SEEING

Some look and see only what they want to see...  Some very few look and see in minute detail all that is there to see.  Most people fall into a group on the low side of seeing...  Seeing little or maybe more than little, but not seeing a lot of what is there.

I have lived so long that I have seen many things that I would never have personally chosen to see.  I do not fit well among the people where I have been required to function.  Most Peace Keepers do not fit in well with the people upon whom they must exercise authority and oversight.  It is as though I am *alone in a crowd.  One of my favorite people of the past said it this way...   "And last of all He was seen of (by) me also, as of one born out of due time." (1Corinthians 15:8 KJV)

During my whole life it has been as though I was a spectator watching what others are doing but not interested in doing the same things that they liked to do.  I enjoyed companions but I did not need companions.  I was an only child to my parents yet all of my aunts and uncles had multiple children.  None of my parent's siblings had only one child.  There were 10 children in my father's family, four children in my mother's family, five siblings in my wife's family and she and I had four children...  Yet I was destined to be a lone child among all of my relatives who had two or more children.

I could play *alone and be happy.  I could hunt, fish and explore the outdoors *alone.  I could sit for hours and devour a book non-stop.  I never fit in with very many people at any age in my life and I have had very few best friends.  Both of my parents worked, my father away from home often, and my mother on day shift.  I learned to function *alone.  During all of my childhood and teen years I had few friends who like to do the activities that interested me.  In high school my coach would not put me on the first string because I refused to stop playing on a hockey team.  He said he was afraid to put trust in me because he was afraid I would be injured and then he would have to train someone else for my position.  Very few of my contemporaries cared to play on the hockey team.  Most of them were much older than me except for one or two and they were loners also.

I am experiencing all of this again as I am continuously separated from my workmates and from most of those who believe as I believe and live as I live because of having to give continuous care to my disabled daughter as we fight this disease in her body.  I have very little outside activity.

The last few days and hours have been filled with the memories of the duty times I have been *alone and yet was bound to, and expected to, perform all duties incumbent upon me no matter what those duties were.  I have remembered many places where I was *alone and in harms way because of what I had to do and to whom I had to do it.  Knocking on doors in the late hours of the night in remote places and in urban places to find fugitives and serve arrest warrants...  Being the only moving creature in the midst and aftermath of a region killing blizzard...  Being the lone enforcement officer in three counties and having to go into a crowd situation and quell the problem and remove the perpetrator...  Stalking escaped felons in desolate places...  Searching for stills in the backwoods...  Conducting investigations in places where you had to rappel in on a cable to get to the scene...   Called to the scene of a domestic where a man with a gun was beating and abusing his wife and scaring his children out of their minds...  Working accident scenes on four lane, busy, un-divided highways with numerous vehicles involved and up to eight fatalities plus others injured...  Dealing with the aftermath of too many scenes that looked like battle zones from the blood and injuries...

Telling hundreds of people of the deaths of their loved ones by one means or another...  Looking into the vacant eyes of a teen ager as he gasps for breath, knowing that you are watching him die and you cannot stop it...  Being called to minister to the needs of families of Peace Keepers as they try to assimilate the tragedy of their family member having swallowed his gun barrel and blown his own life away...  Standing beside too many open graves in too many Gardens of Stone to celebrate the life of a Peace Keeper who is no longer among us in this life, the latest one being the retired chief whom I dearly loved and loved to work with and for...

For the first five years of this duty I was acutely aware of the *aloneness but not affected by it at all.  Through what I observed I came to the conclusion that there was somebody in charge of a lot of what I saw...  The results convinced me there was no other explanation.  Though I had been seeking off and on since I was seven years old, I began to seek information more earnestly...  Yet the people who should have been able to give me further information could not...  And I plodded onward until the day came when I needed the answer so acutely that I put away my career, my badge, my gun and uniforms and I set out upon a quest...  I had to know more of this One that I knew was doing things before my eyes that affected me so deeply.

