TRUE Word, Faith for LIFE! with Dr. Shawn Greener

Transcript

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Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina.

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Coming up, I have the honor and privilege of speaking with Dr Reverend Sean Greener.

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He's a man who was pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident and, although he lives with a life-threatening condition as a result, he has defied all odds.

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His journey has been nothing short of miraculous.

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From serving in the US Navy and law enforcement to founding an elite executive protection firm, dr Greener's life took an unimaginable turn.

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Yet today he continues to inspire and impact lives through his books, podcast and public speaking.

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You don't want to miss this extraordinary, profound tale of survival and strength on today's episode of experience.

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Hello everyone and welcome to Topsail Insider.

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My name is Krista and I am your host.

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Today we are talking to Dr Reverend Sean Greener, a resident of Hampstead.

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He is the host of True Word, faith for Life podcast and author of two books Excellence Killed the Church how Mediocrity is Destroying America.

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That was in 2012.

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And he's also written the Bible Summary for Real People.

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Welcome, dr Greener.

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Thank you for joining me today.

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Well, thanks for inviting me.

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I've been waiting for this for a long time, actually, because how I met you and I'll be brief with this I met Dr Greener when I was starting this podcast and I was looking for some equipment and he posted on Marketplace.

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So I asked him, because I was looking for some equipment and he posted on Marketplace.

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So I asked him because I was being nosy.

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I was like, well, why are you giving up podcasting?

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And he did inform me at that time that he was very ill and I got the feeling that I just needed to stop asking questions.

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And so he told me that he had some more podcast equipment coming up.

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So I was following him, I was looking to see what else he might be selling and, lo and behold, I noticed he has a podcast up.

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I'm like you did not quit podcasting, what's going on?

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And so I reached back out and I'm so glad to have you at this table today.

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Thank you so much.

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Oh, it's my pleasure.

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You were military law enforcement and a private protection firm, which I find completely fascinating, and I know that I can't ask you any questions about it.

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I'm going to ask a little bit.

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And you can tell me what you're allowed to say.

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You are a disabled US Navy veteran and a former Newcastle County police officer and an expert on terrorism, counterterrorism, personal protection, survival and high-level threat assessment.

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Fascinating.

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I sound like somebody, don't I?

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Yeah, that's a pretty exciting life.

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What led you to join the Navy first of all, and can you just talk about the progression to law enforcement and to eventually founding your company, the Executive Protection Team?

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First of all, thank you very much for having me.

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I'm honored to be here and I'm excited for this podcast what a cool podcast.

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And your reasons in our conversation before, your reasons for doing this.

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I love them.

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I love your motivation.

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I love your why.

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You know the Navy.

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My uncles had all been in World War II and my favorite uncle.

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They're all deceased, but my favorite uncle was in the entire World War II, except for 30 some days the whole war and he spoke with such love about his service and his why.

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And he had a rough upbringing.

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He was a really tough upbringing.

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Why?

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And he had a rough upbringing.

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He was really tough upbringing and he married my mother's eldest sister and he came from really the wrong side of the tracks, if you will, but he served heroically, just with great honor and valor, and no big deal to him.

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He thought, well, this is what you do.

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And so I looked at that as a model and I thought, okay, my older brother, who was two years ahead of me.

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He went into the Navy and for me I had scholarship officers.

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I had three full scholarship officers.

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I played soccer, I did art and martial arts, and so I had options, but one day it was maybe 6, 6.30 in the morning and my parents were early risers and I was an early riser because I ran.

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I would do a lot of the fitness training and all these things.

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I was still in high school, but I would do a lot of that stuff early in the morning.

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There was no sleeping in at my house, that wasn't a thing, and so at that time the pans were 150 years old.

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Big old cast iron pans were 150 years old.

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Big old cast iron pan 150 years old.

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I'm just standing there and I'm looking like what is my life about?

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What is my contribution?

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And this was in my junior year and I was just thinking to myself okay, what am I going to do here?

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Because I knew that I could play soccer at really great division North Carolina was one of them.

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I knew that I could go to art school, to really great schools, and I knew I had options that maybe other people in my family hadn't had.

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But I looked at what am I contributing?

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Where am I making my mark?

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And I'm saying, okay, this is my country, but what have I done for it?

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And then I made the connection okay, my physical body will never be more fit than it is now.

