August 22, 2009

Why I Do What I Do ⁷

by Wendy • 2009: Reflection & Inspiration, featured, Firehouse Jargen

Twelve years ago today…it really seems like yesterday and yet, a lifetime ago.  Twelve whole years ago I laid on an ambulance gurney wondering if the next day would even come.  I laid there waiting for the medics to choose whether to life-flight me or send me to the closest hospital which was only a few blocks away but didn’t have a trauma center.  Twelve years ago decisions were made, mistakes were made, and lives were changed forever.  Twelve years ago.

Twelve years ago, my career as a firefighter ended and the journey to shape my new identity was being born.  In a way, I likened my story to that of the Phoenix, being burned and then rising up from the ashes.  Thus begun the Phoenix Project.  You see, during the first months and years in my recovery process I was filled with pain and misery.  All I wanted to do was die instead of carry this cross that I had been given.  It wasn’t fair to watch life slip by piece by piece as others skipped on with smiles plastered on their faces.  It wasn’t fair to to have needles plunged into my arteries to read blood gases, or medicine forced into my lungs because they couldn’t function without it, or to be pumped full of fluids in order to keep my blood pressure from bottoming out.  It wasn’t fair to hear to the doctor say that I couldn’t be a firefighter anymore and then watch my husband leave for work…as a firefighter.  It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t my fault.  I couldn’t go on.

And then one night, as I contemplated whether it was worth it to keep fighting and to keep trying, instead of opening the bottle of pills, I opened up the internet and stepped into a message board that would bring me back from the brink and start me on my path of healing, and forgiving, and working in this line of work.  I started talking to another firefighter who had been injured and was hurting deeply.  All I wanted to do was help him feel better and to let him know that he was not alone.  The ideas in my head started spinning and whirling.  I started a web page that listed links, and quotes, and messages to encourage firefighters who had been injured.  Slowly the web page evolved into a non-profit organization, Firefighter Ministries.  And Firefighter Ministries starting morphing into sub-programs like The Phoenix Project for Injured Firefighters.  And the programs thrust me into the chaplaincy where I started working with emergency workers one on one instead of just on the internet.  Doors into the lives of others whom were hurting began to open.  I used my pain to help soothe someone else’s pain.  In helping another find healing, I began to heal myself.  I spent summers working at burn camps, which helped me come to terms with my burns.  I spent weeks working disaster sites, which helped me understand what it would be like to lose EVERYTHING.  I spent weeks up in New York City building friendships and work relationships, only to watch 13 friends ripped away on 9/11.  I then spent weeks helping my surviving friends recover, which helped me understand what it was really like to lose a loved one in the line of duty.  This in turn helped me create the Texas Line of Duty Death Task Force, which cares for the departments and families of emergency workers who are killed in the line of duty.  Each experience has led to the next.  Each experience has made me into an expert so that I can give the very best care to the next person that I help.  I can’t truly understand their physical and emotional pain, their cutting loss until I have walked through it myself.  And I have.   Instead of taking my own life, I chose to keep living so that others could too.  This work saved…my…life.  What I do is a very big part of who I am, I am not ashamed to admit that.  This work, still to this day, sometimes keeps me going when the residuals of my accident creep up and want to take over.  I still suffer and wrestle with emotional and physical scars.  I still have pain some days that can seem overwhelming, but when I get to share my story in a class across the country, or talk with a widow about her loved one, or be a part of changing public policy to protect firefighters, or plan a fundraiser for my organization, it makes it all worth it.

Twelve whole years ago, my life could have ended with the collapse.  Eleven whole years ago, my life could have ended by my own hands.  But here I am, with purpose…purpose as a survivor, purpose as the CEO of my own organization, purpose as a wife and a mother, purpose in helping bring comfort to those who are hurting.  Twelve years ago…it’s why I do, what I do.