Tez Brooks. Debriefing. Purple Mountain Literary Services, 2022.

Chaplain Tez Brooks wrote Debriefing for first responders. This book was not what I was expecting, but it has great potential for good. It actually is a devotional or meditational book written for lifesaving and law enforcement professionals. Brooks gets it.

I was a first responder when I was in the Coast Guard. While I did occasionally get search and rescue duty, my main job was responding to chemical and oil spills. At times work would get slow. We would joke that we were waiting around for nothing to happen. I recall one day one of my men came in and complained about the inactivity and said, “What we need is a real good oil spill.”

That day we got the biggest oil spill of my three years stationed there. There was heavy black oil covering about twenty miles of the Connecticut River. The next day, after being up most of the night, the young man who complained said, “I didn’t mean it, honestly, I didn’t!”

We get it. We are prepared to handle something bad, but we hope it does not happen. A prison warden told Rev. Brooks, “Some days, I’m sure my officers hope an inmate would escape, if for no other reason than to break the monotony” (118). A lot of times that is the way it is. How do you deal with that monotony? Hey, you are still doing your job. There are still security checks to be made, whether prison security or port security. Even Jesus tells us to be faithful in the little things (see Luke 16:10).

Probably the hardest situation I had on search and rescue duty was when the station got a radio call at about 10 in the evening from a nine-year-old girl. She was on a boat that had gone aground somewhere on a small uninhabited island. Both of her parents on the boat were drunk, and she was asking for help. This was before GPS, so it took a while for a helicopter to find the boat. We were mostly just telling her over the radio what she could do to help and to keep the boat steady.

Some dispatchers have instances like that almost daily. “Whether walking a child of seven through CPR to keep her mother alive or convincing a suicidal dad to put down his gun” (152), it can be hairy, especially when you know someone’s life could be in danger and you are miles away.

When I got home the next day after that experience with the little girl on the boat, one of my roommates asked me what I was doing at ten o’clock the night before. When I told him, he said that he was in a Bible study and at that time a couple of the people had the impression that they should pray for me. I am thankful they did. God knows what is going on.

As Brooks writes, dispatchers are professionals that “have the God-given ability to comfort those needing a calming presence” (153). The guys on duty that night including myself might not have felt very calm, but we were careful to talk calmly to the that little girl and help her keep her family afloat. Ability? Well, maybe training with some common sense. But we must be glad God is in on it.

Brooks tells a number of similar stories or shares quotations from a variety of first responders: EMTs, firemen, policemen, prison guards. He serves as a police chaplain and clearly knows what is going on.

Certain calls can really bother us. While I was in the Coast Guard, one of my roommates was a state policeman. He was really shaken up once when he responded to a call involving a baby that had been killed in a gruesome manner. He was shaken up, yes, but he did what he had to do. First responders have to have relatively thick skins. Brooks includes this prayer:

Dear Father, thank you for providing a well-armored personality for my job. You created me different on purpose, and that is a blessing, not a curse. I need not be ashamed of who I am or how you made me. Amen. (597)

Lest it sounds like he encourages his readers to “tough it out,” he understands that PTSD is real. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. Over the years, Chaplain Brooks has helped many officers deal with the trauma they have witnessed or experienced. While a first responder may have a thicker than average skin, he or she still needs a sensitive response. “When we (in the name of toughness) avoid empathy, we fail to understand and fulfil our role as first ‘responders’” (633, italics in original). After all, what does respond mean?

Dispatch is written from the perspective of the front lines. While aimed at the professionals mentioned above, other types of veterans might benefit from the book as well. It is direct, it is honest. The book itself shows empathy. “Been there, done that, got the scars to show it.” This little book can help heal the scars.

One of the problems first responders have is maintaining a perspective on life. When I was in the Coast Guard, I usually went to a beach because someone reported an oil spill, and it was my job to observe it, investigate it, and oversee cleanup. Once, when I was doing a final inspection of a cleanup, I went to the affected beach, and it was full of people swimming and sunbathing. “Oh, yeah,” I had to remind myself, “most people go to beaches because they want to have some fun and relax, not to check for oil.”

First responders, especially police and 911 dispatchers, often see the evil side of people. You do not have to explain to most police officers that we live in a fallen world. They know it. What they need is hope. This book gives the reader some hope. It also includes a few QR codes for help with certain problems or challenges. (I hope the writer or publisher keeps tabs on these because URLs are notorious for changing.)

The book ends with a list entitled First Responder Affirmations of Truth. It is a number of sentences that are meant for the readers to speak out and affirm or confirm. It begins, “I am not a first responder by accident” and goes on from there (801). It is easy to imagine the seven short paragraphs of those Affirmations printed out or disseminated to encourage first responders and even to frame them on their desk, hang them in their locker, or post them on their wall.

There is a lot more as well. Some things may make you laugh as you look back on things, but there is hope and a future. And yes, first responders, we do need you.

N.B.: The references above are Kindle locations, not page numbers.