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And the Navy said hold my beer.

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Oh, is that correct?

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Was that what you think?

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So I just decided, right there standing there, I walked into my parents.

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They were sitting on the porch and I said I'm joining the Navy.

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And my dad said is that a question or a statement?

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What?

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What are you telling me here?

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I said I need somebody to sign for me because I was young.

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They said, okay, what are you going to do?

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I said I'm not sure, I don't know.

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But you knew it was the Navy.

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I knew it was the Navy.

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The reason I knew it was the Navy was because several of my uncles were in the Navy.

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Now my favorite uncle was in the Army, but I knew that the ASVABs.

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I had aced the ASVAB.

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The ASVAB test is the test that everybody takes to see what your level of intelligence, your employability, Specifically for the Navy or across all military branches?

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For all military, but it's basically an assessment, but I took it and I aced it.

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I don't know how.

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It's not something that I know of that you could study for.

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I don't know how.

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I just had a weird brain then that I could.

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Well, you were a literal genius, am I right?

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You were a literal genius, am I?

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Am.

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I right, you were.

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Okay, We'll get.

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I want to talk about that a little more.

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My wife will say not anymore.

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We're going to get Colleen here one day she's going to give you all the dirt.

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So you were saying you passed that test, so I had to take it again, because if you, if everything, if it's, I guess, the way way they measure it 100%, they say okay, well, what's the deal with this guy?

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Something went wrong, something's fishy here, and so I had to take it again with a proctor as close as you and I are sitting.

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Oh, interesting yeah.

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So I took it again and I had seen it and I had this brain where, if I would look at something just for a second, like, for instance, a book, and this is nothing I taught myself, it's a gift, it was a gift and I didn't appreciate it, and I guess as we go on, we'll see just how much I didn't realize the gift that I had until I lost it.

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Would you say it's a photographic memory?

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Photographic is about the third level down from the memory that I had.

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Yeah, so so I would goodness.

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Yeah, it was a weird situation.

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I could actually read.

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This is this was a fun party trick.

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My wife didn't believe I could do it until she goes.

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Okay, fine, so I could read two different books side by side at the same time really you could quiz me about it.

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so my wife goes you know we're, we were dating at the time, show me, and I you could quiz me about it.

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So my wife goes you know we were dating at the time, show me.

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And I did it.

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And she was like, oh okay.

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That's incredible, that's kind of weird, yeah, but I didn't know.

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I thought everybody.

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I literally grew up thinking everybody had the brain I had Incredible.

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And everybody had the eyesight I had.

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Oh wait, what about your eyesight?

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I?

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had crazy eyesight Really.

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Yeah, the best they could measure it was 25.

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They didn't go any higher than that.

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When you go in and your doctor's office, you stand on line read the lowest line you can read.

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Well, I could read the copyright at the bottom yeah, oh, my gosh, yeah.

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But so the thing is I had all these assets that I didn't.

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First of all, I didn't realize that everybody didn't have.

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I knew some people didn't utilize their capacity, they didn't go to capacity, but in my case I had teachers on my case all the time.

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I had my English lit teacher, god bless him.

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He actually cussed me out after class one day and he said you are wasting a gift that, trust me, not even 1%.

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So your teachers were aware of this gift and they knew that you were not utilizing it fully.

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Some were what kind of student were you?

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I was okay.

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I was okay.

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Were you bored.

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Very bored.

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Yeah, I felt like it was a lot of wasted time.

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I didn't have the capacity to deal with the people talking back, the people interrupting the people.

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The other students just weren't paying attention, yeah, and I figured we're only here for this little bit of time Now.

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I hadn't put together the whole idea of put this is your career, this is your high school career, then it's going to be your college career, right, I didn't look at it that way.

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I was into sports and art.

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You said soccer, any other sports besides?

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soccer In high school, only soccer.

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I only played soccer, but I did martial arts.

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What style of martial arts did you do?

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Well, that's what's interesting.

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I started with Aikido, which is really a flowing, was designed to disarm swordsmen when you don't have a sword and then I think my husband took that yeah, no good yeah, it's not a popular.

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It's not a popular style it's more about mindset, uh and exchange of energy transferring yes so there's a lot of rolling and all that, and I was I was really really good at that, but I was also very, very good at striking, so I fought competitively in full contact karate.

