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Ep 20: The Rest of the Story: Calling, Identity, and Courage with Pat Welsh (Jeremiah 1:5)

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It is 1:00 in the morning when Pat Welsh catches a call for a 12-year-old who came home late from school. He is annoyed — the bars are about to close, things are about to jump off, and he wants to be doing real police work. He talks to the kid for three minutes. Then he leaves.

Eighteen years later, that same kid finds him in a grocery store line and says: "I graduated from college, I'm married, I have two daughters, and I want to say thank you."

That is the kind of leader Pat Welsh is — and it is the kind of leader this episode will challenge you to become.

Now a retired police superintendent, lawyer, and founder of the Warrior Servant Leader platform. Pat spent 26 years on the Dayton Police Department — at its worst, the seventh most violent city in the United States. 

He has buried a son who died serving overseas in the military, watched his wife fight ovarian cancer, and led through the kind of chaos that would break most people.

In this conversation, Pat and Dr. Lee dig into what it actually means to lead from your identity in Christ — not from your title, your credentials, or the pressure of the role. 

They talk about the fourth stress response nobody teaches you, why studying scripture is different from reading it, and how your job does not define who you are — but who you are absolutely defines how you do your job.

This one is for every faith-led entrepreneur, executive, and leader who has ever felt the weight of high-stakes decisions and wondered if any of it is making a difference.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • The "Paul Harvey Moment": Why you will rarely get to hear the rest of the story — and why that means the reason you serve has to matter more than the outcome.
  • Your Job Does Not Define You: How Pat walked away from a successful DA career at 28 to become a police officer — and what his story reveals about calling vs. credentials.
  • The Fourth Stress Response: Beyond fight, flight, and freeze — the intentional, faith-rooted response that changes everything in high-pressure situations.
  • Study It, Don't Just Read It: Why understanding the historical context of scripture — from the town of Philippi to the gate of Hades — transforms your faith from intellectual to lived.
  • Jeremiah 1:5 as a Leadership Anchor: What it means to be consecrated before you were born — and how that truth holds when the trials are real.

Key Quotes:

  • "Your job doesn't define who you are. Who you are should define how you do your job."
  • "We are all consecrated for a specific purpose by God. Part of our journey is discovering what that is."
  • "Success is somebody else's opinion about you."
  • "If you can't be trusted to do the right things in the little things, what are you gonna do in the big Joab moments?"

Connect with Pat Welsh:



Connect with Dr. Lee and the Regulated Roots Community:

Follow on TikTok: @leechelseacordell

Connect on LinkedIn: Dr. Lee Cordell

SPEAKER_01

Hello everyone. We are joined by a really special guest today. His name is Pat Welsh. He's a retired police superintendent, lawyer, and the founder of the Warrior Servant Leader Platform. From starting out at birth in a Dublin orphanage to leading on the front lines of one of America's most violent cities, Pat has brought 40 years of battle-tested wisdom onto our show today. He's going to talk to us about how to lead with courage, how to lead with compassion, and how to maintain conviction in the face of chaos. So, Pat, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Okay, so there's a lot of places we could start here. Our audience is oftentimes in similar situations to what you described. Now, they might not be on the literal front lines, but a lot of times they're on the figurative front lines. They are highly responsible for people's lives, for their livelihoods. They're making decisions that can impact millions of people, millions of dollars. And I know that you have experience leading in these high stakes, high likelihood of trauma environments for decades. And I also know that you're a man of faith. So I'd love to just hear about a little bit of your backstory of how you started coming to this place where you were really in this position to, I don't want to call it battle, but get to really do your work and follow God's calling on those front lines.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And when I was three days old, she put me in an orphanage in Dublin, Ireland. And I lived there till I was like 16 months old and was adopted through Catholic charities to a family in Kansas City, Missouri. And so I am like 100% Irish Catholic. I've never I've never even been to a public school, except kindergarten. And I went to Catholic schools all the way through law school and was taught by Jesuits and Marionists and nuns. So I have a deep Irish Catholic tradition. And as a part of that, I really grasp and understand Jeremiah, where I knew you before you were formed in your mother's womb, and I consecrated you before you were born. That is a absolute truth to me, just because I can look back at my life. I'm 68 years old now. I can see specifically God acting, I mean, just throughout my entire life. And some of it was trauma. I had a TBI when I was in second grade, uh, coma, the whole works, got last, well, we called it last rights, anointing of the sick. I got all that. And just that's just one of many stories where I can go, well, there was God. I may not have seen it at the time, but in hindsight, a lot of different things that that made me who I am today. And the whole calling and vocation thing. I graduated from high school. I was 17 years old. I went straight to college, and then I graduated from college, I went straight to law school, and I did all that because everybody always told me, Oh, you'll make a great lawyer. I got the gift of Gab and all those things, Irish. And so I was living up to other people's expectations. And at one time when I was in college at the University of Dayton, I was living in a uh Mariness House of Studies. I thought, uh, I'm really supposed to be a priest, and yet God had other plans. I met my wife, now a wife of man, it'll be 46 years this September. Well, we met at an on-campus Saturday evening fellowship. But I was always living other people's what they thought I should be or could be or would be good at. And that's what I did. And I became a lawyer, I was a prosecutor, and we were married six years, had two kids, and came home one evening after work. My wife's like, you know, what do you really want to do? Because you're always in a pissy mood.

