The Rest of the Story: Calling, Identity, and the Courage to Do the Right Thing
What a retired police superintendent learned about identity, calling, and the courage to do the right thing — even when no one is watching
By Dr. Lee C. Cordell
Want to listen to the full interview?
- Tune into the Full Podcast Episode on your favorite Podcast App HERE
- Watch the Full Episode on YouTube HERE
It is 1:00 in the morning.
Pat Welsh is working midnights, early in his career, and he catches a call for a 12-year-old who came home late from school.... and he is annoyed.
The bars are about to close, things are about to start jumping off, and he wants to be out there doing real police work — not taking a paper call about a kid who missed curfew.
He pulls up to the house. Knocks on the door. Talks to the boy for maybe three or four minutes. Then he leaves.
Eighteen years later, he is standing in line at the grocery store. He's off duty, just trying to pay and get home with his food, when a voice behind him says, "Hey, Welsh, is that you?"
He tenses up and turns around to see an unfamiliar man, about 6'3", early 30s. And before Pat can figure out if this guy is a fellow officer or someone he's arrested before, the man says:
"When I was 12 years old, you came to my house because I didn't come home from school. I just want to tell you — I graduated from college, I'm married, I have two daughters, and I want to say thank you."
That is the story Pat Welsh told me when I asked him to explain what servant leadership actually means.
This isn't theoretical- it's reality of working on the "front lines."
It's where you show up at 1:00 in the morning for a call you did not want, talk to a kid for three minutes, and have no idea for EIGHTEEN years whether any of it mattered.
And it's the fact that sometimes, you never even find out the impact you had... which is why the REASON that you're serving really has to matter.
From the Courtroom to the Patrol Car
Pat Welsh began life in a Irish orphanage, dropped off at 3 days old and living there for 16 months, until he was adopted through Catholic Charities to a family in Kansas City, Missouri.
He went to Catholic schools his entire life, all the way through law school, and did what so many "good Catholics" do - He became a lawyer because everyone told him he would be a great one.
He was an Assistant District Attorney — educated, credentialed, respected.
He was good at it. He had the gift of gab, the credentials, the career path...and he was miserable.
His wife looked at him one evening and said, "You're always in a pissy mood. What do you really want to do?"
He told her that he'd wanted to be a police officer since he was a little kid, and she said, "Well, that's what God's calling you to do. Do it."
He then spent 26 years on the Dayton Police Department — a city that, at its worst, was the seventh most violent in the United States.
He has been in the ER more times than he can count, sometimes taking calls, sometimes being treated for injuries himself.
In that timeframe, he buried a son who died serving overseas in the military, watched his wife fight ovarian cancer, and went through harrowing trials that would break most people.
And through all of it, he has always come back to the same Scriptural anchor: Jeremiah 1:5.
"I knew you before you were formed in your mother's womb, and I consecrated you before you were born."
For Pat, that verse is not a nice sentiment, but a lived truth. It's a thread he can trace through every chapter of a life that, from the outside, might look like a series of detours.
But when you hear him tell it, you realize every single step was a consecration.
Your Job Does Not Define Who You Are
One of the most powerful things Pat said in our conversation was this:
"Your job doesn't define who you are. Who you are should define how you do your job."
I want you to sit with that for a second, because I think most of us have been operating in exactly the opposite direction.
We let external definitions- our titles, our roles, our revenues, our org chart- all tell us who we are.
We let the pressure of the C-suite, the weight of the payroll, the fear of the next quarter define how we show up.
And when things get hard, we default to the job instead of the person God made us to be.
Pat made a decision at 28 years old that most people in his life thought was insane when he decided to leave his career as a DA and become a police officer.
His mother was not thrilled, and lots of people looked at him like he had lost his mind — going from the prestige of being a lawyer to just being a cop.
But Pat had learned something that most people spend their whole lives trying to figure out: success is not someone else's opinion of you.
Pat's story resonated with me deeply, because I left clinical practice and teaching at 33 to become an entrepreneur, and I had people in my life asking the same questions — You went to school for 12 years and now you're doing what?
And I had to learn, just like Pat did, that the calling is not always the comfortable choice.
In fact, it is almost certainly going to costs you more than you expect.
The Paul Harvey Moment — and What It Means for You
Pat calls what happened at that grocery store a "Paul Harvey moment" — named after the radio broadcaster who was famous for a segment called "The Rest of the Story."
Harvey is known for telling "the story behind the story"- aka the part you never knew.
In law enforcement, Pat says, you almost never get "the rest of the story". You show up, you do the work, and then you move on to the next call.
You rarely find out what happened to the person you helped, whether it mattered, whether the kid you talked to for three minutes at 1:00 in the morning turned his life around or went a completely different direction.
