May 2011 Subscriber Letter
May 2011
Dear Reconcile Family,
I thought I would share with you the fact that twenty-one police officers were killed in the U.S. in the line of duty in the month of March. The Police Unity Tour Organization website shows that April and May are months that tours are taken to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Below is the confession of a police officer from policelink.com. It gives us all some insight into what they have to face daily. As many of you know, my son Bradley is a police officer.
“I am a cop. That means that the pains and joys of my personal life are often muted by my work. I resent the intrusion, but I confuse myself with my job almost as often as you do. The label “police officer” creates a false image of who I really am.
Sometimes I feel like I’m floating between two worlds. My work is not just protecting and serving. It’s preserving that buffer that exists in the space between what you think the world is, and what the world really is.
My job isn’t like television. The action is less frequent, and more graphic. It is not exhilarating to point a gun at someone. Pooled blood has a disgusting metallic smell and steams a little when the temperature drops. CPR isn’t an instant miracle, and it’s no fun listening to an elderly grandmother’s ribs break while I keep her heart beating. I’m not flattered by your curiosity about my work.
I don’t keep a record of which incident was the most frightening, or the strangest, or the bloodiest, or even the funniest. I don’t tell you about my day, because I don’t want to share the images that haunt me.
Sometimes my stereo is too loud. Andrea Bocelli’s voice makes it easier to forget the wasted body of the young man who died alone in a rented room, because his family feared the stigma of AIDS. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony erases the sight of the nurses who sobbed as they scrubbed layers of dirt and slime from a neglected two-year-old’s skin.
The Rolling Stones’ angry beat assures me that it was ignorance that drove a young mother to draw blood when she bit her toddler on the cheek in an attempt to teach him not to bite.
Sometimes I set a bad example. I exceeded the speed limit on my way home from work, because I had trouble shedding the adrenalin that kicked in when I discovered that the man I handcuffed during a drug raid was sitting on a loaded 9mm pistol.
Sometimes I seem rude. I was distracted and forgot to smile when you greeted me in the store because I was remembering the anguished, whispered confession of a teenager who pushed away his drowning brother to save his own life.
Sometimes I’m not as sympathetic as you’d like. I’m not concerned that your 15-year-old daughter is dating an 18-year-old because I just comforted the parents of a young man who slashed his own throat while they slept in the next bedroom. I was terse on the phone, because I resented the burden of having to weigh the value of two lives when I was pointing my gun at an armed man who kept begging me to kill him.
I laugh when you cringe away from the mess in your teen’s room, because I know the revulsion of feeling a heroin addict’s blood trickling toward an open cut on my arm. If I was silent when you whined about your overbearing mother, it’s because I really wanted to tell you that I spoke to one of our high school friends today. I found her mother slumped behind the wheel of her car in a tightly closed garage. She had dressed in her best outfit before rolling down the windows and starting the engine.
On the other hand, if I seem totally oblivious to the blood on my uniform, or the names people call me, or the hateful editorials, it’s because I am remembering the lessons my job has taught me.
I learned not to sweat the small stuff. Grape juice on the beige sofa and puppy pee on the oriental carpet don’t faze me, because I know what arterial bleeding and decaying bodies can do to one’s decor.
I learned when to shut out the world and take a mental health day. I skipped your daughter’s fourth birthday party, because I was thinking about the six children under the age of ten whose mother left them unattended to go out with a friend. When the three-year-old offered the dog the milk from her cereal bowl, the dog attacked her, tearing open her head and staining the sandbox with blood. The little girl’s siblings had to pry her head out of the dog’s jaws – twice.
I learned that everyone has a lesson to teach me. Two mothers engaged in custody battles taught me not to judge a book by its cover. The teenage mother on welfare mustered the strength to refrain from crying in front of her worried child, while the well-dressed, upper-class mother literally played tug of war with her toddler before running into traffic with the shrieking child in her arms.
I learned that nothing given from the heart is truly gone. A hug, a smile, a reassuring word, or an attentive ear can bring an injured or distraught person back to the surface, and help me refocus.
And I learned not to give up, ever! That split second of terror when I think I have finally engaged the one who is young enough and strong enough to take me down taught me that I have only one restriction: my own mortality.
One week in May has been set aside as Police Memorial Week, a time to remember those officers who didn’t make it home after their shift. But why wait? Take a moment to tell an officer that you appreciate her work. Smile and say “Hi” when he’s getting coffee. Bite your tongue when you start to tell a “bad cop” story. Better yet, find the time to tell a “good cop” story. The family at the next table may be a cop’s family.
Nothing given from the heart is truly gone. It is kept in the hearts of the recipients. Give from the heart. Give something back to the officers who risk everything they have.”
Romans 13 tells us that police officers are “ministers of God.” They stand between us and chaos. Thank you for making an impact on a crazy world through your prayers and kind financial support. You are also “standing in the gap” (Ezekiel 22:30).
Love and blessings to you; my apology for the length this time, but thought it important.
Curtis May