God has a plan and purpose for your life. You have breath in your lungs. God could use you. It's going to take boldness, and it's going to take a faith that knowing that, regardless of your situation, regardless how you feel emotionally right now, God will use you.
Well, if you need encouragement to get through a difficult situation in your life, today's show is for you. As we honor those who have served in the armed forces here on Veterans Day, welcome to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller. John, today's guest is Chad Robichau, and he's a former Marine with Special Forces who did eight tours in Afghanistan. Eight tours.
I mean, man, that is amazing. He's the founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation that serves military veterans, and he recently was. Honored by Glenn Beck with the Bonhoeffer Angel Award, which is given to people who speak for those without a voice and act in the face of evil. And you'll hear how Chad did exactly that today. It's a great presentation from Chad Robichaux speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of students at Liberty University in 2023.
On today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I want to start off with a story from one of my times earlier in Afghanistan. I was a force recon marine. I come from a long generation of military members in my family. Back eighty years in World War II, Korea, in the Marine Corps.
My family has fifty-three years of service in the Marine Corps. My father served in Vietnam. Thank you. I was a force recon marine. I did eight deployments to Afghanistan, and both my sons were marines.
So, for me, I was as a force recon marine. I got to go on what's called a JSOC task force, a Joint Special Operations Command task force, and I had a very unique job. My job was an AFO, and a lot of you may not understand what AFO is. The best way I know how to describe it is kind of like there's being undercover, like a cop, but there's no undercover in the military. But if there was, this would be.
That's what AFO is. You get to work with local nationals. For me, I got to work with Afghans, and usually with one other team member, or just with local nationals. You get to grow a big, giant beard, and. Live, live like the locals and eat, eat like the locals.
I loved that job. And for for me, like living with Afghan people and understanding who the Afghan people were, I became very close to the Afghans I worked with. One Afghan in particular, his name was Aziz, and Aziz and I not only worked together as my interpreter, but he became my friend. When I was out on operations, Aziz. Went out with me.
The two of us. We. When I was not on operations, I was at home. I lived with his family. I played soccer with his kids.
I ate dinner with his family. He became very close to me. In fact, he saved my life on multiple times. We became very bonded. This particular day, I want to tell you about myself and Aziz and a friend of mine who's a Navy SEAL.
The three of us were in a vehicle called a Toyota Prada, which is like a Toyota 4Runner, and we were we were driving in the eastern side of the capital city. City of Kabul, which is on a road called Jalalabad Road, and as we're on Jalalabad Road, I looked in my rearview mirror and I seen a vehicle full of guys that looked like the Taliban. It's a Hilux pickup truck, and it had a bunch of guys with like big, giant beards, tribal clothing. They all had AK-47 assault rifles, and even had a RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. And they looked like they were up to no good.
And there was a lot of them in this truck. We had a joke: How many Taliban can you fit in a pickup truck?
So the answer is one more, right? They pile in the truck. They're hanging out the sides. Usually, there's one like sitting on the roof, and I'm like, man, I hope these guys aren't following me because you know I didn't want any trouble. And so I did a technique I learned in training called deviating your route.
So I'm on Jalapa Road and make a right and start to make the block, and they continue to follow us. When I got back to my original route and turned right again, I realized they were in fact following me. And then and what it what it also confirmed to them was that I knew they were following me.
So. Started a pretty aggressive pursuit. They start trying to run us off the road, and and I made it to this major intersection called Masood Circle. And when I got to Masood Circle, all of a sudden the traffic began to congest and stop, and I didn't really have anywhere to go.
Somehow, that truck full of Taliban guys got up in front of us about twenty yards and blocked us in and created a roadblock situation. I remember. A few guys jumped out the back of the vehicle, but probably most my most vivid memory was the passenger stepping out. You could tell he was in charge. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he turned around and shut the door behind him.
He was really, really calm and cool. He turned and looked at me. He had his AK-47 in one hand, and with the other hand, he gave me a signal to stop my vehicle. A really bad situation. In my training experience, this is called being stuck on the X.
