I am pretty sure he got the idea from something he had read. I seem to recall reading or hearing about a similar tale at some point in my life. It doesn't really matter, though, because as we all know, the best ideas are bound to be repeated. This was a good idea.
After he would step out of his patrol car and before he would come into the house, he would pause for the briefest of moments and mentally hang his worries on that tree. Worries that were images, burdens, and thoughts of despair.
In other words, humanity at its worse.
He would hang the unpleasantness of the job on a limb that certainly would have never been able to bear the true weight of such a thing and would proceed to walk inside the house, weary and hungry, and hug each of us one by one. I could not help but to think this week of the wives and children in Dallas who would not be receiving those same kind of hugs ever again and my heart literally broke.
I can remember one particular night during his career when I paced the floor waiting for that man of mine to come home. I had heard tales of a particular call that involved gunfire and even when he personally called me to assure me all was well, I did not believe it until I physically had him within reach. I can distinctly remember him looking at me ever so seriously and quietly saying, "I will always come home."
But we all know that promise does not always end well.
And so I had those memories swirling through my overactive brain as I was watching the events of Dallas unfold the other night. Lives that were cut short because they went to work that day. Families who would forever be changed because of the delusion of one man. Since that night, every talking head in America seems to have a solution on what we should do and what lives matter and what steps we can take to heal our land. The truth remains that regulations and protests and hashtags will do nothing to solve the evil in the heart of man.
The husband works no more in law enforcement (although his ears perk up every time he hears a siren and I know in his mind, he is racing toward another call). We have long since moved from that little house in a little town with a little tree out front. To my knowledge, none of our current trees serve to bear his burdens before he comes inside the house to hug each---- well, just me now. We pray for our country as we pray for those who serve to protect, assist, and defend; and we worry what the future holds for our children's children.
I can only think of one tree that can bear that kind of burden.
And it was made into a cross.
