Police officers will often
tell you there’s no such thing as a routine call when you’re patrolling the
streets. But when Albuquerque police officer Ryan Holets responded to a
possible theft at a nearby convenience store, it had all the hallmarks of a
mundane assignment he could quickly clear from the call log. But, it didn't
turn out that way.
As Ryan left the
convenience store on September 23, 2017 he noticed out of the corner of his eye
a couple sitting on the grass against a cement wall. It appeared the man and
woman were shooting up heroin in broad daylight behind the convenience store. Ryan
turned on his body camera and approached the couple but he wasn’t prepared for
what he saw. The woman was in the middle of injecting a needle into her
companion’s arm. Then he noticed the woman was pregnant. “It's not every day I
see a sight like that and it just made me really sad,” Ryan said.
Crystal Champ, 35, looked
slightly dazed and agitated in the body camera footage as you hear Ryan begin
to scold her. She told the officer that she was almost 8 months pregnant and
addicted. “You're going to kill your baby,” Ryan is heard saying on the bodycam
footage.
In the course of the
conversation, Champ told Ryan that she desperately hoped someone would adopt
her baby. Champ says the words triggered a change in the officer’s demeanor. “He
became a human being instead of a police officer,” Champ said. Ryan made the
call to not charge the couple with drug possession, but he couldn't shake the
voice in his mind telling him that this was his chance to help and truly make a
difference.
Ryan showed Champ a
picture of his wife and four children, including a 10-month old baby and in
that moment offered to adopt her baby. “I was led by God to take the chance,”
Ryan said. “God brought us all together. I really don't have any other way to
explain it.” Champ was stunned and says she looked at him to “make sure his
eyes were genuine and that I could see his soul.” Later, Ryan’s wife Rebecca told
reporters, “We feel God has called us to do this.”
When the baby was born in
October 2017 the Holets decided to name her, “Hope” and she will spend her
first Christmas with her new family.[1]
What Officer Ryan Holet
did in that split-second decision to adopt Hope made me think of Mary’s
surrender to the angelic announcement that she would be the mother of the
Messiah.
34 Then Mary said to the
angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” 35 And the angel answered
and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born
will be called the Son of God . . . 37 For with God nothing will be
impossible.” 38 Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be
to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:34-38)
In both Mary and Ryan’s
situation a baby changed everything. I think what we can learn from this is
that God’s invitations, often appear as
interruptions. How much more inconvenient can you get than a baby being
dropped into the middle of your life? God interrupted Mary’s life with an
incredible opportunity. Yes, there would be adversity and heartache, but the
blessing of playing a role in God’s salvation story far outweighed the trouble.
It takes faith to surrender to the plan of God, especially when it’s going to involve
a new set of challenges and unknowns. But if we say “Yes” to God's interruption,
there is no telling what good He will bring from it.
-DM
[1] Ed
Lavandera and Jeremy Harlan, “Police Officer Adopts Homeless Mother’s Opioid-Addicted
Newborn,” CNN, 3 December 2017 <http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/01/health/police-officer-adopts-homeless-opioid-newborn-btc-beyond-the-call-of-duty/index.html>
No comments:
Post a Comment