016 - Fear Is Only The Beginning

This episode presents a fear cops deal with early on and transitions to a fear we all should possess.  Let this fear define you.

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Transcript

Parallel Proof Episode 16: Fear Is Only The Beginning

Welcome to Parallel Proof episode number 16: Fear Is Only The Beginning

Thank you for listening.  Here we are, together again, and no matter where you may be, or what you may be doing, I know your time is valuable, and the fact you want to spend it with me is so very much appreciated.  Thank you for telling a friend.

My journey has its ups and downs, packed with frustrations along with learning lessons along the way.  I try very hard to make experiences meaningful and relevant to who I am right now and what my next steps will be in so many different areas of life.  I have a purpose and so do you.  Are we on the correct road?  Have we taken the proper turn?  Is the trajectory we are travelling in line with our God given talents?  What do you like doing?  What are you good at?  What are your passions, those things that get your juices flowing?  You and I have been created as we are, and we have been allowed to make decisions that have formed our existence.  Look back, think back, reminisce on the reference points that don’t escape your memory.  What’s it all mean?  Whether your decision or decisions, whether by accident or fate, possibly coincidence, or divine intervention, why?  Why did it take place?  What are we to learn, and through being taught, how can we be better humans to ourselves and those around us?  We all want to have meaningful lives, to make a difference, to have a purposes.  That is inherent in our souls.  Life, and ALL of life, is a sequence of events creating an evolution of a better you, starting with the subsequent minutes following this podcast listen.  You may need to think back, remember, and dig into the dirt to locate the treasure buried in the remembrance.  Let it not be a digging of a grave, but more an exploration, like metal detecting, to find the gold nugget of truth in the experience.  It is a fun way to live, well, for me it is.  Life has meaning and had it throughout the years.

After the police academy, one is thrown into daily learning lessons that help sharpen your stance as a law enforcer and protector of people and property.  These daily live tutorials are abundant, and necessary, for one to become the best officer one can be, primed to handle the plethora of adventures and crisis readily presented and in commonly uncommon modes of discovery.

Are you ready for the break in routine?  Prepared for whatever is thrown at you both allowable and unacceptable?  How will you react to anything that surprises you, and has there been a plan formulated, or a training completed that will assist in the decision making of dispersing a better version of yourself in times of plight?  Yesterday was a training ground, today is what you learned, tomorrow is who you have become.  Who have I become?  Only time will tell in my next opportunity to react.

That’s what field training as a cop is all about.  Make your mistakes, observe, learn, and for the love, don’t make that same mistake again.  It can cost you your life, the life of your partner, or the lives of citizens who depend on the strength and weight of the badge, along with the correctness of your instantaneous assessment.

I was, I’m not sure blessed would be the right word, but, blessed with a very particular, aggressive, hands-on, type-A, narcissist for an FTO, or Field Training Officer.  This guy was something else to be around.  A very difficult personality, but also very thorough in his approach to teaching new officers on probation, and those not ready to ride solo.  Just the kind a newbie needs to create nervousness and fear of handling the possible mayhem in the incorrect manner.  Remember, life or death can be in the palm of your hands in any split-second decision.  In sales, it’s ABC, Always Be Closing.  In law enforcement, it’s ABR, Always Be Ready, HOAS, Head On A Swivel, GHS, Go Home Safe.  Yeah, I just made those up.  Anyway, you get the picture.  Be ready.  Be prepared.  Trained having been schooled by all the in-your-face scenarios.

I remember riding with my FTO on a calm uneventful night.  Not a night where you can learn much due to the absence of action.  Perpetrators taking it easy apparently, opposite of a full moon.  Nothing is going on.  To a nervous newbie, it’s kinda welcomed.  The lull seems like a vacation from the madness.  The radio is silent.  Patrol vehicle windows cracked to hear only the sounds of the cop car engine shifting and the tires grabbing the asphalt as my trainer is driving through sleepy neighborhoods at 2am in the morning.  But that isn’t what a good trainer does.  He doesn’t allow for long stretches of absent teaching opportunities.  A great field training officer doesn’t permit the stale activity to run the show.  So, he creates windows of learning opportunities.  He will put the pressure on, and grip the calm with an intentional grasp that forces your hand.  We are rolling down a side street at the speed limit, no more than 25 miles per hour, and this guy, out of no-where, induces disorder like he invented the word.