It only took six more months of searching and I met the One whom I sought through a man I had previously known.  When I knew this man before, there was not much he would not do, and if he found some new thing he had not done, he would try it.  I heard about how he had become so religious that the company he worked for was thinking about dismissing him.  I knew if it affected him this way it had to be real.

I met him at a business conference shortly thereafter and asked him to help me find the answers I sought.  I handed him a Bible and said, "I know what I need is in here, help me find it!"  That night he introduced both myself and my wife to Jesus Christ as Savior.  (Since then, in the rest of my Journey, I came to know Him as Lord and as my Eternal Captain.)  That event took place on a Friday night.  On Sunday afternoon I was in my home sitting at a desk doing reports.  I was facing a concrete wall.  I looked up and said, "God, if you are listening, give me a way to feed my family and I will give you all I have and that is me... and your part of everything I ever get from this moment on!"

He was listening!...  On Monday morning at 0930 the telephone rang as I was going out the door...  I answered it.  The call was from someone in Norfolk, Virginia, asking me to come talk to them about working for them.  I had not approached them in any way.  I was not in their line of business and had not been for many years.  Come at their expense...  and how soon could I come?  That was quick results to my cry for help and my promised response.

Two days later I met the caller and he asked what it would take to get me to work for him.  I laid out my needs and he not only met my needs and gave me top pay, but he went far beyond and gave me several more perks that I had not thought were available.  He even paid for the move and put up the money to buy the house in which I am still living.  Within a week I was working for him.  He even paid all of my living and travel expenses for three months until I could find the house and move my family here.

As soon as we settled in, we attended the church the man who had introduced us to Jesus Christ was attending.  At the end of the service the Pastor gave an invitation to come and join the congregation and to be baptized if you needed Baptism.  My wife wanted to shop around.  I heard in my own heart,  "This is the place, get going!"... and I did...  I went to the front to meet the Pastor and in a moment, my wife was there by my side.

That was the beginning of my living here in the last place in this world that I ever wanted to live.  I don't like flat land.  I don't like sand.  I don't like salt water.  I had come to my desert like Moses had to come to his.  In this desert I have been trained because I learned that I could ask Him to train me.  He arranged all of my education...  All I had to do was the work to absorb the education and put it to use.  In the process He caused me to be licensed to preach...  Then He caused me to be Ordained to the Ministry.  He connected me to some of the most God-knowing, useful trainers that I have ever seen...  Through them, especially one of them, and through the Holy Spirit, I learned the life of how to walk with and in Him every moment of every day.  Involved in all of this process I also became a volunteer law enforcement officer and a volunteer Police Chaplain with Virginia Beach Police.

Numerous times I have wanted to leave here and go back to my mountains.  During this time I have served as an Evangelist and as Pastor or Assistant Pastor in seven different positions.  I have served twice with a global evangelistic organization where I still serve as Vice President and have gone to the mission field twice with them.  I have had several opportunities to leave here but none of them were opportunities I could take.  One was even the position I wanted more than any thing else in this world.  I had the job and was preparing to move when I realized that it could not be.  I had to stay here for a specific task.

Then we had a terrible destructive occurrence during Labor Day weekend in 1989.  I was there within a few feet of it when it lit off.  I had predicted it a few minutes earlier to the Lieutenant I was walking with.  I could recognize it because of my training in Riot and Mob Control.  The crowd did millions in destruction, injured 22 police officers and two horses...  And set the stage for the reason why I could not leave.  The next Summer season I was tasked with the setting up of a group of chaplains to combat the people problems that had gotten out of hand in 1989.  That has been accomplished to a very successful degree and today it could function without me.  That is the goal of all good managers...  Bring all of those for whom you are responsible to the place where they are able to do their jobs without your presence.  Moses was 40 years in his desert.  By that time he was still not ready to accept his new assignment but God moved him anyway.  I have been here 41 years in mine...  I don't think my training time is over yet but I have learned to accept the will of my Commander.  If there is no change in orders, I simply follow the last orders that I received.