Right, the X is ambush site. It's a kill zone. A couple of rules you learn in training about the X is rule number one: you have to be able to recognize that you're on the X. Right, you got to know you're in a bad situation. Rule number two, it's pretty easy.
You have to get off the X. You got to move, or something bad's gonna happen. And I'm so thankful for military training because I actually train for this scenario before. It's a roadblock situation. The X scooter ramming technique.
I did it before in tons of times in trainings. And so I hit the guys and aim a vehicle towards theirs. And probably one of my favorite memories of Afghanistan is when I smashed in that vehicle. Was little Taliban guys flying out the back of that truck. I feel I'm jumped right before I hit it.
That truck spun out of the way, and but there was one more obstacle. As that truck spun out of the way, there was a there was a pathway, kind of like this aisle right here, like a perfect pathway to get off that intersection. But there was one more obstacle. There was like this hundred-year-old policeman, and he had his perfect military uniform on. If you ever been to third-world country, you know traffic cops, like on intersections, they like own that intersection.
That's their whole life, and he was like proud of this intersection. He's blowing his whistle. He's like taking charge. He's telling me to stop, and I wasn't going to stop. I was going to run him over to get out of there.
And when he saw I was going to run him over, He jumped on my team. He actually blew his whistle, gave me a thumbs up, and smiled at me. And started stopping cars and directing traffic, and got us off that intersection. And probably saved our lives that day.
So, you know, I don't know what those bad guys wanted on a suit circle that day, but I know this: if we would have stopped on a suit circle, if we would have stopped on an X, we probably would have put up a heck of a fight. But the truth is, we we likely would have been killed or taken. I'm here this morning to tell you: you don't have to go to Afghanistan. To be stuck on X, there's going to be times in our life, in all of our life, that we're going to find ourselves stuck on X. Maybe it's a ambush in Afghanistan, or maybe it's sin in our life.
Maybe it's an addiction. Maybe it's a passivity or fear, or or just a hardship and a time of depression, a time of hardship in your life. It could be many things. The question in life is, if you're going to find yourself in the X, because you will, I promise you. It's when you do.
What are you going to do?
Now, in my life and experience, and in the work that I do now, working with thousands of military warriors, what I really discovered is it really comes down to one thing, and that's a choice—a choice that we make to decide if we're going to stay on an X or we're going to step forward into life and promise that God has for us. And God does have a promise for us. He didn't just create us, but He created each and every one of us for a purpose. Jeremiah twenty eleven says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you, not to harm you; plans to give you a hope and to give you a future." That promise that God has is not contingent upon the hardships of your life. Hardships will come.
What that promise means is, when those hardships come, when you find yourself on the X, if you trust and believe in God's promise, you're going to have the ability to get off the X and to move forward. If I could fast forward. A few years from me, from that moment in Kabul, Afghanistan, I came home from my eighth and last deployment, and I had found myself in X again. This time, however, I didn't follow those two simple rules. I didn't recognize that I was on X.
I probably didn't want to because of my pride or shame, and because of that, I couldn't make that second decision to get off the X. And I chose, I emphasize, I chose to stay there for a period of almost three years, and it almost cost me everything in my life. It began for me. With anger and frustration from my time in Afghanistan, from burying 15 friends and and seeing the atrocities that the Taliban inflicted on the on Afghan people, I just began to begin to have a lot of hate in me. And that frustration came home with me.
I became a really a tyrant to my family, really verbally abusive to my family, yelling at my wife and children, slamming doors, breaking things, just being just a not a very good person. Eventually, that anger and frustration manifested for me in physiological symptoms, where my arms would go numb, my face would go numb, I'd feel like my throat was swelling shut, and I I couldn't breathe. These are signs of panic attacks. I didn't want to get help or reach out to anyone because I figured the special operations guys in my team would think I was weak. Like I, the only way I really know how to explain the level of panic attacks I was having is if you were in a swimming pool, chained at the bottom, and you were drowning to death.