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Okay.

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And so I excelled in that area, but I was a really skinny kid, but I was really really fast and I was very strong, and so my thought was okay, I don't think my body's, my capacity, my strength, my quickness, any of those things, I don't think I'm going to be better and faster, and my mental acuity?

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it's never going to be better than now as a young man, and so I just I made the decision while I was making.

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I still remember what I was making.

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I can't remember what I ate this morning, but I remember I was making scrambled eggs in a 150-year-old pan, that's really cool.

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So for the Navy, when you go to boot camp, I had never been on a plane, except for recruiting.

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So no college.

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You went straight from high school to Navy.

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Much to the chagrin of a lot of my teachers.

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Right, yeah, I bet yeah.

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I think I would have wasted the scholarship money in fairness In the military a lot of the schools, depending on what you do.

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I had a very nondescript job really, but I was fascinated by the military training and as I progressed I had opportunities presented to me because different people saw capabilities and I loved the Navy.

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So I was married.

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I got married young and this is my second marriage 21 years.

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Oh that's right my second marriage, but my first marriage I was too young.

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I was too young and I was far less of, probably far less of a husband and definitely far less of a father than I could have been and should have been.

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So, that being said, I didn't stay in the navy.

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I had been recruited by the agency the agency oh really so I was recruited twice and on two separate kind of two areas of attack they flanked me okay, but you're gonna have to go back.

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So what were they seeing that they're like.

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We need you on our team.

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At the time I didn't know I was being recruited.

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First of all I had no idea.

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And let's just dispense of the movies portray.

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Hollywood portrays that kind of life romantically.

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You know, that's what I'm tapping into right now.

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Yeah, it's really not.

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It's super, super hard.

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It's a hard life.

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You lie to everyone, including your family, all the people that are closest to you.

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My parents didn't know until shortly before my father died I shared it with him Really and my mother.

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After my father had died, I ended up protecting some very high profile people.

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Father had died.

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I ended up protecting some very high profile people and we were on CNN and usually if you're on a protection team, your objective is to stay out of the camera shot, and that was always my goal.

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But in these particular cases there was so much press around these people that you could.

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There was no way to effectively protect them, and so I would get calls when the wee hours of the morning my mother she would be up late.

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Sean, I'm watching television and I'm seeing you on television and you're with this person and she knew who they would be and it looks like you're a bodyguard.

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Is this you, or is this someone who looks like you?

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And a lot of my friends and different people who had no idea they were seeing it.

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They were seeing it too.

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So all of a sudden I'm getting these calls and so finally I said oh no, mom, that's just a doppelganger.

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People have said that before because I didn't want her to worry, obviously, and so there's an element of you protect your family by lying to them.

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There is a truth to that, because when you share certain things that are very difficult to hear, the darkness that exists in the world is too dark for most people to handle.

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Right, I can see that.

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It's just like with combat.

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Combat is there's a very high level.

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It's not just an adrenaline rush, but you're competing at the highest level life or death, life or death.

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And so there is a.

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I'm going to use the word thrill, but really thrill has a negative connotation in this space, but in reality it's the challenge, it's the ultimate challenge, and you lose when you die.

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The challenge is live and win or die, which is not the case really.

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There are lots of heroic men and women who have died in combat and they died heroes not just because they died, but they died doing heroic things beyond our imagination.

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But that world is extremely dark, and when you enter into the space of international intelligence in the clandestine I was in the clandestine service you see an experience and are privy to things that are sickeningly terrible and evil, and so at the same time, as a younger person, it's thrilling.

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Right, I get it, I totally get it.

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So it challenges your intellect, challenges your physical abilities, challenges your ability to think on your feet.

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And the problem is, stress is good.

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Dr Jim Lohr in his book Stress for Success a book was out, I don't know, 20 years ago.

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It's still the best book on using stress to your advantage, and he talks about linear stress versus oscillating stress.

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Oscillating stress is okay.

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I'm going into this really difficult situation, and so then you ramp up, ramp up, ramp up, and that loop is going higher and higher and higher.

00:18:00.684 --> 00:18:21.534
And that pinnacle is that moment where higher and higher and higher, and that pinnacle is that moment where, whatever it is you're dealing with, whatever you're engaging, coming out victorious and then taking that deep breath on the downside of it and catching your breath and letting all that adrenaline flow out of you.

