Agent for God
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): The United States Secret Service represents the top rung of the law-enforcement ladder. For Tim Miller, becoming an agent was a dream come true.
TIM MILLER: It was a great hands-on, high-speed dynamic training program - everything from learning how to do j-turns in limousines, to walking Hogan's Alley with targets popping out.
CHUCK HOLTON: Do you find yourself using these skills on a daily basis? I'll bet it helps you get the kids to the soccer games faster!
TIM MILLER: It absolutely does. (laughs)
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): Tim loved being an agent, but one day in October 1994, things got a little too exciting. Tim was guarding the stairs to the president's private quarters when he heard a rapid popping outside. Then glass began to shatter.
TIM MILLER: Very shortly thereafter the radio crackled to life that we actually had somebody outside of the White House who was shooting into the White House at that time. As I sprinted out the front of the White House, I noticed pure panic on the street, chaos, people screaming, people running, but I did notice that the firing had stopped and that the suspect was lying on the ground at that point.
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): Tim was proud to be a part of such a professional organization. But the intense travel schedule made it less of a job and more of a lifestyle.
TIM MILLER: It was a regular part of my job to be traveling for periods of 3-, 4-, 5 weeks at a time.
CHUCK HOLTON: What kind of travel did you do, and what kind of places did you go to?
TIM MILLER: Chuck, I've kind of been all over the world doing different things. Obviously, I protected foreign heads of state. I actually worked on the vice president's detail on his shift, and obviously worked with the president. It's not uncommon for folks on these details to travel 40-, 50 percent of the time.
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): In the meantime, however, Tim's wife and three children were bearing the weight of his commitment to his career.
CHUCK HOLTON: So, Ladonna, what were you doing while Tim was gallivanting around the world with all these famous, important people?
LADONNA MILLER: Diapers and dishes - that was my job! (laughs)
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): She can laugh about it now, but at the time, the long hours and frequent travel began to drive a wedge in their marriage.
TIM MILLER: I was charging ahead doing what I thought was right and for a very important job, but my kids and my wife were kind of left standing off on the side.
LADONNA MILLER: Those are the moments in my life where I realized it wasn't just affecting me, that as the children were getting older, they were responding to the absence of the father in the home, which, as all wives know, without daddy there, your job becomes incredibly difficult.
CHUCK HOLTON: Did you ever discuss divorce?
TIM MILLER: We discussed it, yeah, and we got into some pretty violent fights - not violent physically, but violent emotionally. Sometimes that's worse.
LADONNA MILLER: It just wasn't Tim being angry with me. I was angry also. The most tender times for me were when the kids would hear what we were saying and questioned me the next morning.
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): As the years went on and nothing seemed to change, it looked like the marriage was headed for disaster. But instead of giving up, Ladonna went to God in prayer.
LADONNA MILLER: I will tell you, I live with incredible regret today over some of those words that I said, some of them mean, hateful things. But God is so compassionate. Every time I got angry with Tim, when I would stop and think of what God had sacrificed for me, as God began to show me my wickedness but that He still loved me, how could I not have compassion for Tim? Because I knew, down deep, that he was not doing this to hurt me. He was doing this because he wasn't walking with the Lord the way that he needed to.
TIM MILLER: It culminated one day as I was driving to work at the White House. I was listening to Dr. James Dobson on Focus on the Family and he was talking specifically to fathers. He said, 'Fathers,' something along the lines of, 'I don't care how important your job is, if it's not allowing you to be a good husband, a good father, then you really need to get that right with the Lord because over time that's the greatest and most important role that you'll ever play.' I remember clearly pulling over to the side, and I remember a wave of emotions coming over me, and I remember clearly the Lord saying, 'It's time now. Are you ready to leave?' And I said, 'Yes.'
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): Tim knew that he could no longer allow his family to take second place. He left the Secret Service and took a job with U.S. Customs. At the time, it seemed like a big sacrifice.
LADONNA MILLER: When Tim was in the process of making that decision to leave the Service, he had a lot of doubters in his gallery, believers and unbelievers. And many of them really believed that he was committing career suicide, that to make that step, to make that decision to leave such a powerful and prestigious job would cost him everything. But God's ways are higher than ours, and all we knew, all we had to hang onto at that time was 'just be obedient,' even when we did not understand it - and we didn't.
CHUCK HOLTON: Did you think that it would cost you when you made that decision?
TIM MILLER: I thought that leaving that job that I desired all my life would take away my self-fulfillment, it would take away my importance, it would take away everything that I had worked so hard to get. But what I found is when that left and that vacuum was created, God came in behind it and filled it perfectly.
CHUCK HOLTON (reporting): God blessed Tim's decision. Today, it isn't heads of state that he is working to protect, but other important people - the rest of us. Tim's new job with the Department of Homeland Security helps to safeguard our country while allowing him time to invest in his family.
TIM MILLER: My daughters, yesterday we went for coffee and we hung out and we drove around the country and looked at houses. At the end of the day, I could be on Air Force One, or I could be traveling the world, but I kind of think I'd rather be there.
CHUCK HOLTON: There are a lot of fathers out there who are saying, 'Look, it's my responsibility to provide for my family' --
TIM MILLER: And I agree.
CHUCK HOLTON: -- 'What do you want me to do? Just quit my job?'
TIM MILLER: Absolutely not. What I would say to them is to prioritize your life in a way that is God honoring. The last time I checked, the God that owns all the jobs on the face of the earth owns your job. And if you will put His priorities first, stand by because He will do things both within your job or He'll take you to another job like he did with me that will allow Him to work in your family and through your life. It really is a trust issue. At the end of the day, who are you going to trust?