Imagine a level of panic you would have seeing the surface of the water, and you just want one breath of air, but it never comes. But you also never die. You're in that state of panic twenty four seven. That's the level of panic I was in. And the medicine they gave me made me feel worse.
I thought it was going to kill me, and some medicine made me feel like a zombie. I didn't want the medicine. I was also felt ashamed because for me, I had worked my whole life to get where I was. It was like if I played football. And worked my whole life from little league all the way up to the NFL, and made it to the Super Bowl, which would never happen because I'm five foot three.
But you get the point, right? I worked my whole life to get there, and when it came to the game-winning play, I had failed. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed, and I felt like I could not be used moving forward. And my wife and my counselor tried to find something to would snap me out of this situation.
So he talked me into getting in those mats and doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And when I got in those mats for the first time, I felt like I found a cure because you can't think about Afghanistan and training. Your buddy's going to beat you up, right? You have to be focused. But you could take something that's good for you, and you could abuse it like a medicine for being sick, and you could abuse it.
That's what I did with jujitsu. Don't get me wrong; I still love jujitsu. I used it like climbing in a bottle of pills or alcohol. That's what I did with jujitsu. I never got better, and and I witnessed three year downward spiral, which ended in me.
Was continuing to deal with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, anger towards my family, taken out on the people I love most. Ultimately, ended in a affair on my family, and in me and my wife and kids sitting down and deciding we would divorce and sell our home. We filed for divorce. We moved to two separate apartments for with twelve month leases. We were pretty committed to that.
My wife had a very different reaction to me. She went to church and she began to pray for me. You know, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad. Let me love Chad the way you love Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way you forgave Chad.
That's what my wife would pray for me when I was betraying my family.
Meanwhile, I went to this apartment. And I was like, you know, full on bachelor pad. I don't have to deal with this woman anymore. She never understood me anyway. I fought this big fight on a Strikeforce on Showtime.
About three months, I was separate from my family. And when that fight was over and I won this big fight and showed on Showtime, I found myself home in my apartment by myself. And this thought came over me of how how much pain I brought my family through. And and I had this thought that maybe my family would be sad without me, but they would be better off. Right, maybe my family would be sad, but they'd be better off.
That same hopeless thought finds a home in the hearts of over 20 veterans every single day, and so many more outside the veteran community. In the last two years, if you don't know, the national suicide hotline has been up 1,000 percent.
So, if you're feeling depressed, if you're feeling hopeless, you're not alone. The world is in a very difficult place right now. And you can't do it alone. I tried to do it alone, and that thought came over me. And maybe that thought hit some of you.
Maybe my family would be sad without me. Maybe my loved ones would be sad without me. The world would be better off if I just ended. And I made a decision to take my life. We're listening today to Chad Robichau on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm going to say right here: if you're feeling what Chad is describing there, and you're considering suicide, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline right now.
It's nine eight eight. And then, for those times when you're overwhelmed and you don't know where to turn, give us a call, please. We'll make sure that one of our caring Christian counselors gives you a call back. We are able to offer a free phone consultation, thanks to the generosity of our donors. Speaking of which, please support this show and our ministry.
When you do, when you make a donation of any amount to Focus on the Family, we'll send Chad's book "Saving Aziz" as our thank you gift.
Well, let's return now to Chad Robichaux's incredible story. And this parental warning: it's going to be a little bit graphic here. And when I put that gun to my head, I would see it play out. Like who's going to find me? And the only person had a key to my apartment at that time was my oldest son, Hunter.
He was 13 years old at the time, and the thought of him coming find me was enough to pump the brakes. But I was in such a dark place that the next day I was back at it, trying to build up the courage to do it again. And there was one morning I was I was in that closet with a pistol in my hand, and I heard a knock on my door, and I wasn't going to answer it. But when I heard my wife Kathy's voice, I panicked. I went to the door and I started arguing with her.
