop in the US was listening, what would you want to say?

Jared: 40:50

That's a really good question. There are several points that I try to make repeatedly, and maybe the most important one is that it's okay that you try to not use a cliche like broken, although broken is apt, because there is something broken when we've lost that identity, when we've lost our hopefulness, there's something there that is dysfunctional and it hurts that we're not The man or the woman that we meant to be, and we're doing the job, but we've lost some of that drive, some of that enthusiasm and and that loss feels like a very personal, very unique thing. And I would want to tell him like, no, no, no, no, no. This is routine. This is normal. You are not uniquely broken, and you are not alone. So if you can realize that that that feeling of loss, that feeling of of I'm not who I'm supposed to be, this didn't turn out how I wanted it to, I'm not sure if I want to keep going, that is normal, and it's something that you could talk to others about because even though everybody else is putting on a very brave face, that is hypocrisy, they do not actually feel as good as they are acting. Most people are also having the same kind of doubts, the same kind of questions, the same kind of hurt. And if you would open up about it, maybe a few other brave souls would be willing to open up as well. And that's that's really the purpose of the podcast is I want older and retired cops to tell what they've been through and to show the younger cop that, oh, this is survivable. Someone has gone through this before me. I'm not all by myself.

Chris: 42:37

Clearly, you've got a Christian faith, but then also you've got a huge amount of faith in people as well in humanity, in people, police officers, members of the public. So how'd you keep your hope tank full?

Jared: 42:49

I am searching through my brain right now to try to find a way to say this in a secular way, and I don't know if I can. I am a Christian, and I genuinely believe that God cared about us when we were his enemies, when we were unlovable and unlovely, and that is what fills me with hope, if he can forgive me and love me when I've been despicable, well, how bad can a person really be? I mean, I really can go into the county jail and talk to someone who's done something that just turns my stomach, but I've turned God's stomach, and if he can forgive me, then I can forgive them. I feel like I can work that out in my brain, and I can deal with people in the midst of tragedies. Sometimes they're the victim, innocent victim, of the tragedy. Sometimes they've caused the tragedy, and many times it's a mix where they have partial responsibility. I feel like I can have hope because of my faith in Jesus Christ. So if there's a good, secular, psychological answer that everyone could grab onto, I don't know what it would be. I hope that everyone finds it. I hope that people really do find a reason to continue serving, even if they're not a religious person. I hope that they can figure out some kind of motivation, some kind of goal that that would they would keep striving toward, so that they could give the help that people need. Because if you don't have if you don't have those helpers, if you don't have police officers, if you don't have firefighters, you don't have civilization. It literally, every other business in the world depends on it, and so we have to have people willing to do this. I don't assume that they'll all believe what I believe, but I don't know of anything better than what I believe, to motivate a person to get up at three in the morning and to go sit with somebody else in their misery.

Claire : 44:47

I think the whole thing you talked about with compassion fatigue will be very understandable for those who are working in lots of jobs that are just going to latch on to that expression. Because I hadn't heard it before I'd spoken to you, and suddenly I just thought, gosh, so many people. Must be suffering with that, and I know you've done an episode about it on your podcast, which is really interesting. I'd recommend listening to but for people in any line of work that are suffering from that, is there anything you'd want to say or advise as like a good starting point for maybe recognizing it or maybe dealing with it.

Jared: 45:13

For ourselves and for the people around us, we need to be keeping track of baselines. What is your normal way of behavior. I mean, it's been built up over years, over lots of experiences, good and bad, but you have a normal way of coping, a normal way of getting on with your day and moving forward. And when we begin to carry too much of a burden, those patterns will change. Someone might be obviously, more sad and morose and despairing, but there could be changes in the opposite direction. They could be suddenly compelled to go party, to go celebrate anything and everything that's not normal for them. Why are they suddenly so obsessed with this, those little changes, both positive and negative, are indicators that were getting bogged down by too much and and maybe our defenses, where we compartmentalize things, some of those defenses are just getting overwhelmed. Maybe we just need a break. We just need a really good vacation. We just need a really good holiday. Maybe that's what we require. And a lot of times, people are more resilient than you give them credit for. If you can give them a warm meal and a hot shower, you'd be surprised how well people can bounce back. It's not permanent. I really don't like it when people treat veterans of of war and first responders, as if they are permanently broken. They're not permanently broken, most of them, if they could take a good break, if they could really just change what they do for a little while, and that may be six months, but, but sometimes it's just, even just a few weeks of a break will reset most of what they've lost. And so there's hope to recover and to bounce back and to be yourself again. It's just you do have to come up for air, and too many times, especially our first responders and maybe church ministers too, we just never take a break. I think of myself in my 20s and early 30s, where I never, literally never, took a vacation. That's unhealthy. It's unsustainable. So you keep trying to carry everybody else's burdens, you will get to a breaking point sooner or later, and that it will not just hurt you, it'll hurt the people you love. So you must be alert to that. You need to take breaks. You need to be watching it in yourself. You need to be watching in others, and you must be accountable to let others watch it in you. If you guard yourself and keep yourself isolated where no one can tell what your baseline is, then you're destined to go toward disaster, because it's people who are close to you who can say, hey, something different than you. You're suddenly really obsessed with something, or you're suddenly really hopeless, or whatever those things are called leakage and and every major thing, including, again, not to be too morose, but including suicide. We never do something that big to take our life or someone else's life without giving indicators in advance, and that's called leakage. And so every time, even when it surprises, everyone, usually friends and family, can go back and say, You know what? He gave away his prized collection of stuff that he treasured, and he just gave it away to me last week. That was a sign, that was an indicator. And so you have to have people close to you who are paying attention, who are watching that baseline and looking for indicators, because they will see things before we do and and that's an important thing for yourself to stay healthy. And like I said, You need to be practicing it, watching others as well.