00:18:21.534 --> 00:18:24.265
And so that's oscillating stress and that's good for us.

00:18:24.265 --> 00:18:26.431
Just like lifting weights right?

00:18:26.431 --> 00:18:30.602
If you lifted a weight and you just held it up all the time, that's linear stress on your body.

00:18:30.602 --> 00:18:38.634
Lifting weights, weight-resistant training, is really the fountain of youth, but if you do it every day, all day, it's going to wreck you.

00:18:38.634 --> 00:18:46.894
So you have to oscillate, you have to rest, and so that's the way the stress is, for whatever reason, I had an uncanny ability.

00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:48.286
I was recruited for several reasons.

00:18:48.286 --> 00:18:52.210
My eyesight was off the charts, literally off the charts.

00:18:52.210 --> 00:18:57.951
I could see no kidding, as long as it was within the line of sight.

00:18:57.951 --> 00:19:00.656
I could read street signs from almost a mile away.

00:19:00.656 --> 00:19:01.038
That's incredible.

00:19:01.038 --> 00:19:01.318
It was insane.

00:19:01.318 --> 00:19:01.920
From almost a mile away.

00:19:01.920 --> 00:19:02.961
That's incredible.

00:19:02.980 --> 00:19:14.291
Well, here's what I learned is, that's great, but the issue that made that good and bad was my perception of everything.

00:19:14.291 --> 00:19:19.890
Was on fire, so I was seeing little movements and I had a.

00:19:19.890 --> 00:19:26.951
My peripheral vision was greater than normal, so I could see very clearly what's way out here.

00:19:28.281 --> 00:19:29.926
So this is a hyper-stimulation.

00:19:29.926 --> 00:19:32.086
It is it's hyper-awareness.

00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:36.971
Great for executive protection in areas where you're, you know, great for that.

00:19:36.971 --> 00:19:37.551
But guess what?

00:19:37.551 --> 00:19:38.805
That doesn't shut off.

00:19:38.805 --> 00:19:40.602
And so what?

00:19:40.602 --> 00:19:41.962
A lot of people with that?

00:19:41.962 --> 00:19:50.934
There aren't many people with that, but the people that have it among that group they tend to drink or do drugs to try to shut that off.

00:19:50.934 --> 00:19:51.556
Yeah, yeah.

00:19:51.779 --> 00:19:56.372
Because, it's exasperating because you hear and you see everything, all the movement.

00:19:56.372 --> 00:19:57.967
You're always paying close attention to it.

00:19:57.967 --> 00:20:00.464
So all of that either eyesight.

00:20:00.464 --> 00:20:04.773
But what became evident was my ability to accept pain.

00:20:04.773 --> 00:20:09.203
Now people will use a word or a phrase called pain tolerance.

00:20:09.203 --> 00:20:12.132
Pain tolerance and pain acceptance are two different things.

00:20:12.132 --> 00:20:23.045
So pain acceptance is the ability to feel pain, intense, terrible pain, and still function at an optimal level.

00:20:23.045 --> 00:20:25.050
Mental acuity is still high.

00:20:25.050 --> 00:20:30.333
Physical ability is still high despite severe pain impairment.

00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:32.825
Did you have that naturally?

00:20:32.924 --> 00:20:33.246
or is that?

00:20:33.266 --> 00:20:34.107
something you trained?

00:20:34.107 --> 00:20:35.451
No, you had it naturally.

00:20:35.612 --> 00:20:36.333
Very naturally.

00:20:37.019 --> 00:20:38.202
Because I figured in the military.

00:20:38.202 --> 00:20:42.413
They would probably train you to accept pain to some degree.

00:20:42.579 --> 00:20:53.912
They do some of it and then, as training advanced in my post-military life, it becomes more of a psychological study of okay, this is a real situation.

00:20:53.912 --> 00:20:58.826
You may be hurt very badly, but pain is a feeling.

00:20:58.826 --> 00:21:03.323
And you either pay a lot of attention to it or you segment it.

00:21:03.323 --> 00:21:07.584
You fragment it, you compartmentalize it, you put it over here and you say okay.

00:21:07.584 --> 00:21:10.791
I'm feeling pain, but I still have something to do.