I was so mad. This may sound weird, but I was so angry that she was there interrupting me, killing myself, and I began to yell at her and berate her. And she's not a very calm person, by the way. But in this moment, she was totally calm, and she she asked me a question that radically changed my life. She asked me how I could do everything I did in the Marine Corps.
She, we were married. We met when we were seventeen and eighteen.
So she saw me become a Recon Marine, and go through that process. If you don't know, it's eighty percent attrition rate to make it in any special operations. That she saw me do that. She's like, "How could you do all of that?" And when it comes to your family, you'll quit. And I don't know about you guys, especially young men, but there's no more soul-cutting word to me than to be called a quitter.
And she was absolutely right. I've been successful at professional things in my life, but when it came to the most important things—being a husband, being a father, being that young seventeen-year-old kid that went to Marine Corps boot camp and raised his hand and said, "I want to do something important with my life"—I quit all those things, including my own will to live. And I made a radical decision in that moment to get back in the fight. I didn't know how to do it, but I knew I couldn't do it alone, and I knew I couldn't do it with the people I was surrounded by. And so I asked my wife, "Is someone at this church that you're going to?" That could help hold me accountable, and I met a man named Steve Toth who happened to be on call at the church.
He wasn't in the military, he wasn't an MMA fighter, but as I met with him, he had all the perfect words to help me. I had actually written a plan of how I was going to fix my life because I was wanted to him to show it to my wife to win her back, and I was pretty impressed by it. I was pretty probably pretty bold, like a Like confidently slid it over to him, like, "Hey, check this out; it's really good." Show it to my wife, and he put his hand on that plan, and he slid it back to me and told me I was going to fail. I remember being pretty offended because I was like, "This is a pretty good plan." You even look at it, and you're telling me I'm going to fail? What a jerk, right?
But he tapped on this paper, and he said something I'll never forget. He said, "This plan doesn't have anything to do with your relationship with God. I'm not going to waste your time, and I'm not going to let you waste mine." And so I trusted Steve, and I surrendered my life to Christ. And beyond that decision, Steve mentored me for an entire year in biblical living, and what that really meant for me was really. The things that I was dealing with—the anxiety, the panic, the anger—those things didn't just go away.
But the way I responded to them was different because now I had biblical principles in order to make better decisions with. And what I discovered through the process, which may seem pretty simple, but to me was pretty profound, was that all these bad things that happened to me in Afghanistan in my childhood—I shared some of them with you. All these things, as bad as they were, those things didn't lead me to be in that closet with a pistol in hand at rock bottom. What led me there were the choices that I made in response to those things. And now I can intentionally choose differently because of the truth of God's word.
And as I begin to intentionally apply that in my life, I realize this cliche phrase, but it's so powerful. I didn't have to let my past define my future. I could choose a different future moving forward. I didn't have to remain in that brokenness. I could still do great things in this world and now for the kingdom of God.
And and I made a pretty profound decision to be intentional about that. And I started calibrating my life to that. And through that, I found restoration. In my brokenness, in my marriage, I'm married 26 years now. Amazing relationships with my three children.
Thank you. I found hope again, and ultimately, I found what I think all of us seek in life, and that's purpose. We have to have purpose in life, regardless of what we've been through, regardless of not just what was done to us, but regardless of failures in our life, because we're all going to fall on our face and fail. It's just part of life. But we get back up and we get off the X and we move forward because God has a plan and promise for you.
If you still have breath in your lungs, God still has something for you to do. And realizing that, I found that purpose again. Mark Twain says one of my favorite quotes about purpose: the two most important days in a person's life are the day that they're born and the day that they find out why. When I realized that God still had a plan for my life, I found out the why, and it was sharing what I discovered with others. To be here to share that story with you.
To realize that we don't have to remain in our brokenness, we don't have to stay in the X. We can trust God's promise, and we can move forward and do amazing things for the kingdom. And and I felt a deep burden on our heart at that time to share that story with other veterans. It was like if I was dying of cancer, and Steve Toth gave me the cure through God's word. I didn't want to keep that to myself.