Chris: 48:56

Wow. Need to remember that if I give away anything of my prized sessions. You know you heard it here first Jared. Thank you so much. We've We've reached our final question. So we're after something, something personal, something that you've nurtured, grown. What's your Herman?

Jared: 49:15

So I'm reaching an age where I can become that grumpy old man who yells at kids who are on my lawn and complain about kids these days and how awful they are. I tell you what, I spend a lot of time with 25 year old police officers, where all of their cohort, all of their peers, are in their mother's basement playing Xbox, but they are putting on an armored vest and a gun on their hip and a taser on the other hip, and they're going out into a dangerous world, and they are clearing houses and responding to car accidents and doing all kinds of dangerous things that most people would never dream of doing, and they're doing it while being criticized and. While being yelled at, and this desire to serve has moved me. I mean, it really does. It inspires me. I look at kids these days and I'm inspired to serve. And so this thing that's been handed down to me by people half my age is this service to community, to say I will not let this community fall apart on my watch, I am going to go help when there's fire or gunshots, I'm going to run toward the sound of danger, and I'm going to do everything I have. And I tell you what, there's not very many careers, military, law enforcement, firefighters, that's pretty much it that they swear an oath. They raise their right hand and swear an oath that they would give their life for a stranger. I can't think of a higher kind of service, a higher kind of love than that, and so I am moved I roll out of bed in the morning because of what's been handed down to me by 25 year old police officers.

Claire : 51:12

Thank you to everyone who serves their community and country by putting themselves in harm's way to protect us, the public. You may not always hear the grateful words of those who appreciate you, and I'm sure the criticisms are louder and more frequent, but I hope you're encouraged by the impact you've had on not just Jared, but the rest of us that feel safer knowing there are people signing up to protect us.

Chris: 51:33

And a big thank you to Jared and all those who choose to volunteer and work in jobs that want to support those that work in these areas. If you'd like to hear more from Jared. Check out his podcast, which is called Hey Chaplin, and we'll put a link to his compassion fatigue episode in the show notes as well.

Claire : 51:47

And thank you for listening to The Silent Why podcast. We know these can be hard conversations to listen to or even think about, but grief is something we will all face, and it's a when, not if, situation.

Chris: 51:57

So the chances are you know someone, or will know someone that experiences a loss, and we're not just talking about bereavements, we're talking about redundancies, divorces, separations, miscarriages, identity crisis, moving house, hospital treatments, chronic illness, all these big changes and more come with loss and therefore the involved grief.

Claire : 52:16

So who could you share this podcast with? We want to reach even more people to comfort them through grief and loss, either now or later. We believe this podcast can make a big difference to those who have experienced something awful, helping them understand how to face and process all the emotions they feel, and also to the rest of us that are supporting them and wondering what to say.

Chris: 52:34

Claire's written a really good blog on this breaking down what to say and what not to say to people who are grieving, because we all know it can be really hard. And we'll put a link in the show notes to that.

Claire : 52:44

For more about Chris and me, visit www.thesilentwhy.com or follow us on social media @thesilentwhypod.

Chris: 52:50

And we'll finish this episode with a quote from Barry Reynolds, who's an author and advisor on police leadership issues.

Claire : 52:57

"Take a minute and remind ourselves that the reason we put on the uniform every day. The reason we got into this profession to begin with is to serve that noble cause, to be something greater than ourselves, to be a part of something more significant. Each day we have an opportunity to help somebody."