Christmas Eve in a Cruiser

This evening and tomorrow morning over 330 million Americans will be gathered with family and friends, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lights will be blazing from inside family homes, Christmas music softly playing in the background as families gather around dinner tables for a grand meal. Excited children, faces beaming with the innocent anticipation of what Santa may bring  them, will have trouble falling asleep, listening intently for the sound of reindeer hooves on rooftops. Laughter and joy, two of the most precious gifts to be given and received, warm hearts and lighten spirits.

Except for a few hundred thousand folks, clad in blue, brown or gray, who chose to serve and protect.

From personal experience, many times over, I can unequivocally say that there can be no more lonely place other than inside a police cruiser on Christmas Eve...short of being in a foreign land serving our country in the military.

Our men and women behind the badge, dedicated to a life of upholding the law and maintaining order, will pilot those cruisers this evening and throughout the night, answering calls for service. Big city coppers might not have time to reflect on being absent from those family gatherings, running call-to-call, but their wives, husbands, parents and children will, missing their public servants who, more likely than not, will be absent once again from their homes on a major holiday.

We'll sit in our darkened cruisers, interiors lit only by the glow of  dashboard lights and mobile data terminals, as we cruise neighborhoods whose houses are adorned with festive Christmas lights and displays, wishing we, too, could be with our families.

We accept it, though; it goes with the job and we knew that going in. Its one of the many sacrifices we make without complaint, though inside we anguish over missing these precious moments, undoubtedly not for the first time.

Its not just us, though; its the emergency dispatchers behind microphones sending us on those calls for service. Its the nurses in hospitals, the firefighters, the over-the-road commercial truck drivers trying to make a living, all giving up an important day in their lives that cannot be recovered.

Tonight I pray for the safety of all our police officers, our fire fighters and nurses, those working this Christmas to provide for their families, remembering what it was like to be working during Christmas for my thirty-plus years on the job.

I ask you to pray also, and to think about those dedicated to protecting and serving our great United States.

To my brothers and sisters of the badge I say Merry Christmas! I am one old, retired cop who has not forgotten you.