00:21:10.791 --> 00:21:17.032
Okay, and if I don't do that something, if I succumb to this pain, then I get killed.

00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:23.691
Okay, you know or or tortured or whatever the case may be, or that may be, part of the process of pain.

00:21:23.691 --> 00:21:25.815
The cause of the pain might be torture.

00:21:27.942 --> 00:21:34.273
So you were naturally built already to do the CIA type work right.

00:21:34.493 --> 00:21:35.301
Yeah, and it was.

00:21:35.301 --> 00:21:42.951
I will tell you it wasn't a lovely existence, but the other part of I think I failed Spanish in high school.

00:21:42.951 --> 00:21:44.786
I think her name was mrs huff.

00:21:44.786 --> 00:21:50.902
God rest her soul.

00:21:50.902 --> 00:21:51.663
She was old when she was.

00:21:51.663 --> 00:21:52.405
She was good land.

00:21:52.405 --> 00:21:56.636
She was really really old when she was our teacher, but I don't know were you not applying yourself?

00:21:57.178 --> 00:21:59.343
because how many languages did you end up picking up?

00:21:59.503 --> 00:22:02.450
five, I spoke five, I could go into the country.

00:22:02.450 --> 00:22:11.513
And here's the interesting thing if you just learn a language because you want to go visit and you want to be able to talk to people, that's one form of language learning.

00:22:11.513 --> 00:22:15.636
I was a polyglot so I could speak.

00:22:15.636 --> 00:22:18.567
For whatever reasons, I could learn other languages really quickly.

00:22:18.941 --> 00:22:21.746
And I don't know why, it was just my weird brain.

00:22:21.746 --> 00:22:26.510
I could pick it up, but my fascination wasn't just with that.

00:22:26.510 --> 00:22:28.183
Like I said, that's great.

00:22:28.183 --> 00:22:31.763
If you want to go visit the country, you can converse, you can order a pastry.

00:22:32.125 --> 00:22:33.028
Where's the bathroom?

00:22:33.028 --> 00:22:33.951
You know type of deal.

00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:46.982
But my fascination was the deeper level, which was the cultural appropriation Understanding how they wear their belts in this country, how they button their shirts.

00:22:46.982 --> 00:22:50.150
Do they button from the bottom up or the top down?

00:22:50.150 --> 00:22:51.621
How do they wear their watch?

00:22:51.621 --> 00:22:52.663
Do they wear their watch?

00:22:52.663 --> 00:22:53.605
Do they wear watches?

00:22:53.605 --> 00:22:56.131
How do they count?

00:22:56.131 --> 00:22:59.586
There's a great movie, Inglourious Bastards.

00:22:59.586 --> 00:23:00.730
I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

00:23:00.890 --> 00:23:02.342
I've heard of it, but I have not seen it.

00:23:02.422 --> 00:23:18.792
There's a scene in that movie which it's going to totally wreck the movie for people who haven't seen it but there's a scene in it where one of the undercover, pretending to be German soldiers, he holds up his fingers to show I think it was three, the number three.

00:23:18.792 --> 00:23:22.144
And there are many ways to show three, there's three, three, three.

00:23:22.144 --> 00:23:23.287
To show three, there's three, three, three.

00:23:23.287 --> 00:23:27.394
There's so many different ways that you can show that.

00:23:27.394 --> 00:23:38.828
Well, in the movie, this officer, this actual german officer, could tell that, okay, this is not, this is.

00:23:38.848 --> 00:23:39.733
It was a small thing, it was so insignificant.

00:23:39.733 --> 00:23:44.464
But little things don't mean a lot, they mean everything, and so they can cost you your life and and in that movie they did.

00:23:44.464 --> 00:23:49.292
So I enjoyed learning those things and I would go in and come out.

00:23:49.292 --> 00:23:53.867
I didn't go in and stay, I would go in, do what needed to be done and come out.

00:23:53.867 --> 00:23:56.781
So that that was a great advantage for me.

00:23:56.781 --> 00:23:59.488
And again, 90% of my family had no idea.

00:23:59.488 --> 00:24:07.413
Most of my friends, except for two, two really good friends they knew that they were good for it because they had top secret clearances anyway because of what they did yeah.

00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:10.930
And so, anyway, I did that for a time.

00:24:11.820 --> 00:24:13.146
When did you become a police officer?

