Joint Triumph (Part VI-- the end of the story)

Well, are you about ready for me to wrap up the tale of our roller coaster year? I guess if you've been reading my blog for any length of time (or you actually rub shoulders with Terence) you know that he did, after all this drama, manage to become a DPS officer.

Eventually, after eons of sessions with a physical therapist, Terence was cleared to reenter the police academy. But during our 8 month hiatus from academy life, we had prepared much more for the second time around. Terence worked on learning his spelling lists, as well as any other tidbits he had to memorize. He had many of the essays already written (including the 1500 word one) before his first day. We decided to have his shirts laundered at the dry cleaners. I would still have to go over them with an iron afterward to make sure they were perfect, but at least it only took me about 20 minutes a shirt instead of at least an hour. He had lost quite a bit of weight and was regularly jogging and lifting weights again, so he was far better prepared for the physical training. With all these things lined up, when he went back for that first week, our lives didn't quite fall apart like they did the first time. It was still terribly hard on the whole family-- police academy is like boot camp and law school rolled into one, and with his study groups and practice outside of class, we didn't see much of him. When he did, he was so exhausted he didn't really seem to be "there" anyway. Our date nights consisted of watching "Cops" together on TV so he could tell me everything the officers were doing wrong. Romantic, huh?

However, it all paid off. When Terence graduated, he was given the Skip Fink award, a special award for the member of the DPS class who had gone above and beyond. I think the instructors were honoring Terence's determination to become an officer despite everything that happened. I was so proud of him and all his hard work, but I have to admit, when he walked up on the stage at graduation to get his badge, I felt proud of our whole family. In a way, it was if all of us were graduating from the academy together.

The miracles weren't quite over, either. While Terence was working in records at DPS HQ, he was able to find out what area he was assigned to originally, which was the Phoenix Metro Division. One of the other senior officers suggested that we considered requesting a "remote duty" post, since it would give Terence a 10% salary increase and allow us to rent state-owned housing for only $100 a month. Since his salary as a rookie cop was not enough to pay the bills without my side work, we jumped at this opportunity. It led to our assignment in Sanders out of the Navajo Rez, but we would never have gotten the chance if Terence had not been working in records-- miracle #9.

Also, just when it looked like we were going to have to dig ourselves into one deep credit card pit again to get by until we moved out to Sanders, we received a $5,000 check in the mail. Terence's orthopedic surgeon had reported that Terence had a permanent 8% loss of mobility in his knee, even after the surgery. It didn't bother Terence at all-- he couldn't even tell-- but we received the disability check in compensation for it. Miracle #10. That knee injury that had seemed to be such a wrench in our lives had actually brought us blessing after blessing.

So that was our year of challenges and growth, heartbreak and joy. Especially now, when I look back and see all the wonderful things that happened to us, even with all the difficulties, it makes it easier to face the challenges we have today. I'm not sure why it has to be so hard, but maybe it's actually working for our benefit, and five years from now I'll look back and see it so clearly.

Just keep that eternal perspective! Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!!