I
guess
the only struggle—the one worth actually fighting about is the one we most
often overlook: the human struggle. I saw it first while growing up in the
dusty red dirt streets of my Selma, Alabama hometown, but in child-like innocence
failed to recognize it as such. I saw it again when I joined the U.S. Marines,
but thought it was just boys being boys. Then in becoming a peace officer, I saw this
struggle in a whole new light.
On
becoming a police officer, if you will remember my mentioning in an earlier
post, one of the first things you experience is the heavy badge. You get this belief that you’re great—that you’re
awesome. Not unlike the young Marine who believes he can take on the entire
U.S. Army and Navy alone, with one arm tied behind his back just to make the
fight fair. Well in transitioning into that world of good guys verses bad guys,
cops verses robbers, I saw this human struggle again. This time in the faces of
the wives, husbands, children, mothers and fathers who were left to try to put
life into some form of normal once their loved one had
decided to cross that line.
I
watched as young brides kissed dirty glass windows, because the lips of the
person they loved were on the other side. Women exposing themselves to hands
that would never caress them, and
children crying for a daddy they might never know. This was the same struggle seen in the faces
of the empty-eyed deputies who slept in the bunkroom because he or she could
not face going home to the person they vowed to love forever. Or hearing the
latest gossip of two married officers caught having sex in the parking lot just
outside the HQ.
This…is
the human struggle.
My
point—it wasn’t until truly seeing
“people” in the light, or rather the darkness of their fallen condition,
consumed and blinded by sin and its effects, was I really able to see myself in
the proper perspective. For after all, I too am human and have
my part in the human struggle. Think about it….Just saying.
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