During my time here as officer, chaplain, supervisor, director and administrator, and now safety officer, I have worked mostly *alone.  Often I have patrolled the resort strip hot spots *alone...  Oh, there has always been a crowd of people but you can be alone in a crowd when the crowd has different goals than you do.  One night the only law enforcement on the strip was a Sergeant and five chaplains because everyone else had been called away on an emergency.  I have initiated many corrective actions *alone while waiting for the rest of the troops to respond.  One night I even had to split a crowd apart from two victims they were physically and verbally harassing while help was on the way.  It was a matter of survival for the two.

This week I have reviewed several historical events that demonstrated why I grew up learning how to live and function in *aloneness.  My patrol experiences were not a new condition because I had been conditioned and trained to be *alone.  I simply had to be trained for the new tasks but not for the condition of *aloneness.  Personal *solitude is one of my favorite conditions when I can get it and always has been. 

I would have fit very well in an earlier time and my wife told me that often.  Like Paul in relation to the time of Jesus and the Apostles...  He was born after their time so that he could expand the effects of Jesus Christ upon the world and the new church...  I was born at a time where I had to learn from the Peace Keepers of the time before me so that I would be prepared to be a Peace Keeper and Peace Maker in my time.  The study of the Peace Keepers in the history of this country was my favorite course of material and it was self initiated.  I learned from them and applied what I had absorbed.

Now I have passed it along by making it available to others and am ready for new orders as my Commander-In-Chief deems fit.  Meanwhile I shall maintain the pattern of doing the best I can with what I have where I am and leaving the rest to God or whomever else is responsible.  Someday He might say I have done enough...  Or He just might give me another task that will last forty years or so.

Peace Keepers, someone else might be learning from you like I learned from the Peace Keepers before me and from my contemporaries as well.  Give them whatever it takes to survive and be successful at the job.  The military are soldiers that usually work in groups.  Law enforcement are soldiers that usually work *alone.  I know there are some exceptions to those two statements but they are generally true.  Also learn how to help the others around you cope with the cost of being a Peace Keeper.  Peace Keepers must carry and know how and when to use our weapons...  And must know that so well that when the time comes to act, we act quickly, efficiently and decisively gaining the best possible results in the time available.  We must be ready and able to act.  If we are not, then our other frequent companion, death, may be the result we could have avoided.

Long hours of duty, *aloneness, violence, brutal abuse, critical injury, death...  These and other detrimental things can and will wear us down and wear us out if we are not prepared to deal with them as they come.  Survival and success in peace keeping takes a toughness, a base of knowledge and a peace that those outside peace keeping might not even know about.  The only others I know about who are sometimes very good at dealing with all of this are some few servants in the spiritual realm.  I have known a few of them also.  Sometimes, like myself, they are Peace Keepers and Peace Makers at the same time.  Most of the ones I have known are one or the other.  Some very few have been one and then the other.  I have had a few very close Compadres in both peace keeping and peace making.
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About 1970 I learned that I am never *alone but that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and all of the Angels I can keep busy are always with me...  I am never alone...  NEVER ALONE!!!...  even when I appear to have no one with me...  I am NEVER alone!***
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Because of what I have learned from Romans 13, I am just as certain that none of the Peace Keepers who work with and for our nation are ever alone.  They are His Ministers of Rightness in this world.  They are there to minister peace to those who want it.  They are also there to minister His justice and wrath to those who will not live right in this world.  The problem most of us have is that we do not put in the effort to learn how to integrate our professional training with His spiritual training so that we can obtain the very best results that are possible to obtain in this world.