SPEAKER_01

We wives are good at that, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're not you don't seem to be happy and this, that, and the other thing. And I said, I've wanted to be a police officer as as long as I could ever remember. I mean, being a little kid. And she goes, Well, if that's what God's calling you to do, do it. And so I did. So I transitioned after having been an assistant DA in Montgomery County, Ohio. I transitioned over to the Dayton Police Department, took the test, went to the academy, worked my way up through the ranks, and I was there 26 years.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And that was one of the faith-based lessons, if you want to call it that, is that we are all consecrated for a specific purpose by God. And part of our journey is discovering what is that. And it's not a job. What is God calling you to be as a person of faith, as a child of God? And your job doesn't define who you are, who you are should define how you do your job. And so I've had a lot of experiences as a police officer. Some of them were really scary. You come out of the trauma nursing arena. Yeah. Dayton, Ohio, at our worst, we were the seventh most violent city in the United States with a population of at least 150,000. I think California was number nine to give you a comparison.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_00

And so, yeah, I spent more hours in our taking calls or sometimes being treated myself for injuries on the job. That all has an impact on you and how your worldview. And for particularly in the emergency nursing and medical fields, the fire and police service, is we can get jaded really quickly. Yeah. And get disillusioned and get egocentric, self-centered, and really have our faith tested. So that's not the reader's digest version, but oh my gosh, I'm riveted.

SPEAKER_01

I'm like just sitting here, if you're not watching the video portion, I'm just on the edge of my seat. I really appreciate you telling that story. How old were you when you transitioned from being a lawyer to a police officer?

SPEAKER_00

28.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So I asked that too because I have to, well, first of all, ADA at 28. Okay, all right. And I asked that because that is such a unique backstory to bring to being a police officer, because you're gonna understand it in a way that most police officers never would. Because and please correct me if I'm wrong, I would imagine that it's almost like with nursing, right? After the patient was well enough to leave the ICU or leave the bone marrow transplant unit, I rarely saw them again. And I had no idea what happened after that. If they got better, if they got worse. I just knew, well, they were well enough to leave. And so being on the flip side of that now, and a lot of times encountering people who are cancer survivors or survivors of trauma and having conversations about the backside, it was so great to have the understanding of what they went through before. And I can imagine that on your side, it's almost the flip side. You understand what's going to happen next.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's I call him Paul Harvey moment. He had his own radio show, and he always he would tell you the story, but then he'd tell you the rest of the story, like the story behind the story. And in law enforcement, and like in nursing emergency medical stuff, it's very rare that we get to hear the rest of the story. Yeah. But when you do get to hear the rest of the story, that is confirmation for you that you've been doing the right things at the right time, the right way and for the right reasons, even though you don't know what happened to that person and how you impacted their life. And so, real quick story.

SPEAKER_01

You don't have to make it quite at time.