I felt obligated to share with others. And so that manifested in a founding a Mighty Oaks Foundation. And over the last eleven years. That most amazing people have come around me. God just orchestrated.
It's the most amazing foundation. I've been able to speak to 250,000 active duty troops on bases around the world. I go to Marine Corps boot camp every quarter. Thank you, guys.
So as I'm doing all that, I thought. Man, you know, God's really give me a second chance here, simply because I'm pursuing His Word, pursuing what He has for me, and I thought that would be the end of it. But God brought another opportunity in my life when I realized that President, the President of the United States, President Biden, was going to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. I could really get into details of that, but I won't get into details of what mistakes were made. But I will say this: Aziz, my friend that I told you about when we began here, was still there.
His wife and six kids were still there. He's my friend. He saved my life. I could not leave my friend there. I went through a series of planning of how to get him out.
I put together several team members, a dozen, twelve of us, all from the special operations community, and we made a plan to go get hises, his wife, and six kids. And and we had a lot of experience in our team. And as we started planning, one of my teammates. Said, "Hey, there's 3,500 orphans in this orphanage." If we can't get just Aziz and his family, we we have to get them too. And we kind of paused for a moment and said, "There is a lot more people than Aziz there needs help, and we have the ability to do this.
We have the passion to do it. Let's get as many people as we can." We put a team on the ground at H.K.I. Airport, which is Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where the military was. We worked with the military to be there, and we sort of sent three man ground teams out of the wire. Out into Afghanistan because our military was not allowed to do that, and to go rescue people, and we started rescuing Americans, interpreters and their families, women that would be vulnerable, children that would be that would be.
God knows what to the horrible things that Taliban would do these children, and Christians that we persecuted. That was who we targeted to get. The first day we got Aziz, his wife, and six kids. We got his family out, and we got about one hundred and eighty people out. We were like, "Wow, we can't believe we did that." The next day, thank you.
The next day we got eight hundred people out, and then after that, everything became a blur. Our team did not sleep. Literally twenty four seven, because every minute we would stop to rest, we knew somebody's life was going to be in danger or or killed. Literally, every minute counted. And at the end of the week, at the end of ten days, when the when the military was leaving Kabul airport, we finally dust finally settled.
We realized we had rescued twelve thousand people. And thank you. But as as the military left, we had knew too much. We knew that despite what the news was saying, the stuff you were seeing on the news, there were not a hundred Americans left there. There were thousands still, and and I could not leave there knowing what I knew and knowing Americans were still there.
The United States does not leave Americans behind anywhere in the world. This is. This is not a. This is not a. This is not a political position.
Either side, America does not do that. I spent my life in special operations, and if one American is behind, even if they were a total boner and put themselves in that bad situation, we go get them. We will scorch the earth around them with every bit of military force to get that person and get them out. Even if we're gonna lose people, we don't leave Americans behind. And I was not gonna leave Americans behind.
None of our teammates were either, so we decided to stay to get those Americans and get our allies that fought beside us for the last twenty. Years that had saved my life and saved my American lives, we're going to go get them. And we stayed, and we got we started flying people out of remote airports, and we got another five thousand people out, seventeen thousand total to date. We're actually moving two hundred out right now of women that are on Taliban list. Journalists, doctors, teachers, and vulnerable teenage girls that the Taliban are targeting because of their family members or because they're Christians—we're actually moving them as as we speak right now.
I have two team members there. A lot of Afghans, a lot of Afghans that were persecuted, moved to a place called the Panjshir Valley, and as they moved there, they didn't know how to cross the border to get out because the mountain. It's not like our borders. The mountains are so intense there. Twenty-five thousand foot peaks.
You could spend a week getting through a valley, and then you get to the end, and you're going to run into a river or a Chinese checkpoint or a Taliban checkpoint.
So they needed eyes on the other side.