00:24:13.941 --> 00:24:18.079
Well, I said you know what, I think I'm done with the Navy, so I'm going to go be a police officer.

00:24:18.079 --> 00:24:25.490
And so there was a time frame in between Navy agency and there was wedged in.

00:24:25.490 --> 00:24:30.588
There was time to become a police officer, so I applied for it in the state.

00:24:30.700 --> 00:24:31.664
How did you like that work?

00:24:31.664 --> 00:24:34.346
Well, you didn't stay in it very long, did you?

00:24:34.346 --> 00:24:36.263
Five or six years.

00:24:36.263 --> 00:24:37.528
I think that's a good length.

00:24:39.824 --> 00:24:47.989
And this was the early days of anti-police, the anti-police attitude Early days of it.

00:24:48.780 --> 00:24:53.425
I loved most of the people that I worked with and for I worked for some great people.

00:24:53.425 --> 00:25:07.141
It was a very restricted job, so you knew what needed to be done, but you couldn't do that, and the only reason you couldn't do that was because of perception I don't think we had.

00:25:07.141 --> 00:25:09.445
We didn't have any body cameras or anything like that.

00:25:09.445 --> 00:25:11.730
Maybe dash cams were coming in.

00:25:11.730 --> 00:25:12.961
I doubt it, though.

00:25:12.961 --> 00:25:15.230
I don't have any recollection of that part at all.

00:25:15.230 --> 00:25:18.340
But what I do know is it just felt very restricted.

00:25:18.340 --> 00:25:33.502
It felt stupidly restricted, very politically driven, and it was a large police department and served a huge county, much of which was urban and suburban, so it wasn't like the county that we're in, where everything is spread out.

00:25:33.502 --> 00:25:34.548
It was a lot of people.

00:25:35.412 --> 00:25:37.339
And it just was exasperating.

00:25:37.721 --> 00:25:46.028
Maybe because I'm from small towns, I can't imagine it being as adrenaline rush oriented as what you were doing prior.

00:25:46.680 --> 00:25:48.006
Yeah, it's a tricky business.

00:25:49.142 --> 00:25:50.607
I mean, I almost feel like you would be bored.

00:25:51.401 --> 00:26:01.229
I was a little bored, but the reason I left was I had gotten hurt a couple of times and we didn't know this then.

00:26:01.229 --> 00:26:02.505
Obviously we know this now.

00:26:02.505 --> 00:26:07.352
But I had what was called arterial venal malformation, AVM.

00:26:07.352 --> 00:26:23.811
I had an AVM and so I passed out, you know, and they put me in the hospital for a week, lost a ton of blood internally, and so they put me in the hospital and they say, hey, you've got a massive tumor and that's frightening.

00:26:23.811 --> 00:26:24.753
You're going to check out.

00:26:24.753 --> 00:26:25.943
This is bad deal here.

00:26:25.963 --> 00:26:26.907
Oh, my goodness yeah.

00:26:27.059 --> 00:26:28.286
So yeah, it was crazy.

00:26:28.286 --> 00:26:31.950
But then they did doctor, medicine, surgery, stuff.

00:26:31.950 --> 00:26:34.612
They said, ok, what this is this calcification?

00:26:34.612 --> 00:26:36.359
It's not actually a tumor.

00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:39.931
It looks like a tumor on imaging but it's not actually a tumor.

00:26:39.931 --> 00:26:41.902
So they used sound, which is fascinating, to break it up.

00:26:41.922 --> 00:26:43.483
So they used sound, which is fascinating to break it up.

00:26:43.483 --> 00:26:44.204
I've heard of that.

00:26:44.204 --> 00:26:45.366
That's really cool.

00:26:45.366 --> 00:26:46.228
It was wild.

00:26:46.327 --> 00:26:47.750
And it's wild to experience it.

00:26:47.750 --> 00:26:51.693
But during the course of all that they said look, you have an AVM.

00:26:52.015 --> 00:26:52.796
What is that?

00:26:54.519 --> 00:26:55.722
Arterial, venal malformation.

00:26:55.722 --> 00:27:03.780
Think of it as the intersection of your arteries and your veins, where they come together.

00:27:03.780 --> 00:27:06.903
There's a weakness and it bulges and becomes an aneurysm.

