Firefighters in the city of Mobile work a 24 hour shift and then go home to spend time with family if they are fortunate enough. The truth is most firefighters in the city of Mobile have to work their 24 hour shift plus a lot of overtime to make ends meet.
 

All these hours away from home combined with the stress from upper management and emergency calls that involve tragic deaths or the death of a close relative and you as a firefighter made the call.

These things are issues everyone has to deal with but being a firefighter you never know when you may make a run on someone you know and may be very close too. Sometimes a firefighter needs to have nerves of steel and disconnect their emotions to be able to perform their duties.
 

The stress of having to remove a family member from a car that hit a telephone pole and crushed his head and still holding it together and being professional to perform this duty. This fire house reporter had to perform such a duty late one night during a 24 hour shift.
 

This week a local Mobile firefighter had a very stressful week. The call came from the wife’s family. His mother-in-law was in intensive care and it didn’t look good so the firefighter and his wife packed and drove from Mobile to Tennessee to be with his mother-in law. Three days after being in Tennessee the firefighter receives a call from his mother telling him that they found his sister Paula dead early Wednesday morning.
 

So now the firefighter has to leave Tennessee and return to Mobile to bury his sister Paula. The firefighter leaves his wife and son in Tennessee with the family car because his mother-in-law needed not to be left alone. The firefighter catches a greyhound bus from Tennessee late Saturday around 10 p.m. and arrived in Mobile at 1:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
 

Monday morning came and the firefighter got out of bed and started getting ready for Paulas funeral service. He first puts on his watch and as he fastens the band he notices the watch battery was dead so he takes the watch off.
 

Now completely dressed the firefighter gets into his truck and drives to the funeral home. It is now time for the service to begin and the family walks into the chapel and sets on the front pew. The firefighter takes his glasses off his face to adjust them and the right arm of the glasses breaks off in his hand.
So now the firefighter has a watch with a dead battery and a broken pair of glasses.

The funeral service started and the firefighters sister was buried as soon as the service was over. Now Paula Farmer Brightwell is finally united with her one and only love Lamar Brightwell and they will live eternally together in heaven.

After the burial service the family was told that city church was providing food for all family members.
Now as all family members leave to go to the church to eat the firefighter stays behind long enough to call his wife to tell her he loves her and give her an update on how the funeral went.

After talking with his wife the firefighter leaves the funeral home and drives to city church.
After eating the firefighter walks to his truck to leave and try’s to crank the truck but the truck would not crank. So the firefighter gets a jump and off he goes and on his way home he stops by Lowes to buy a small socket set to tighten the battery terminals with.

He gets out of the truck and gets his spare key and locks the truck up running and goes inside to buy a small socket set to tighten the battery terminals with. Now the firefighter drives to O Rally’s auto parts and parks the truck running in front of the store and then went inside and asked to have his battery tested. One of the employees came out and tested the battery and then he told the firefighter that his battery needed replacing.
 

So now the firefighter has a dead sister, a dead watch battery, a dead truck battery and a broke pair of glasses. The firefighter bought a new battery and placed it into the place where the battery was supposed to set. Now the firefighter opens that brand new socket set that he bought from Lowes to tighten the battery terminals with. He opens the set and two of the sockets were missing but was still able to tighten the battery terminals.
 

Now that the firefighter has a new battery he drives back to Lowes to return the socket set with the missing sockets and gets his money refunded. After getting his money refunded the firefighter was ready to call it a day and headed home. This was a stressful week for this firefighter but the only way he was able to withstand it all was because Jesus is his all in all.

The firefighter in this story is Darrell Farmer and he wrote this story for examiner.com because he is the Mobile Firehouse Examiner and he wanted to let others know that firefighters are human too and Jesus is his helper.