The Fireman's Call

We were just finishing up the last few bites of supper tonight when Isaac dropped his fork on his plate and looked at his Dad. The pagers must have started vibrating a split second before the tones went off, and just like that my men were gone, speeding up the road toward the fire house in hopes of arriving before the truck was filled with firemen and gone on it's way, almost empty plates left sitting by empty kitchen chairs while I was left to finish my dinner alone in the quiet house. Such is the life of the wife of a fireman. Dinners alone, nights alone, and occasional holidays alone. We are rural so they speed away from me with far less frequency than the wives of many firefighters experience, and with every call they respond to, I feel great appreciation for the firefighters and their families in much busier areas. The sacrifice is great, and it's not only the firefighters making the sacrifice.

My baby is a junior fireman. He's not really a baby, he's a 16 year old young man with a pick-up truck and a part-time job at a hardware store, busy making plans for his future and plans with his friends. It's not a surprise, really, that he would find within himself the desire to give up his time to take training classes and maintain firetrucks and sacrifice time with his friends to volunteer with our small town fire company. It's in his blood, after all. He's just following in his Daddy's footsteps. But still, for me to see my baby in fire gear grabs my heart. It makes a mother proud when her baby wants to serve, and it makes a mother cling to Jesus a little bit tighter as her baby learns to run toward the danger. To see him serving alongside his Daddy is a treasure.

I check the app on my phone to find out what they are facing as they pull on their gear and race for the truck, and I remember the days before smartphones and apps at our fingertips, when Kelly would speed away from me and Isaac, and I would be left wondering if I should worry. Were the firefighters responding to an automatic alarm due to a resident burning toast at the local retirement home, or a minor car accident, or would my husband and the father of my young (at the time) son be entering into a burning building, surrounded by flames and protected by his gear and his knowledge and Jesus? I remember when a raging fire took four buildings on the square in Manheim before Isaac was born. Hearing Kelly talk about entering the building and feeling the floors spongy beneath his feet made me sick to my stomach. Kelly didn't have the scanner set up for me to hear what he was headed into so every time the pager went off and he raced away, I prayed he would not be surrounded by the flames. Because when there's a fire, that's what these men and women do. They run into the danger, putting themselves at risk, for the sake of helping others.

The app told me what I needed to know. A medical assist and within a short time, the firetruck is no longer listed as responding. I breath a prayer for whoever made the call for help, and think of several families of friends in that immediate area, hoping and praying they are all okay. As for my firefighting boys, they are probably back at the firehouse by now cleaning up the truck and shooting the breeze with the other men. Soon they will come home and the evening will proceed as if nothing ever happened. That's how it works. Drop everything and run to help, then return and get back to whatever they were doing before. It's who they are and what they do. It's in their blood.