More Precious than Gold -- Pat Patterson

"Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold." - Proverbs 3:13-14

Anger! It’s part of who I am. My response to the harshness of life. But have mercy on me please, I didn’t choose to be this way…..

My youngest son was fourteen years old at the time, healthy and safe, getting himself ready for school when my final call of the night was dispatched. “EMS report for medic-seven,” the dispatcher said. “Possible suicide…”

A gallery of colorful images flooded my mind—slashed wrists, gunshot wounds, overdoses. I’d seen them all. Vibrant memories of hopelessness and pain. Horrific expressions of self-inflicted death.
I felt myself cringe.

“You can handle it,” I told myself. “It’s just another call.”

I forced the images aside and approached the scene. We found her lying at the base of a carpeted staircase, a fourteen year old girl without a breath of life. Her eyes bulged. Her face looked puffy and blue. A collar of swollen red skin encircled her neck.

“Oh, my God,” my partner cried.

“She hung herself,” one of the police officers explained. “Her little sister found her. Cut her down and ran back to bed. Can you believe it? Poor kid didn’t know what else to do.”

The harshness of life. It slapped me in the face. What was I to do but cry?

But I couldn’t cry. My defense mechanism worked too well. I glanced around the room. The other faces displayed emotion. Pain. I felt nothing. No sorrow. No pity.

Nothing.

“It’s just another call,” I whispered, my heart grown cold. “Just another call.”

*
Weeks passed. Months. My life went on as usual. But then one day, like a freight train charging out of the night, another crisis hit. This one in my home.

My defense mechanisms went to work. I prepared myself for the worst.

“You can handle it,” I told myself. “It’s just another call.”

But this time something went wrong. Like a pressure cooker blowing off steam, I exploded. I broke down in a fit of uncontrolled grief while my wife, my sons, my in-laws watched, bewildered by the sudden burst of emotion from a man so usually hard.

Embarrassment could not begin to explain the humiliation I felt that day. But I couldn’t help myself, it just happened. Fifteen years of pent up frustration and anger, grief and hopelessness, sorrow and death—they all finally surfaced, and with them a tidal wave of emotion that truly rocked my world.
My family survived that crisis. God poured out His mercy on us…especially on me. I still find myself crying at times when the harsh realities of life slap me in the face, but I handle pain better now. I now know how to let it go.

God granted me wisdom through those two experiences, and new understanding more precious than gold. I learned that no man can hold in the pain forever. It will surface. It always finds a way.

* * *

Do you know a police officer? A firefighter or a paramedic? Someone who’s out there every day absorbing the pain of others and trying their best to keep it all inside? Pray for that person. Be
there for them. Love them. But most of all try to understand them. They were called to serve others— a tough, painful job.