A couple weeks ago I wrote a short story titled “The Life of a Battered Wife”. It’s about a woman who escapes from the abuse of her husband. The story had been read three hundred and eighty three times in just four days. It really made me stop and wonder just how many women out there are going through abuse. After a while I forgot about it and then last Saturday morning it was brought back to my attention.
I lived downstairs in an apartment complex and about a month ago a woman and her two children moved in upstairs. I said hi to the woman a couple times if I caught her coming down but didn’t really talk to her. The first morning of deer season her little girl was headed up the stairs when I asked her if any of her family got a deer. I had seen them earlier dressed in orange and camo. She said she didn’t know and shrugged her shoulders and opened her jacket and said, “see my new shirt?” I replied, “um yea, it’s very nice, where did you get it?” She smiled and said, “out of my closet.” It was a weird conversation but so cute how she was proud of her new shirt and wanted me to see it.
Thanksgiving morning the woman came down the stairs and I was sitting out drinking a cup of coffee. She told me Happy Thanksgiving and I told her back. She was wearing a nice pair of boots with jeans and had a nice button up shirt on. I told her she looked very nice today and she smiled back at me and said, “thank you.” As she walked off I noticed a (pretty good size) hole in the back of her shirt. I just assumed she didn’t know.
I was moving out of the apartment this past Saturday morning and was trying to get rid of things so I wouldn’t have to move as much. I had some smaller clothes that my daughter gave me and I thought about the little girl upstairs. I put a lot of clothing and shoes in garbage bags to take to the dumpster but I saved those smaller clothes so that I could ask the little girl if she would want them. I went upstairs and knocked on their door and the woman answered. I explained to her that I was moving and had some smaller clothes that I thought her little girl might want to look at. She told me that she would take anything I wanted to give away. She explained how she and her children just came from the battered women’s shelter and they had nothing. She raised up her pant leg and showed me where her husband had burned her. She said he beat her with a metal rod and when she woke up she was on fire. I didn’t know what to say to her about it. I told her that I had a lot things and I would bring them up to her. She came to my door and asked if I needed her to help me bring anything up. There were several bags of clothes in the living room floor. I told her that she didn’t want those because they were little boys and man’s clothes and that I would just take them somewhere. She started loading them up and said, “whatever we can’t wear I will take to the shelter for my friends.”
I gathered a couple flower arrangements, dishes, rugs, makeup, used shampoos and conditioners and food. When I took the last load up to her I asked her about a Christmas tree. She said “no, I’m not sure we will have one.” I gave her all my ornaments, lights and the Christmas tree stand as well. She had already started going through the bags of clothes and I looked down in her floor to see that she was gathering the little boy clothes. She looked back at me and said, “I know a little boy at the shelter who can really use those.”
I know that we are not suppose to let our left hand know what the right one is doing, but God forgive me for wanting to share this story. It’s not because I am gloating on what I did for this woman, not at all. As a matter of fact, she helped me to get rid of all that stuff so I wouldn’t have to move it! I wanted to share it so that we could all be aware that there are people we meet everyday in these situations. It could possibly be the person next door.
I went shopping at TJ Max last week and I wore a long sweater with tights and boots. This woman walked by me in the aisle, looked me up and down and snarled her nose right to my face. When I left that morning for shopping, I felt pretty in what I had on but after what she did, I wanted to go hide somewhere! She made me ashamed to be in public. I just thought I would add that in here because that little episode fit in with everything I experienced these last few weeks! I got to see how some people really act toward others out there.
This experience has really taught me a lesson and has opened my eyes to so much. Now I’ve never been one to snarl at someone like the rude woman in TJ Max but I’m not one to spontaneously throw out compliments to people either. The compliment that came out of my mouth on Thanksgiving morning I see now to be a God thing. I didn’t know that she needed it but HE did. God is working in us even if we are not aware of it.