Most of the time, you just do not know.
And that is true for many of us in our work, not just cops.
We rarely find out what our investment in someone actually produced long term.
The customer you stayed late to help, or the patient you went to bat for in rounds, or the kind smile you flashed a stranger that you barely remember.
Pat's challenge is this: interact with people in a way that if you do get to hear the rest of the story, you're proud of how it impacted them.
And even if you never hear it — you can be confident you were doing the right things at the right time, the right way, for the right reasons.
That's a leadership framework deeply rooted in a Godly heart posture.
The Fourth Response Nobody Talks About
Most of us know the three stress responses: fight, flight, or freeze. But Pat says there is a fourth one — and it is the one that changes everything.
An intentional response.
It's a deliberate, trained, faith-rooted choice about how you are going to engage.
Pat and I talked about how people in high-stakes environments — first responders, emergency room nurses, C-suite leaders — can have their nervous systems wired for hypervigilance. And when you spend 40, 60, 80 hours a week in that kind of pressure, it becomes your default.
You stop responding, and you just react.
I know this firsthand- I left the bedside five years ago, and I still have to remind myself sometimes that my business is not an emergency. The same tension I felt standing at a patient's bedside in the ICU can creep into a strategy call, a difficult client conversation, a moment where I feel like everything is on the line.
Pat's framework of doing the right things, at the right time, the right way, for the right reasons serves as a leadership principle grounded in spiritual discipline, one that requires practice, study, and community.
And it requires you to know who you are before the pressure hits, so that when it does, you are not starting from scratch.
Study It, Don't Just Read It
One of the most unexpectedly rich parts of our conversation was when Pat started talking about the historical context of scripture (and I mean really talking about it.)
He walked me through the historical context of the town of Philippi, why Paul kept getting thrown in prison, what it meant for Christ to say "upon this rock I will build my church" while standing beneath Caesar's temple at the literal gate to Hades.
He explained why Jesus could not have started his ministry before age 30 in Jewish tradition.
He connected the Beatitudes to the radical, dangerous, countercultural message Christ was preaching to people who knew exactly what He was talking about.
My husband has a degree in early Christian and Roman history and talks to me about biblical history often, and even I was sitting there going, I did not know that.
Pat's challenge was simple: don't just read the Bible. Study it.
Not to impress anyone, nor to try to best someone in a theological argument.
Study it because understanding the history, the culture, the people transforms the words on the page into a living, breathing, radical invitation.
And for those of us who are building businesses, leading teams, and making decisions that affect real people's lives?
That kind of depth provides an incredibly sturdy foundation on which we can execute on what God has called us to build.
What Pat's Story Is Really About
Here is what I kept coming back to as I was editing this episode:
Pat Welsh was born in an orphanage.
He was adopted.
He had a traumatic brain injury in second grade.
He became a lawyer because he thought it was the "good" thing.
He walked away from a successful career to become a cop.
He led in one of the most violent cities in America for 26 years.
His son was killed oversees.
He watched his wife fight cancer.
He spent 13 years on midnight shifts while his wife felt like a single parent.
And yet — he is not bitter. He is not burned out. He is not cynical.
He is a man who has spent 68 years watching God act, even when he could not see it in the moment.
A man who can look back at every chapter and say, "There was God."
That is what Jeremiah 1:5 does when you actually believe it.
It does not remove the suffering, nor make the chaos disappear.
Instead, it gives you a framework for the rest of the story — the one you may not get to hear until much later, (or maybe not at all on this side of eternity.)
So let me ask 2 questions, friend-
- What is the job you've been operating in "for everyone else" — the one that keeps you in a role that looks impressive but leaves you cranky at the end of every day?
- What is the calling that God has been whispering to you that you have not had the courage to say out loud (yet)?
Because here is what I know:
He knew you before you were formed. He consecrated you before you were born. And He is not surprised by where you are right now.
Go tell Him.
Ask Him for the courage to do the thing He actually called you to do.
Always Rooting for You,
Dr. Lee
P.S. Read Pat's 2 books, check out his podcast, and connect with him further at https://www.thewarriorservantleaderpodcast.com
Ready to stop striving and start building your business God's way? Here are three ways we can help:
- Discover your Primary Motivational Gift: Each of us has been uniquely graced with motivational gifts from God. Take our assessment and discover your primary motivational gift today! www.growinyourgifts.com
- Enroll in Our Regulated Roots Academy: Connect with other faith-led entrepreneurs who are building businesses without compromising their values — starting at just $1/month. Join us at skool.com/regulatedrootsacademy
- Explore Our Agency Services: For established entrepreneurs ready to scale, our Agency provides marketing strategies rooted in integrity and biblical principles. Find out more at regulatedroots.com/agency
