Writing as Therapy

This is a creative writing Zoom assignment from a chronic illness support group:

It was the night before I resigned as a police officer with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. I had asked my soon to be wife, Kathy, to come with me to the grounds of the local Episcopal church near the campus of my Alma Mater, the University of Arizona. In front of this Episcopal church was a prayer labyrinth. I had walked it many times before, but that night had more purpose than purely devotional. 

I took my badge with me, the badge that I had to turn in the next day. I still remember how that badge looked and felt. It was polished brass and the engravings had grown smooth with all the polishing I had done during the past seven years. My number, 4570, was prominently displayed in blue, along with the words, “Arizona Highway Patrol Officer.” I had worked so hard to earn that badge. 

But as I had closed in on seven years of police work, I knew that a new calling in me was being nurtured. I had previously done work at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, intending after a twenty year law enforcement career to become a pastor and police chaplain. The calling to ordained ministry, however, manifested earlier than I had intended. The Holy Spirit does like to surprise us. 

So on that prayer labyrinth, on a mild Tucson Spring evening, I began to walk the path towards the center. The cool-crete path beneath my bare feet still radiated heat from the sun that had just gone below the horizon. And as I walked, I prayed for God to help me turn the page, which was going to be a 

dramatic turn. 

As a police officer, so much of your self-worth is tied up into that piece of brass, an idol to your ego. With each twist and turn of the path, I dreaded the approaching center. And when I reached the center of the labyrinth, I was almost shaking. I did not stay long in the center like I sometimes did to pray. 

Rather, I looked upon that badge one more time, laid it down on the ground, and left by the same path that I entered. As I made my way out of the labyrinth, I felt lame, as if a part of me was amputated. When my journey out of the labyrinth ended, I had Kathy pick up the badge for me and we went home. Although I had to hold it again to turn it in the next day, I knew that it was no longer mine from the moment I left it in the center of that labyrinth. 

That decision to leave law enforcement and to begin the path to ordained ministry was the greatest transition of my life. It did not simply lead to a new career or calling, but it led me to my wife, my future child, and moving to many lands of which I never dreamed, or wanted, to go. 

It also was a transition that came alongside my struggles with major depression and severe mental illness. I do not know how I would have navigated that journey if I had still been in law enforcement. It probably !would have been a lonely and baren journey. So, although the transition still continues to be hard after 25 years, it is has been life-giving, for which I am forever grateful.