As I am sinking into the passenger seat, thanking God Himself for the break that is numbing of my nerves, my FTO suddenly and without warning, slams on his brakes in the middle of the street and equidistant from the intersections in front and behind us, and starts screaming at the top of his lungs, of which I will spare you the ear piercing sounds, “Shots fired, shots fired!  We are being shot at!  We’re taking gunfire! Where are we?  What street are we on?”  He’s shouting,   “What intersection are we near?  You have to put it out on the radio!  What’s our location?  What direction are we travelling?  Screeching all this in my ear.  I just went from heavy eyelids to full blown eyes as saucers, 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t know anything.  Not one thing.  I couldn’t answer one question.  I was so in the dark and absent of anything remotely accurate.  I felt the heat burning my insides, and my mind melt into mush.

“What are you gonna do?”  He’s yelling.  “Where the hell are we?”  I didn’t know.  “Tell me where we are at?”  Still didn’t know.  “What the hell are you doing sitting here?  Go find out where we are at!”  What?  I mean, what?  How?  “Get out of the car and run down the block to the intersection and find out where we are!”  He’s serious.  Which intersection?  I’m about to tear up.  “I don’t give a ----!  Find out and which direction we are from it!”

So there I was, full uniform, sweating from the immediate realization of my profound lack, running down the middle of the street to grab our location in this hypothetical attack on police.  Boy do I feel dumb.  A gut punch to my feelings of being a badass cop carrying a smoke wagon on my hip.  That was a slap in the face of reality.  I wasn’t prepared.  I wasn’t ready.  I didn’t know where I was, nor the direction I was heading.  Completely overwhelmed, and underdeveloped.  I was severely lacking the awareness I desperately should have acquired prior to the test.  I was afraid of my lacking, fearful of the ramifications.  This fear dawned a realization of the knowledge I needed to survive and become a better cop.

My parallel.

Solomon, one of the wisest, a very prominent man in the Bible, would throw proverbs at you like Nolan Ryan would fire fastballs from the mound back in the day.  Heaters all day long, and he starts his book, aptly named Proverbs, with an extremely pointed one in the very first chapter.  We all want to appear like we are smart and have it together.  We don’t want to be perceived as stupid or half a lightbulb turn away from bright.  Somehow, we all desire what it takes to make decent decisions for the good of our lives and the lives of those we care deeply about.  That takes wisdom.  I want to be wise in how I present myself, how I act in the face of turmoil, and how I respond in the crucible of change.  Solomon rips off a proverb in verse 7 that literally is the theme for the entire book, and most likely his own life.  He writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”  This is where I want to be.  I am nowhere near even close to having the knowledge I am in line for.  Not being afraid of God, but a loving reverence for God that includes submission to His Lordship, and to the commands of His word.  God is supposed to be our King.  And I am to stand in awe of Him and his grace, and power, and forgiveness, and love, so much to the point that He wants to bestow on each of us knowledge.  We are to desire the knowledge only He can give.  The correction of any kind.  Fools who don’t fear the Lord are quick to quarrel, and give full vent to their anger, are complacent and trust only in themselves rather than God.  If I can stand in admiration, and submit, desire to be owned and controlled by Him, then will come the knowledge I so urgently need to be the man I am supposed to be, the instrument played out with purpose, a figure used to make this world a better place.

Where are you?  What is your location?  What are you gonna do?  What are you doing sitting there?  Find out what direction you just came from.  Name the place you are at.  Is it correct?  Or are you somewhere you aren’t sure about, like, you should be located somewhere else right now?  Spiritually, where are you?  Where am I?  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.  How much of my existence is me, as opposed to how much of it is a submission to God?  I don’t know what’s going on because I don’t fear the Lord.  My heart wants to, but I constantly battle selfish desires.  I want to crave the knowledge only He can give.  I want to fear the God who created me, the only One who can tell me where I am and which way to head.  Maybe some of you are in this with me.  I doubt I’m alone.

Thank you for listening to me express my thoughts this week and allowing me to take a week off to recharge.  Lots going on in this brain of mine.  I am trying to make sense of it all.  Stay with me.  Tell a friend.  Let’s come back here soon.