SPEAKER_00

Well, so I get dispatched, it's one o'clock in the morning. I was working midnights, I was in my early 30s, I'd only been on the job a couple years, and I catch this call, and it was on a Friday night, Saturday morning, that a 12-year-old had returned home, had been reported missing by their earlier in the day. And I'm like, dang, Navit, I'm gonna be taking this paper call when it's like one o'clock, the bars are gonna start closing, things are just gonna start jumping off, and I want to go headhunt bad guys. And but I catch this return missing 12-year-old. So I pull up to the house, and my beat was 99% African-American, single-parent households, tons of drugs, violence, gangs, I mean the whole works. And I pull up to this house and it looked like an oasis in the desert. The grass was cut, the bushes were trimmed, and it looked like a nice house. So I go up and knock on the door, and mom and dad both answer the door. So I'm like, okay, this is odd. This is what I'm thinking. I'm also thinking, I only got to be here for two or three minutes. And you know, is your son home? Is he safe? If he does it again, cause. And then I can go out and do real police work. And uh so they invite me in. They tell me that their son is in private school. They both work, they're paying tuition to have him in private schools, so he's not in the Dayton public school system. But he's running with the wrong crowd of boys in the neighborhood. And on this particular day, he didn't come home from school, and he finally came home at 12:30, quarter to one. And so they knew they were supposed to call the police to let them know. And I'm like, okay, is he safe? He's not hurt, all those kind of things. And they're like, Yeah, he's fine. We just don't know what to do. And I'm telling you, mom looks like she's ready to cry.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And she looks at me and she goes, We're at the end of our rope. We don't know what to do. Will you at least talk to him? And I'm like, okay, what's a 30-some odd-year-old white guy, gonna, police officer, gonna tell a 12-year-old black kid living in this environment that's gonna make a difference. But of course I said yes, I talked to him because that's part of protecting and serving. And I said, But can I just talk to him one-on-one? And they go, Yeah. So they had a little sitting room, and they they brought him in, and I was already seated, and he kind of shuffles in and his head's down. He never made eye contact with me, never looked at me. He sat down, and I talked to him like a parent, because we had kids, and not like a cop. I bet I wasn't with him three or four minutes, and then I left. 18 years later, I'm in line checking out groceries at Kroger's up near Hubert Heights, Ohio. And I'm just minding my own business. I'm off duty and I just want to get the groceries and get home. And there's a little old lady in line behind me, and the girl's bringing up my groceries. And this voice behind her says, Hey Welsh, is that you? And I'm thinking right away, okay, it's either another cop or a bad guy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because our name tags on our uniforms only have our last name and first initials. So nobody calls you by your last name if that's all they know you by. So I turn and look and I'm like, okay, this dude's about 6'3, 6'4, black guy, early 30s, probably. And I'm going, not a cop. And it's like my mind's racing. What if he follows me out to the parking lot? What did I arrest him for? And I'm just like, crap. But I'm polite and professional. And I said, yes, sir. He goes, You don't probably remember me. I said, No, sir, I don't. He goes, When I was 12 years old, you came to my house because I didn't come home from school. I just want to tell you, I graduated from college, I married, I have two daughters, and I want to say thank you. And that really struck me, because this is 18 years after the fact that I got that Paul Harvey moment of knowing the rest of the story, which I think should encourage us and challenge us, not just cops, but period, always interact with people in a way that if you do get to hear the rest of the story, it turns out like that. And even if you never know, you can be confident that you were doing the right things at the right time. And then if it's faith-based, even more so, think of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa. If you read about her and her life, she did not have to take a vow of poverty and be on the streets of Calcutta. And the millions of people that she touched and influenced, you can't imagine how impactful she was, even though she never knew the rest of the story. You're not probably old enough to remember this, but she spoke, she's a little thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

She spoke before the UN, the full assembly of the United Nations once. And she very politely and graciously and with great love basically kind of smacked them upside the head about, hey, you're not being servants of God. And to have that kind of impact it and have that kind of faith, I think is very it's encouraging to me. So that's kind of and I have other stories.

SPEAKER_01

I was like, I don't think I've ever just like outright cried on a podcast before, but if you heard me be very quiet there, I was like, okay, Lee, like you're gonna have to talk in a second. So you're so pulled back together. That's so gorgeous. And also, you are speaking to something that I wasn't planning on talking about, but I think it's very important. Some of us are in these jobs that they hardwire our nervous system to be hyper-vigilant, even when we're not working. And I left the bedside five years ago. I still have to remind myself at times that my business is not an emergency. And I know you said it twice now, and I wanted to actually ask you about this because you talk about doing the right things at the right time for the right reason. What I've found is that when you're in those life or death situations, oftentimes what you would do in those moments is not what you would do 99% of other times when you're not in that do or die moment. And when you spend 40, 50, 60, 80 hours a week in more of those hyper-vigilant spaces. And I don't think that this is just emergency room nurses, police officers, first responders. I've been in so many C-suites, and it's the same tension there as it is at the bedside of a patient who's not doing well, or probably a call for you where you're like, we're not quite sure how this is gonna go. When you spend that much time a week in those spaces, it can be really hard to remind yourself, hey, you know, I am a Christian, I believe that Jesus is my savior, I believe in eternal life with God. So even if this feels like an emergency on earth, I gotta remember this is not an eternal emergency right here. So I really need to be thinking about how do I want to approach this and how can I ensure that I am doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason and not necessarily succumb to the pressure that's even present for me in that moment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it's I've done a lot of studying and reading. I'm an avid learner. In fact, one of the things I think most people fail to do, they get on the lazy river ride and they just float, they have this mindset, and my wife hates this saying it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