So myself and a marine, active duty. Marine, friend of mine, his name is Dennis. He's a four-star guy, Marine. The Marine Corps actually let him come with me, and the two of us went into this neighboring country, and won't say where. And we went under the border, and in ten days, we did ninety miles of border reconnaissance, 170 kilometers of border reconnaissance.
We and we built routes through providing information of how to cross the border and get out. And and I can tell you one time specifically, we knew this would be a great route out. There was a Chinese BMP, which is a mechanized vehicle with A PKM machine gun on top, which a large caliber machine gun, and then and then about 100 meters away was a Taliban checkpoint, and we swam across that river to build those routes out. And I remember thinking, God, what are you doing? I'm 46 years old.
Why the heck am I out here doing this? And and I had recall the conversation my wife and I had as she dropped me off at the airport. You know, why why would you go back and do this? And and you know, I had really had had a lot of time to think about. With God, and I thought, what if it was, what if it was us, what if it was my wife and kids that were in that situation, what if it was one of you and your family, would you not hope that someone was coming to get you?
I sure would, and and that's what really had motivated our team to do that. That I would be praying if we were in that situation that God would send someone to help us, and regardless of what. Politics are involved with what the governments of the world have chose to do. Humans have to do the right thing for other humans. I want to go back to that message of getting off the X.
When we find ourselves in that position, stuck on the X's in our life, the enemy wants us to feel broken and useless. When I say the enemy, the spiritual enemy, Satan, he wants us to feel broken and useless, like God has no no purpose for us anymore. Whatever you faced makes you unqualified. I felt that way before when I was sitting in a closet with a pistol. Man, there is no more purpose for me.
There is no more reason for me to be here.
So much to the point that I don't want to live anymore. My life is over. I have no more purpose. That's what the enemy wants you to believe, despite what you ever been through, despite your own brokenness, despite what you feel. Maybe even right now, today, God has a plan and purpose for your life.
You have breath in your lungs. God could use you, but to stand up and get off that X is going to take courage. It's going to take boldness, and it's going to take a faith that knowing that, regardless of your situation, regardless how you feel emotionally right now, God will use you.
But you have to reject passivity, which has been contagious in culture right now, to be weak and stand down and be quiet and not speak up for the hard things because you're worried about what other people are going to say. And as Christians, as people of God, you. Have to be the voice of truth, and you have to be bold and courageous to do it. Our generation, when I say our generation, mine needs your generation to speak up and be bold and courageous for the kingdom of God. Can you do that?
Yeah, you do that. I challenge you to. God bless you all. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
What an inspirational message from Chad Robichau on this Veterans Day edition of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. You know, John, I had a thought as I was listening to Chad's message, and I believe it was from the Lord. If Chad had given in to his suicidal thoughts all those years ago, would anyone else have been able to spearhead that rescue of innocent lives targeted by the Taliban in 2021? Think of that, and as Chad mentioned, over seventeen thousand people were rescued from Afghanistan by a group Chad co-founded called Save Our Allies. What an amazing outcome!
So, as Chad said, if you're facing a crisis in your life, don't just sit on the X. Don't stay in the danger zone. Reach out to us. Our staff would be honored to listen to your story, pray with you, and you can request a call back from one. Of our caring Christian counselors, please let us provide this free help to you and your family.
And if you're in a good place right now, but you want to help others, let me encourage you to do ministry by giving to focus on the family. Your donation will help us help others. We have the resources and the delivery systems. We just need you to fuel that rocket engine. And when you make a donation of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Chad's book.
Book called "Saving Aziz: How the Mission to Help One Became a Calling to Rescue Thousands from the Taliban." And when you get the book from us, we'll include a free audio download of his entire presentation.
So join us as we help families thrive in Christ. Yeah, donate when you click the link in the show notes, or give us a call if you need to speak to a counselor. Eight hundred the letter A and the word family. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Please take a moment and leave a rating for us in your podcast app, and share this episode with a friend who can benefit from this great content.
I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.
