When we heard the doorbell ring, my husband told us to hold on answering it until he could take a quick look at the front door cam. He was hoping to avoid any well-intentioned front porch sermons or friendly sales pitches. A quick peek at the camera and he hastily made his way to the door declaring, “Oh ya, looks like we better get this.” Curiosity piqued, I made my way over and found a friendly member of our local PD standing in our foyer. It seems someone had texted 911 and the text read “am dead”. We quickly discerned that “someone” was standing behind me, eyes wide with just the slightest curve to her mouth, as if questioning what exactly an appropriate response might be.

One look at our daughter quickly put much of the puzzle in place for the officer. The physical markers of Down syndrome helped him understand that this was most likely an innocent misunderstanding. He kindly addressed our twelve year old and asked, “did you text 911?” While she was too shell-shocked to eek out a verbal reply, the response in her sheepish expression was all the confirmation we needed. 

Our daughter has had a significant fascination with the police and all things emergency rescue for quite some time. While she understands these men and women in uniform help people who are hurt, she doesn’t have a clear understanding of what qualifies as an emergency and her only understanding of “dead” is that her dolls can be sick and die and pop right back to life. 

“Oh, boy”, I addressed the officer, as I tried to finagle my overly excited dog away from his sniff search. “I’m so sorry.” He smiled and kindly asked Mary to retrieve her phone so he could confirm the text had come from her. She made her way upstairs to her room to do so just as a second officer came into the house. The look of concern on his face was quickly eased when his partner explained all looked to be ok. It took me a hot second to pry my eyes away from the second officer whose arms were the width of a healthy tree trunk, but when I found myself again, I realized Mary was in no rush to make her way back downstairs. By the time we retrieved her and she handed over her phone, the text had been deleted. Yup. Don’t anybody tell me this girl is not smart.

Overall, we are grateful for how the officer handled the situation. He addressed Mary directly and first made it clear that he and his partner were not angry with her. He brought her attention to how quickly he was able to get to our house and assured her that he or another member of his department are always available to help and can get to her in a matter of minutes if need be. He then affirmed her capacity to listen and understand when he took the time to explain that by being called to a house where they were not needed, they were then not available to help someone who may have been experiencing a real emergency. Lastly, he was careful not to assume all was well just because everything appeared to be in order. He engaged her a few different times asking if she was ok and paid close attention to her response.  

After some time to reflect on the unexpected events of the afternoon, I realized how fitting it was that this happened in the season of Easter; this time of reflection on the true presence of a Savior who wants nothing more than for us to be fascinated with Him. Much like our men and women in uniform, we often place God in this category of “there if we need Him” but go about our days assuming we’ve got things under control all on our own. Emergency or not, He is always there and always ready. He is waiting, patiently, to be called upon, to be needed, to have the opportunity to show us just how much He loves us. It’s what He lives for. And exactly what He died for.