The emotional roller coaster of this LEOW life is so exhausting. It’s frustrating to go from flying high, feeling like you want to change the world one week, to barely keeping it together the next. From feeling like you have it all together and this LEOW life figured out to a lump in your throat, knots in your stomach, and autopilot mode. Unfortunately, the hard weeks come. They happen to all of us at one point or another during our spouse’s career. We find ourselves standing on the side of the road with our blue shirts, flags, our cheeks burning, feeling simultaneous pride and grief. We send our officers out the door with that extra piece of fabric around their badges and we try to put a smile on our faces and focus on work, kids, school, etc. but it really is impossible. The what-ifs become louder and more real. The things you push to the back of your mind, the things none of us want to think about become deafening and all encompassing.
It could happen to our officer, any shift, and that my friends is what makes this life, and us, different.
It is so unfortunate we have to experience this (far too often) in our lives. This career our spouses chose is not just a job. We become fully engulfed in their livelihoods. We rearrange our entire worlds for them. We raise kids, have meals, celebrate holidays, birthdays, anniversaries around their schedules. It is so hard sometimes. There are days we have it all together and I’m not bothered one bit by him going to work. There are also days I am keepin’ it together by a frayed thread.
Watching our kids wave and blow kisses out the window as dad flashes his lights and he pulls out of the driveway, hearing their little voices say, “God watch over Daddy!”, gets me every time. They have NO idea what that truly means. Why we ask God to always watch over daddy, it’s just something we do when he goes to work. To them it’s, dare I say “normal”… But it’s not.
It’s not normal to watch your husband salute a co-worker as he’s being laid to rest for doing his job.
It’s not normal to watch friends get critically injured physically and mentally, just for going to work.
It’s not normal to watch your husband strap body armor on as he walks to his car for a shift.
It’s not normal to feel that pit in your stomach every time you see the Officer Down Memorial Page post for the 4th consecutive day of a hero lost in the line of duty by gunfire.
Watching your kids wave and ask God to watch over there daddy just for going to work is not normal.
Some days I wish my husband was going to work at a “normal” job like a bank or a burger shack. I don’t know….anywhere else but pulling out in a squad car. But then I see him in his uniform. I see our kids’ eyes light up when he puts his siren on and flashes his lights. I see him honor heroes making the ultimate sacrifice. Every once in a while I even see a positive social media post and I know that this is where we’re supposed to be. I know this is what he is supposed to be doing and that our family was meant to be a blue family. It doesn’t make the hard days any easier, it just makes the hard days worth it. This is a hard week all over the country for Law Enforcement, but I am so thankful to have found this group, and this outlet to be able to reach you all. Breath deep, and remember the hard days don’t last forever.
l Danielle l