And that's a mindset of uh defeatism and surrender. And you can appreciate this with your psychology background, is the four things every human being, four basic things, and this is my summarizing it all, yeah that we all want and need and crave in our lives. And it from being a little kid to being on your deathbed, we all want safety, security, prosperity, and control in our lives. That's and that that hyper sense sensitivity you're talking about in the emergency and first responder arena, it's even more acute to us that safety, security, and control. Those three are really they're really hyper sensitive. But as we deal with people, not only do we have that desire, but so do they. When we're taking a call for service, it's a family trouble or what whatever it is. And they're calling, not because they're having a good day, it's because either their safety, their security, their prosperity, or control they've lost. Or it's being threatened and so.

SPEAKER_01

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so what I like, and I and we can't always be running in high gear. It's just it's exhausting if you do. And not just in first responders, just in our regular everyday life, we have challenges and obstacles and even opportunities. I mean, good things are happening that can stress your sense of security, safety, prosperity, and control. Getting married, your first kid, or we had five, and great blessings, but boy, can that be exhausting. But you have the blessing, but at the same time, you're feeling the stress and the pressure of your circumstances and how your life is going. And I think one of the things, particularly from a Christian standpoint, because it's real easy. We all know you you're either going to fight, flight, or freeze. That's what everybody says. Those are your three responses. Really, there's a fourth one, and that is having an intentional, not a reflexive reaction, but an actual intentional response to circumstances and challenges and obstacles, like a road rage. Somebody cuts you off. Well, if you reflexively react and flip them the bird, okay, well, now we're just gonna, this is not gonna end well. Yeah. But if you train your mindset to be that, okay, maybe they're having a bad day, and I'm gonna make the intentional decision, I'm just gonna back off and slow down, and or maybe either pull whatever, but to minimize the escalation of what could be a bad or a worse situation. And that takes practice and time and effort. And so, for example, people go, Oh, yeah, I read the Bible every day. Okay, that's great. I'm really glad you're doing that. Now, take the next big step and study the Bible. Learn, learn the history, learn the context, not just memorize verses. Example. The letter to the Philippians, or when Peter confesses in in the gospel where Peter confesses that you are the Christ, both the letter of the Philippians where uh Paul says that at the name of Christo, every knee shall bend and every tongue profess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Well, in the first eleven sentences, he uses the word Christo, Christ, seven times or something. I don't remember the exact numbers. But here's the thing about the town of Philippi. And you won't get this from just reading scripture, you have to study it, and that means studying things that are non-scriptural, like history. Yeah. And so Philippi, the town of Philippi, was created by Caesar to be a retirement community of Roman soldiers. Because Caesar and Mark Anthony Constantinople and Rome were doing this, coming at you fighting for control, who's gonna be the emperor. And Caesar went. Well, the road from Constantinople to Rome went right through the town of Philippi, which is named after Philip the Great. So he turns it into a Roman garrison retirement community and says, hey, if you do your 20 years or whatever it is in the Roman army and retire here, you get full Roman citizenship, free slaves, free land, and you don't have to pay Roman taxes. Because he's afraid Constantinople's gonna take another shot at him. They got to get through Philippi, which is inhabited by the badasses.

SPEAKER_01

I'm like, this isn't a bad idea as I'm listening to you tell the story.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, and then also Caesar declared himself God man, Christo. And it was at the name of Caesar in Philippi that every knee bent and every tongue professed Caesar as Christ. So the letter to the Philippians, that's and then you stop wondering why Paul kept getting thrown in prison, that he's telling the Christians and the Jews and the Romans in Philippi it's at the name of Christ. Now, so that's a Letter. You wouldn't know that history unless you studied history to find out what was going on at the time. Now, at the same story, or different story, but it involves Philippi when Jesus says to the apostles, Who do people say I am? And he goes through the thing, and then he says, Who do you say I am? And Peter says, You are Christo, you are the Christ. They're in Philippi when this is going on. And if you look at the history, you can Google it. Caesar's temple was sitting up on a giant rock above them. So they're down below it. And there's this cave in this hillside that has the temple built up there that was in the pagan world was the gate to Hades, to hell. So when Christ says to Peter, it is upon this rock that I will build my church, meaning Petra, he's changing his name to the rock. That rock behind us is not upon which this church is built. So when you when you study that, then your mind gets opened up that you know the Paul Harvey, the rest of the story, but you also gain wisdom and understanding. It's not just reading words on a paper that I go, well, I believe it because the Bible says so.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I believe it because the Bible says so, and I understand the meaning behind and how radical the message was that Christ was preaching and why the it so inflamed the Pharisees and everything else, because they knew what he was talking about.

