I wrote to you about storms. I meant every word. But I have been thinking since then, and I realize there are things I left unsaid.

I told you that God called you into this service. That is true. But I did not say plainly enough that the calling does not make you invincible. It makes you available. And availability has a cost that no one prints on the oath you took.

You were trained to run toward what others run from. But no one trained you for the silence after. The ride home. The moment you sit in the driveway and are not yet ready to walk through the door and be a spouse, a parent, a person who is asked how your day went.

I want to speak to that silence.

It is not weakness. It is the soul catching up to what the body has already done. God does not judge you for it. Neither should you.

In Oklahoma, after the storm passes, we walk outside and take account. We check on our neighbors. We look at what is still standing. That same honesty is what I am asking of you now — not for my sake, but for yours.

Take account.

If the anger has become a companion instead of a visitor, name it. If the numbness has settled in so deep that you cannot remember the last time something moved you, pay attention. If the ones who love you most have started to feel like strangers, that is not a failure of love. It is a wound. And wounds left unattended do not heal on their own.

You do not have to carry this alone. That is not courage. That is pride dressed in duty’s clothing, and it will break you if you let it.

I have sat with officers who wept and called it the first honest thing they had done in years. I have prayed with firefighters who could not put words to what they carried, and the prayer was enough. I have listened to dispatchers describe sounds that will not leave them, and my presence — just being there — was the only ministry required.

God does not always send answers. Sometimes He sends a chair and someone willing to sit in it beside you.

You were called to stand between danger and the families you protect. But even those who stand must, from time to time, sit down. Rest is not retreat. Asking for help is not surrender. It is the bravest thing a warrior can do.

So I say to you again, and I will keep saying it until you believe it: you are not alone.

And if no one has told you lately, let me be the one — it is okay to not be okay.

May the Lord who sees you in the storm also meet you in the stillness. May He guard your mind as fiercely as you guard others. May He give rest to the parts of you that no one else sees. And may you have the courage to let someone in.

May you find God’s blessing on your life. I pray these words in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Keith+