Thank You First Responders!

To the first responders among us, Thanks for all you do!

I want to remind you that in the world we live in the headlines in the news do not reflect the gratitude that the majority of the people you serve feel for you.  I want to remind you that we are thankful for you. 

• Thanks for coming when we hear a noise we aren’t familiar with in our backyard (you know it was the neighbor’s cat, but you never discourage us from calling.)

• Thanks for being there so quickly when our baby stopped breathing, our father had a heart attack, our car had been hit or our teenage kid didn’t come home last night.

• Thanks for talking to our kids about things that we should have been talking to them about already. 

• Thanks for taking the furniture, pictures and family keepsakes out of our burning homes so that the tragedy that just nailed our family wouldn’t be so bad, it was the last thing on our minds and the first things we would have missed after we knew that everyone was ok….and you knew that. 

• Thanks for comforting us after you had to deliver devasting news that one of our loved ones had died.  Thanks for showing up at our school events with your police cars and firetrucks, for being kind to our kids.

• Thanks for running to help us in crises when everyone else was running away.  Thanks for risking your lives.  We know that you are designed as a Modern Day Warrior, that you by instinct run to the battle whether it is to battle a house fire or gun fire.  You were designed to fight for our community.  We are safer because you are among us.

• I don’t know if we can ever say thank you enough but I do know that we don’t say thank you near enough. 

Forgive us as a community:

• We too easily forget that you are human, that you have a heart and compassion.  We forget that most of the things that break our hearts on the news broke your hearts first at the scene. 

• Forgive us because we mistake your humor for callousness when in reality it is simply how you survive

• We forget that you are married, that you have kids the same as age as the toddler who just got ran over or the teenager who killed themselves.

• Forgive us, we forget that you are people too.  Please remember that what we say on Facebook or the finger we give you as you drive by makes more of a statement about our ignorance than it does about you or your profession.

• Forgive us for saying it must be nice to sleep all night while you’re at work

• Forgive us for complaining because you didn’t get here fast enough, for not appreciating your ability to make rapid fire life changing decisions under some of the most difficult of circumstances. 

• Forgive us for celebrating Steph Curry’s ability to nail a 3 point shot from half court and not appreciate your ability to get an IV into a dehydrated infant that saves its life with the family screaming frantically in your ear.  I wonder if Curry or Lebron James can do that?

• Thank you for treating us better than we often treat you. Thank you for giving us your best when you find us at our worst. 

If there is nothing else you hear, if you only hear one thing this is what I want you to hear:  Thank You, your lives matter, what you do is so important to our community.  I speak as one but I am confident today that I speak for the majority. 

And we say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you!