Behind Closed Doors

I cycled past that house again today. I ride past it most days. It’s the house where a woman was murdered a couple of months back. It’s alleged that her husband did it. I guess the courts will decide.

After it happened there was police tape blocking off the road and a number of police vehicles of various shapes and sizes scattered around the end of the street. It stayed that way for days but up until that time it was just another unremarkable house on an unremarkable road that I passed on my daily commute. The tape and the cars are well and truly gone now and it’s just a ‘normal’ house again. Although, I guess, it can never really be normal again.

Statistics tell us that the majority of homicide victims die at the hands of someone they know. Even before things get to that point you’d have to imagine that there’s a lot of pressure behind closed doors. Thankfully not all situations end that way but it’s a reminder that we never know what’s going on behind closed doors. We generally don’t know about the sadness our neighbours might be facing or the struggles that they may be working to overcome.

We can never really know if the guy that sits and the desk next to us at work is facing some major issues at home or if the woman in front of us in the queue in the cafe has just received a phone call with devastating news.

We might think we know someone but do we fully know what’s going on in their private world?

Maybe we need to remember to always deal with people kindly, with compassion and with the kind of respect we’d like others to show us. Our attitude and care may just be part of the healing someone needs today.



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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