SPEAKER_01

I love that you're bringing this here because my husband got a degree in early Christian and Roman history and psychology. And he was raised both Catholic and Lutheran, but chose Catholicism when he went to college, and then I converted before we got married. And so I just in the last few years have been really deepening my understanding of the Bible. I've never been interested in history. He and I in college took a Roman history class together, and it was the only class that he got a better grade than I did. And he'll tell you, he's like, you're the better student. But I was like, I just can't get into this, I don't understand it. And one of the things that I realized in my walk was, okay, I love to learn, I love to read. Why have I not read the Bible the entire way through? Why have I not really tried to understand this at a deeper level? If this is something that is so important. And so I did that. And one of the passages that really stuck out to me was the passage in Red Solomon has just gotten the kingship after King David has passed away. And God comes to Solomon and says, What do you want? I promised your dad that I would take care of you, even though your dad sinned. I said I wasn't gonna take it out on you. Um, what do you want? And he's like, I want wisdom. Because I'm young, I'm 18, I'm 19, I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here. There's so many people, there's so many decisions. And he so humbly says to God, I want to know how to do this. And God says to him, Not only am I gonna give you wisdom, because anybody who asks of me, I will give them wisdom, but I'm gonna give you the riches and all of the things beyond that. Nobody will be greater than you in terms of wisdom and these things, because this is what you saw first. And that has stuck with me the entire time because I've just realized that every time I open that Bible and there, and and I don't just stop at the words. I go down to my study notes and then I go online and I look at the context of where that was said and the the historical background of what was going on. Even this morning, I opened my Bible and I was planning to read something else, but sometimes I open it and God's like, stop right here, just where you're at. And it was the preface page to Isaiah in my Catholic study Bible. And I was like, wait a second, how much do I know about the prophet Isaiah? And I was like, Well, I don't, so let me read this. And it was talking about his whole journey for 40 years, and it added so much richness and context to the several passages in Isaiah that I had read the last several weeks going to Mass and in my daily meditation. And so, like, I think that as these busy humans who are responsible for a lot of things, a lot of times we go, I don't have time for that. I'm gonna open up the Bible app and get my two verses and meditate on that for a minute and I'm done. And I don't mean to imply that that's not good. And it is so worth it to take the time to even for five or ten minutes, like you just said here, give yourself a little bit of time to understand the historical context of what is going on because it will deepen your faith. It makes the verses and the scripture make so much more sense when you understand it through the lens of the humans who were there at the time and when you understand the context of what was happening.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So here you really want to get challenged.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I do. I don't know if our listeners will, but like it's my show, so let's go.

SPEAKER_00

You can do this online. We did it in person, my wife and I, and my wife, by the way, is a convert as well from the Episcopal Church.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So we did it in person. It's a four-year biblical studies program.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

And it's through the St. Augustine Institute in Denver, but it's online. Now it wasn't online when we went through it back in 2013 to 2017. It's a four-year, nine months a year. It's basically a school.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And we had two and a half hours of in-person instruction. We had homework, we had tests, but it is from Genesis to Revelation, a deep study of scripture. So there'll be companion works like Brant Brant Petrie. B-R-A-N-T is his first name. Petrie is P-I-T-R-E, and Edward Shree, S-R-I, is his last name. Read anything by those two guys with respect to having a greater understanding. I think one of one of my favorite books was The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00

And to understand the whole transubstantiation. Just it's just like boom. Now so many, like the sacraments in the Catholic Church. Where the roots for every single sacrament in the church is in the Jewish faith and tradition. Christ was a Jew. He wasn't a Catholic. So it's fascinating to read that and then also read other things that will help you understand the human mind and human experience and how your faith. Take Ryan Holliday, great book called Ego is the enemy. And there's nothing scriptural about it as far as his writing of it. It's the psychology of egocentric self-centeredness, that kind of stuff. But how ego is your enemy, and then you can take that and just translate it like uh the reading from the Sunday, The Temptations of Christ, after 40 Days in the Desert.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And what Satan was doing to Christ was trying to get him to be ego-centric. Hey, it's all about you. If you really are the Christ, change these stones into bread. And so if you recognize how ego works, the psychology, and Satan knows how it works, but Satan is not all-knowing, all powerful. He can't read your mind. So he's gonna prod and test like he he did Christ. So if he could get Christ to question his divinity or question his humanity, then boom, he gets him to sin, and then he's like, ah, he's just another great prophet. He's not the Messiah.

