A few days after the Ascension Catholic School shooting that claimed the lives of two children and injured many more, I parked my car to visit with a paramedic and was caught off guard by the green and blue ribbons tied to a tree in the front yard of a nearby house. The ribbons, tied on trees and light poles around the city, were a reminder of solidarity with victims. Later that day, my own kids, students at a different Catholic school, asked me about the shooting. I told them I had heard about it because some of the EMTs and medics at my company had responded.
My oldest, a fourth grader, said the ribbons were really sad because two kids had died. I agreed it was sad, but also that it made me think of how many people showed up to help. The photos from that day showed a sea of emergency personnel on scene from agencies all over greater Minneapolis-Saint Paul. “It’s sad when bad things happen,” I told her, “but thank goodness there are people that help when we are scared.”
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My daughter’s question served as a beautiful reminder that EMS is sacred work rooted not only in heroics, but in presence.
As one of a handful of professional chaplains whose role is explicitly to support employees in this frustrating, often heartbreaking job, I feel particularly blessed to stand on the periphery. Though I am not a dispatcher, EMT or paramedic, I am grateful to have been invited to bear witness to this work in ways that move and change me.
Similar to many first responders, I got into this field to help, only to find that I was one person serving countless individuals bearing huge burdens, many of which are due to systemic issues that will take decades to fix, if they can be fixed. Burnout isn’t just trauma; it’s being part of a machine that feels, at times, like it could grind you under its wheels without even slowing down. You may want to do good in your little corner of the world, but the intoxicated drivers will keep causing accidents, the babies will still get rolled on, the sad people will still end their lives.
As first responders, you know this is frequently gut wrenching, thankless work.
I have been the doula for death more than once, holding hands of family members while they said goodbye. I have stood at the graveside of young people whose lives ended too soon, and baptized babies who never took a breath. In my work as an EMS chaplain, I have presided at funerals for loved ones, held medics while they cried and made contracts to keep EMTs safe from themselves.
This proximity to suffering is hard for people to understand. “I could never do what you do,” I have heard too many times to count.
And yet, there are insufficient words to express how much I love this work. Building these relationships and being invited into the adrenaline-laced realm of the first responder is unique and exhilarating. But when I reflect on the times that have most convinced me that my faith isn’t futile and love will win, it’s the time spent accompanying others through deep suffering that stands out.
Not because it makes me feel good; it actually makes me feel pretty bad in the short term. There’s a sort of grief hangover that comes with this kind of work that only people who do it understand. But crying with the brokenhearted and comforting the scared, grieved and lost reminds me that though we may be in the dark, we are in it together. We walk side by side, hearts beating in sync as we stumble through the night, neither of us knowing how the story will end, but trusting that morning comes.
Somehow the force of our vulnerable, tentative, wounded little souls combines to fight against the darkness with light whose sum is greater than the parts. And it’s with that defiant light that we co-create a future together that stretches beyond this present darkness. What it looks like is uncertain, but step by step, bandaged wound by bandaged wound, we become the guides for those who come after.
We change the dark. You change the dark.
The work you do is sacred. Daily, hourly you give the gift of presence; a beacon in the night, even when you don’t get ROSC. Some people find meaning and hope in vast cathedrals and mosques, or spiritual highs that make them soar with elation. And that’s fine for them. But for me, I find transcendence in the breaking voice of a first responder making a death notification. I find meaning in the medic’s arms wrapping around the child crying for her mother. I find hope in the responder’s willingness to stick their hands up to their elbows into blood and guts, courageously snatching victory from the jaws of defeat no matter the sleepless nights they will endure because of it.
Regardless of the outcome, the effort matters. Showing up matters.
Most people see the scene of a grisly incident as a tragedy; something to shake their head at and quickly hustle away from. The Ascension ribbons and signs around our beautiful cities remind us that suffering is ever-present. It calls attention to two realities: loss and resilience, death and life, wrapped inextricably around one another.
Now that I know the emergency response world and the cost of this work, I don’t only see the tragedy of suffering in scenes like this. When Fred Rogers advised scared children like my own to look for the helpers, he wasn’t offering them petty comfort but a paradigm shift. Looking for the helpers is an act of sacred defiance.
You are the light that spites the dark.
You have taught me that in my own suffering, I can look for the midwives of hope, the prophets of presence, who, in walking this lonely path into suffering, invite us to stand together on the holy ground whose darkness births the light.
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