Last Sunday our local newspaper published a feel-good story: The firefighter and the baby: 911 call leads to lifelong bond for two Colorado Springs families. It’s worth the read in its entirety; the opening sentences capture the main idea:

Colorado Springs firefighter Alan Kent was just doing his job when he responded to an emergency call at the home of Stacy and Todd Huddle on Feb. 15, 2004. 

What came next — a lifelong bond between Kent and the family of the child he helped deliver that Sunday morning — may have been born of timing and happenstance. 

Twenty-two years later, it feels more like fate.

It’s certainly got history: Kent has attended Chloe Huddle’s birthday parties, her graduation from high school and from college, and on July 15, her wedding in Arizona. In turn, the Huddles have been there for major Kent family events, including Alan’s July 2025 retirement from the Fire Department.

Theirs is a heartwarming story that’s made local and national headlines too many times to count, but its true power lies in a quieter kind of alchemy — of connections, gratitude and the building of a chosen family, in baby steps. 

On the face of it, it’s a workplace ministry story. A firefighter doing his job meets a real need. I was recently in a meeting with one of the partners of a major home-building company, and before we parted I said something like:

Here’s something we don’t emphasize in our churches enough. Your work is a real ministry. A continuation of God’s work in the world. People need houses. You build houses. Thank you for your service.

So that’s certainly going on here. But the story goes beyond that, and it’s hinted in the opening: “…the building of a chosen family.” The parents chose to include the firefighter in their lives.

The story continues:

It’s not uncommon for a person saved or assisted by firefighters to visit a station, to shake hands, hug and share their gratitude. The Huddle’s follow-up set it apart.

A week after Chloe was born, Stacy bundled up her infant daughter and went to visit the CSFD firefighter who’d helped bring her into the world. 

There’s a picture. I was holding Chloe in the fire station,” Alan said. “So, I got to hold her the second time. That was pretty cool.”

A tradition was born, and would become one of many.

…

“I think we just kept coming back to the fire station every year for birthdays — that was a priority — but we also thought, well, we should make this long-term and make sure that we go to all life events. And that was kind of our goal, and that’s just what we did.”

…

Chloe remembers a long-ago elementary school field trip to Station 15, and feeling like a celebrity “showing all my classmates, like, oh yeah, this is where I have my birthday parties, and there’s Mr. Alan, and this is all the fire trucks I get to play in when it’s my birthday.”

The article closes:

In 2016, before heading off to study to become a teacher in Arizona, Chloe wrote about “her” firefighter in a high school essay recounting a cherished memory. She wrote about a vow her parents made to the Kents, back when she was too little to understand words, “to spend every birthday, graduation and my wedding day with them as a huge ‘thank you.’”

Promises kept. 

“It’s got to be a God thing how it all worked out,” Stacy said. “Our families, we were meant to be together.”

So it’s a story of an intentional relationship. We are blessed with a few of those. Blog reader Laura will most certainly comment on this story and the fact that when she and her husband, Brant, moved to Montgomery, Alabama, with the Air Force, they called The Navigators to see who lived there. I wasn’t on staff, but The Navigators connected them to us. They called and moved into the rental home next door, vacated by another Air Force/Navigator connection. Both of those have been intentional relationships from the early 1980s until now.

Ray is another relationship from those days. He now lives in New Hampshire, and we were visiting for a family event back in 2015. Someone asked Ray why his kids called me “Uncle Bob.” “Is Bob your brother?” Ray replied, “Bob doesn’t have a brother, but if he did, it would be me.”

There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18.24, ESV)

Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. (Romans 16.13, ESV)