SPEAKER_01

The Messiah.

SPEAKER_00

And so you'll read things. One of the best books I just finished reading was Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he really gets into that security, safety, prosperity, and he's doing it as he was the international hostage negotiator for the FBI. And how he could actually, instead of arguing with a hostage taker, if he could understand where this guy's coming from, then we can get to a solution that's in the best interest of everybody. And it that takes time and practice and study and application. It doesn't happen overnight. Unless you're sol and you get your butt knocked up.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I really don't want to I don't want a sol moment.

SPEAKER_01

And I I didn't have quite the salt moment, but it wasn't I definitely was not one of those people that I have some of these people in my life that have just believed, they've just believed from such a young age. And I love being around them because I am so inspired. And I remember watching a TikTok one day where it was a younger guy, maybe in his early 20s, and he's like, you know what? I always felt like my boring testimony was problematic. And he's like, But a boring testimony where you've just believed is such a beautiful thing. It is okay to not have to have your faith tested in a way or to lose it and get it back or to not have it to start and have to gain it in these painful ways. It's okay to just believe and to have that. It's interesting when I used to run our trauma institute, we talked about three core needs, and they it's the same thing, right? It's it was that physical safety, that sense of like my body is my own. Um, nobody's gonna violate that sense of safety. It was belonging, which is really the security piece, right? Am I good where I'm at? And then it was autonomy, and autonomy is prosperity. You know, I'm able to succeed, I'm able to progress, I'm able to grow and change, and also I'm able to choose so I can control. And what I absolutely love is that part of the reason that we ended up closing our trauma institute and bringing a lot of that work over into our new business regulated roots was because the nervous system regulation that we taught on that side, when I was like, I had my moment with Jesus and he came back in my life and I started experiencing that peace that surpasses all understanding and like suffering with joy, and the fruits of the spirit were growing. I was like, oh, all of these things I was teaching about how you can get these four things for yourself doesn't hold a candle to what Jesus can do. And I was like, I can't continue to teach this because I know different now. And it was a moment kind of what you described, the moment with your wife where she's like, Are you gonna choose to do something else already? I've had a few of those, and it was definitely in that moment where I was like, Okay, I God's calling me to do something different. Like, I know what he's calling me to do. And I wanted to ask you, was that painful to make that shift at all? I mean, I'm sure there were some people in your life who went, Pat, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, starting with my mom.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was same. My parents went, excuse me, you went to school for 12 years to get a degree, and now you're doing what? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00

So Yeah, that everybody, the the prestige, how is it? Uh success is somebody else's opinion about you. And so people would go, you quit being a lawyer, and I didn't quit being a lawyer, I kept my law license, and still is. I'm still admitted to uh federal court in Ohio and state court, but I wasn't practicing law full time, but that people they go in their mind. I mean, you can just see it in their face and their expression, is what are you thinking to go from the prestige of being a lawyer to just being a cop kind of deal. And I tell people, yeah, I get that, and and I think most of the apostles were just fishermen or Matthew the tax collector, kind of deal. But it's the worst advice I think we ever have gotten in our lives that is in direct conflict with the Christian faith is this. If you want it done right, do it yourself. And that that's egocentric, and then you get in the C-suite arena or in the supervisory, starting with being a corporal or sergeant on a police department, and the higher up you go, the greater the pressure is to not fail, which is different than the pressure to be successful.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It doesn't have to be in the dramatic Job kind of uh way, but my wife and I we've been through a couple Job experiences, but I'll just give you an example. We recently bought a used car from a friend of ours, and they were just trying to unload it because they had bought a brand new car and they just didn't want to have to deal with this used car. So we go, okay, yeah, what do you want for it? And said, Okay, that's great. And then they came over to the house, they delivered the car, came over to the house, and in Colorado, you can transfer title and stuff without having it notarized on the spot. And she goes, I left the purchase price blank so you can just put in there whatever you want because of the taxes that would be a result of the transfer tax. And we're like, Okay, thank you. And in right in front of her, my wife writes down the exact amount we're paying for the car. And what she was, she actually threw out a number, you know, just put this down. No, that's not right. And that's if you can't be trusted to do the right things at the right time, the right way, and for the right reasons in the little things, what are you gonna do in the Joe big things? Where I mean, it is, I'll tell you, it's our youngest son died serving overseas in the military. Oh uh 11, it'll be 11 years ago. And you know, all that being a Christian doesn't mean you're not gonna have tragedy in your life and grief and struggles and all those, and that things, trust me, they're not gonna be perfect. I was on Midnights for 13 years, and our two oldest kids went to Catholic grade school. And it wasn't until after I retired, and I've been retired 14 years, so probably about 10 or 12 years ago, my wife tells me in a conversation, for the 13 years you were on Midnights, I felt like a single parent raising our kids. Yeah. And I'm just like, but she never said anything. She's suck it up, buttercup kind of mindset, because that's how we've been raised and taught. And those things are not consistent with what should be our faith journey and our walk with God and our walk with Christ and others is we have to do it in community. You cannot go through life with that mindset. If I want it done right, I gotta do it myself. One, you're gonna die an early death. Yeah. Your body can't take that kind of stress.