00:27:06.903 --> 00:27:10.946
Oh Well, you know, fast forwarding all the way to today.

00:27:10.946 --> 00:27:12.788
Right, I now have a massive aneurysm.

00:27:12.788 --> 00:27:13.269
Right.

00:27:13.269 --> 00:27:19.335
And of all the things that are trying to take my life, the aneurysm is the worst thing, because I now have an aortic.

00:27:20.055 --> 00:27:22.196
Descending correct Descending aortic aneurysm yeah.

00:27:25.759 --> 00:27:27.604
And so the cardiologists all say it's in the worst possible place.

00:27:27.624 --> 00:27:29.027
It's bad and there's nothing we can do for you.

00:27:29.027 --> 00:27:30.810
So anyway, that is what it is.

00:27:30.810 --> 00:27:33.803
So I have to get out of that, create a new life.

00:27:33.803 --> 00:27:49.666
Well then, I you know, there were opportunities to work as a I use the word contractor, it's overused, but as a consultant really and then, in essence, a contractor getting to go and do jobs because of my past and I did and I liked it.

00:27:49.666 --> 00:27:50.169
It was fun.

00:27:50.169 --> 00:27:54.791
But one of the things that I liked more than anything else was hostile repatriation.

00:27:56.763 --> 00:27:58.308
And I like hostile repatriation.

00:27:58.619 --> 00:28:00.183
So what that is?

00:28:00.183 --> 00:28:03.471
Someone is somewhere they don't want to be Hiding.

00:28:03.471 --> 00:28:06.384
They're not there of their own volition, oh gotcha.

00:28:07.099 --> 00:28:11.125
They're being held, they're taken, they're being held Okay and interest Okay.

00:28:11.125 --> 00:28:17.316
Of our government says, hey, we need those people back for myriad reasons.

00:28:17.316 --> 00:28:19.445
Who knows what the reasons are.

00:28:19.445 --> 00:28:21.050
Those were never my.

00:28:21.050 --> 00:28:23.557
I didn't have to really think about what the reasons were.

00:28:23.557 --> 00:28:30.467
The government, the agency, couldn't go get them themselves, so they needed a private contractor to do that.

00:28:30.467 --> 00:28:31.387
I loved it.

00:28:31.387 --> 00:28:47.673
I had a team of guys who range from SEALs, delta guys, secret Service, cia protection group Great, great people, extraordinarily capable people, and so periodically we would have these jobs and no one would ever hear about it.

00:28:47.673 --> 00:29:09.568
They just get reunited with their families and a liaison would say, hey, we've got them, they're safe, we're bringing them back to wherever the meeting point would be, which usually would be either the United States, or, if they had bad medical issues, they would go to the next best place that were friendly to us, get well enough to travel the United States and continue healing.

00:29:09.588 --> 00:29:09.950
Gotcha.

00:29:10.130 --> 00:29:10.912
So I like that.

00:29:10.912 --> 00:29:15.451
And then I also really loved very high risk executive production.

00:29:15.451 --> 00:29:17.096
Loved it, loved it, loved it.

00:29:17.164 --> 00:29:18.410
You are a thrill seeker.

00:29:18.932 --> 00:29:26.330
You know what I never really thought of myself, but the whole notion of jumping out of an airplane never bothered me, it never crossed my mind.

00:29:26.330 --> 00:29:28.917
I thought to myself yeah, okay, when can we go?

00:29:28.917 --> 00:29:29.501
Can we go now?

00:29:29.501 --> 00:29:29.943
That's amazing.

00:29:29.943 --> 00:29:32.667
Can you teach me on the way up how to do it?

00:29:32.667 --> 00:29:35.691
Maybe jump out, be next to me and just tell me what to do on the way?

00:29:35.691 --> 00:29:36.711
I loved it.

00:29:36.951 --> 00:29:38.433
I absolutely loved it no fear.

00:29:38.993 --> 00:29:40.115
Well, I don't know that.

00:29:40.115 --> 00:29:41.938
It's no fear, but it's just.

00:29:42.278 --> 00:29:53.913
I had life in a different perspective then, which maybe wasn't the best perspective quite honestly, because I beat my body to death doing these things, and so I loved it.

00:29:53.913 --> 00:29:57.982

TRUE Word, Faith for LIFE! with Dr. Shawn Greener

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