"Hold My Hand"

Sometimes I feel like I was never a child.

My earliest memories include somehow feeling responsible for taking care of my parents and my sisters. I don't mean this in a regretful way, its just the way I have always felt inside.

My Dad was a kind loving person, my best friend ever, and as giving as anyone I have ever known. He also suffered from alcoholism and often displayed the rage that only the family of alcoholics can know. I don't want to think about the number of times that as a small boy, I stood between him and my Mother and my sisters and did what I could to blunt his actions and words.

As I grew older, my feelings of being responsible for others began to include my extended family. At age 14, I got my driver's license (normal age in Texas at the time). Soon after, my mother's sister (Donna) contracted a serious disease and was hospitalized in Dallas. The family obviously wanted to be with her as she had no other support there. I didn't understand it at the time, but I now know that I was the only one with a driver's license (plus I could read, as in street signs, maps, etc.)(my Dad and my Mom's Dad were illiterate) Thus began a summer of driving various family members from the Wright City area to Dallas and back because they needed me.

As I grew to manhood and started my lifelong career as a cop, there were never a shortage of opportunities to "help" family with various problems, many of which were legal difficulties. I remember the night my Dad had his first heart attack. He was in the Henderson Hospital and I was understandably concerned for his future. About midnight I get a call on my cell phone from Dad's brother, Buddy, with the plea, "Since you are in town, could you come to the Kilgore jail and bond me out?" (I did). On numerous occasions I would be called in the middle of the night from some jail by Dad's brother Curtis asking for the same service. (I NEVER did)

Finally one day my Dad called to ask me to come visit him. Dad had been arrested for what was to be his last DWI offense. Due to his previous arrests, he was terrified that he would be put in jail for an extended period and that was something he feared worse than death. He ask that I go to court with him, plead his case and (oh yeah, pay the fine). I told Dad that my job was to put drunk drivers in jail, not get them out. Dad got tears in his eyes and said, "Son, please hold my hand and get me thru this".

You have to know that my Dad was by any standard you choose, one of the toughest men who have ever walked the face of this earth. For him to make that statement told me that even the strongest among us have to have someone to cling to at times (and I didn't let him down).

If you are the "someone to cling to", always remember to "hold their hands" and be their strength until it is your time to need someone and you will know that the hand holding yours is truly God's own blessing.