SPEAKER_01

No, I see it all the time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I appreciate what you're saying too, because so a perspective that I hadn't thought of ever and just blew my mind the other day was thinking about how they always talk about Jesus being a carpenter. You you never see him do anything with carpentry in the three years that he's ministering, right? And when he goes back to his hometown of Nazareth and he's there, he talks about how how hard it is to be yourself in your hometown. And he shakes the dust off of his feet, and then he has surrounded himself with other people who have also, you know, picked up and left whatever vocation it was that they were doing and are now following him. And I think about the fact that those disciples had such a beautiful example in Jesus of what it looked like to like do something for, I mean, I'd have to go back. I'm just thinking about with Jewish customs, like 13, you're there's the you're having the bar of the bot mitzvah, like that's the adult. So I don't know what age Jesus would have started working, but I'm guessing 14, 15, he's in it. So he's been doing that for 15 years, and he just set everything down and left and went to be a prophet, a minister, a rabbi. And so I think, like, wow, what a beautiful example to a lot of those disciples. Because whenever I thought about the disciples when I was younger, I always thought they were like 30, 40, 50-year-old dudes, right? No, these guys are a lot of them are in their late teens, early 20s, they're young. And so I love that he modeled that. He modeled, I'm not gonna do this alone. In fact, I'm gonna send you all out and I'm not gonna send you alone. I'm gonna send you in pairs to these towns to go prophesize and let people know. And by the way, if you get scared or you're worried about what your parents are gonna say or you think people are gonna call you crazy, haha, guess what? Been there, done that. I'm here. And I think he used such a beautiful example for all of us who I made my first pivot. Like I said, I left clinical practice and teaching at the age of 33, which is interesting, right? But I left it at the age of yeah, 33, 34. And I had so many people going, What are you doing? Why are you doing this? What's going on? And I was like, Well, God called. So I'm gonna answer.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And when they're like, why? I'm like, because it's literally what Jesus did.

SPEAKER_00

You know the uh the Paul Harvey rest of the story on that? Yeah, is the uh James and John.

SPEAKER_01

The fish the Thunder twin. Wait, no, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, Sons of Thunder.

SPEAKER_01

Sons of Thunder, yes.

SPEAKER_00

That where they were fishermen was the Mecca of fishing. That that town that they were from was several thousand people, very vibrant, very successful, because it was the best fishing in all the Sea of Galilee. And why they were men in their nets so often and so much is because of the hall. I mean, it was the place to fish. And so for them to walk away when come follow me, and then what's he say later on? It's not just come follow me, it's deny yourself daily, pick up your cross and follow me.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And that's what the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, all that is if you understand that, that gives you then the insight to how amazing and how radical the to follow Christ was back then. It's not any different now. Yeah, it's the same message. And people go, well, yeah, why do you wait? He had to know he was the Messiah. Why'd he wait for 30 years? Because he was a Jew, and in in Jewish tradition, a male did not reach full theological sort of like maturity, maturity manhood to be a rabbi until you're 30. If he had the same message and started preaching that at 21, he would have been thrown out, yeah, and not be considered wise and a rabbi because you're not old enough, you don't know enough and whatnot. So that was the humanity side of him was yeah, he's divine, but he's also following and he didn't come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it, and so that's why he couldn't start until he was he had reached the age of 30.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. I'm and oh my gosh, I feel bad. I feel like I could talk to you for literal hours. I think I'm gonna have my husband listen to this episode before it even airs and be like, oh my gosh, you have to hear this. I want to make sure before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about because yes, you're retired, but you're not just sitting at the base of a mountain in Colorado right now, you're doing things. So can you tell us about this Warrior Servant Leader project?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I have a podcast, uh, it's called the Warrior Servant Leader Podcast, which I started just because people go, Hey, you start a podcast. I'll listen to it. So I'm like, okay, I can I'll get a couple people. It'll be a hobby. And we're coming up March 3rd will be our first anniversary, and we're in 32. Countries, six continents, and pushing five thousand downloads and listeners.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00

