It was 11 years ago today my phone rang with a voice asking me if I wanted to go to a small town in Texas where many first responders lost their lives. I went because someone asked me to and I was trying to do my part. It was there I learned of love and hope lingering in the twisted debris of life. It was like love and hope were homeless and just needed that gentle hand to pick it up. It was there I found some parts of myself that I had lost many years before that tragic day. My own love and hope just needed the gentle hands of those standing in their own debris.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve returned to that small town. Now I return not because someone asked me to, or to do my part. I return to find my set of footprints I made there many years ago. I like to stand in them and see the face of the Chief aka the Devil Dog. I like to stand in them and embrace a hug from a woman called the Mother Hen. I like to stand in them and dive deep behind the eyes of the man who has seldom said much but he understands why I am there. We lost the Dentist last year but he died with his boots on. He too left behind his own foot prints on the world.

I’ve been sitting here all night watching this field. It really does not matter why I’m watching a field but what does matter since the sun went down my soul has been in that small town in Texas. I’ve written more than once that we must accept the event, and then we must accept the outcome of that event.

The acceptance of the event will allow us grow and find the positives that lie within the twisted debris of life. Somewhere in that twisted debris is our own set of footprints guiding us and reminding us that love and hope do exist in the horrors of the unimaginable events we call life.

I can see the sun making her way to my tired eyes which tell me that my time in the here and now watching this field are over. No matter the distance or the time that passes that small town in Texas have become the shoe laces to my soul.

From a simple man watching a dark field thank you West, Texas for allowing me to make a set of footprints there.