It is the Peace Keeper who lives and dies to purchase and keep our Liberty.  It is my Eternal Captain, The Lord Jesus Christ, who lived, taught, died and was resurrected to teach us how to use that Liberty to the fullest extent...  He and my Commander-In-Chief do most definitely have a powerful abiding love and respect for all of the true Peace Keepers...  I found my success as I looked to them for the guidance and training in how to use the guidance and training I received as a Peace Keeper.  I have been very successful because of the added training that I received from them.  It is evening, now, in my peace keeping career...  I have already been forced to give up my badge, gun and authority...   So I must endeavor to complete my current  assignments as my peace keeping career sun is setting.

Peace Keepers, You are most of my world in this world.  To you I have been sent.  For you I pray daily.  Upon you I meditate often.  I would to God that I could be out there with you wherever you are but I have been shut up here...  Here I must function as a Wordsmith using electronic transmission to communicate with you.  I thank Him daily for all that He has provided for me so that I might be able to communicate with you.

We can have all that we can dream and all we can  work for if we learn how to integrate our lives into His revelation to us.  If you are doing it, thank you.  If you are not doing it, think about it.

You may tire of my closing every week, but I have no way to say it more effectively...

"BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!"  ALWAYS be alert, watchful, suspicious and wary.  Take the very best care of you as you care for and about others.  See to the strength and well being of your spirit as well as all the rest of you.  Your spirit must be strong for you to be successful.

Call or write if I may be of any service... Or if you just want to encourage me... Feedback encourages all who write... It helps to know we are reaching someone who reads the message.

My daughter is having bowel cramps and Migraines.  Her abdomen is still very tender and much swollen in some spots.  She has had some high temperatures.  The wound is still beautiful and is now progressing well.  The battles come and go but we are winning the war.  Thank you for the many messages of concern, blessings and prayer.

As it has always been... So it still is!!!

"VICTORIOUS WARRIORS WIN FIRST...
AND THEN GO TO WAR,
WHILE DEFEATED WARRIORS GO TO WAR FIRST...
AND THEN SEEK TO WIN."  Sun tzu

Training and practice are everything!
Without them, the best results are not obtained!

ONLY LIVE PEACE KEEPERS SEE THE VICTORY!!!
THEY SEE IT ONLY BECAUSE OTHERS HAVE MADE THEIR ETERNAL
PAYMENTS OF SWEAT, BLOOD, TEARS AND LIFE FOR THAT VICTORY!

WITH THE DEEPEST OF APPRECIATION AND RESPECT...
BE BLESSED (A CONDITION TO BE ENVIED)...
BE SUCCESSFUL... BE SAFE...
[My injunction to be safe means doing all you know to do as you do your job... it means
doing the best you can with what you have where you are using all your faculties to get
the job done well and with good results conquering evil and keeping or restoring peace...
it does not mean to avoid duty and honor... it does not mean to cower or allow anything
to hinder you in the process of duty according to rules, law and ethics...  it means that if
the demand takes your earthly life you destroy as much evil as possible in the process. 
That is my definition of being safe... doing the best you can and leaving the rest to God
or whomever else is responsible... being best employed for the sake and protection of all
the things and people that we hold dear.]

I represent, write for... and give the credit to:
God the Father (my Commander-in-Chief),
Jesus Christ the Son (the Eternal Captain of my life) and
the Holy Spirit of God (my Eternal Teacher, Keeper and Guide).
In Christ I live... with Him and for you I serve...
And I rejoice that you are there whether you are Christian or not...
For God, Country and the Peace Keeper...
D. R. (Don) Staton, Chaplain to Peace Keepers,
Surviving Peace Keeper,
Virginia State Police Alumni,
RETIRED Police Officer Virginia Beach Police Dept.,
Senior Chaplain and Chaplain Administrator VBPD,
DCJS Certified Police Instructor,
Community Service Officer (Traffic Safety) VBPD
BLACKWATER Alumni
757-431-2190, chpln1@verizon.net
3709 Beacon Lane, Virginia Beach, VA 23452
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