So that that's it's not a job because it's all free. I don't charge people for that. But it's a platform that God has shown me is I can have these conversations. Yeah. So that's one thing. The other thing I am on the training circuit in law enforcement. I'm an adjunct professor for an institute out of the University of Louisville. I travel and teach. I have to do it in a way that it's not proselytizing, however you say preaching, but I can take all the concepts of Christianity and articulate them. Like when I teach a leadership course, I'm teaching you scripture, I'm just not giving you a chapter and verse kind of thing. So God's given me that opportunity, and I've been doing that for the last 14 years. And then I've written a couple of books, and they're both called Warrior Servant Leader. One's called Warrior Servant Leader, Life Behind the Badge. And that's just some insight into what it was like being a cop. And I wrote that to be more, I don't know, it was kind of cathargic, I think, for me. Yeah. But then I wrote Warrior Servant Leader, Life Behind the Cross. And then I start from being in an orphanage to when our son died, and my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at a younger age. And all sorts of things that I call them God moments or holy moments. And in that book, I give you challenges as a reader. It's not just reading about me, it's an educational experience as well as a learning a little bit more about me. And I'm breaking into the speaking arena. I'm getting ready to try and get squared away with a TEDx venue and try and start doing more of the speaking and encouraging, inspiring people in addition to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, there's such a wealth of resources there for our listeners to go check out and benefit from. And I my mama heart breaks and just hearing about your son and about your wife. And I think your ability to, like you said, like those Joe moments where you're like, okay, God, I don't get it. And I love you. I trust you. Also, I don't get it. This really sucks. This is really painful. I've yet to meet somebody who hasn't had one thing like that in their life happen. If that's you, you're listening, please email me. I'd love to hear about how you've not had a single trial or tribulation. You can come on the podcast and we can talk about it. But I have yet to meet somebody that doesn't have that. And I think that it's truly a testament to your faith around your ability to suffer with joy. I guess that's the way I'll say it.

SPEAKER_00

But it comes down to the verse that we learned to really rely on it when Kevin died was be still know that I am God. And then through the Catholic Church, we went through a 12-week it's called harvesting your tears. Yeah. And that grief, because you can't suck it up buttercup and go, well, things will just get better. We're not built that way humanly. We can't do it on our own. And it is true that I mean, even Christ was heartbroken when he learned of Lazarus' death. He sweated blood, which physiologically is possible to do when you are stressed to that extent. That human part of our existence is real, and Christ lived through it. And I don't know, the divine part of it, we have life everlasting because of him and his human experience. So it reminds me when uh Michael Jordan, be like Mike, every and that just caught on. Be like Mike. And then for a long time, the bracelets WW.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do is not a fad. Be like Mike, that was a fad. When you really break it down, it is not as complicated as one thinks. And that's kind of what I tried to share in my one book of Like Behind the Cross is that it's all very doable. It just takes commitment and intentionality on your part to live it.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. I have personally found that in those moments of suffering, if I let him, that is when Jesus is closest because he understands it so well. He's like, I feel this because I felt this. And I know that talking with my other denominational friends, they're like, Lee, that is a more Catholic idea that you're gonna suffer and sacrifice for joy.

SPEAKER_00

But it's not just Catholic.

SPEAKER_01

I agree.

SPEAKER_00

I was like, it's not in all things, in all things, be thankful.

SPEAKER_01

Right, exactly. And so, Pat, thank you so much for taking this hour to talk with me. I really appreciate it. I like I said, I feel like we could talk for hours. And I'm excited to check out your book, your books, and learn even more. So thank you. Thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. All right, y'all. We will see you next week.