|
...thoughts expressed
here are not necessarily final.
May 02, 2005
Reading for my finals this week- but i will live to blog again soon!
Thanks for the prayers. I felt the need to share this
with others from our community. I wanted to let you know a bit more detail
on what my dear wife has experienced recently. She is doing extremely
well by the grace of God, but it has been a very tenuous time for her
emotionally. We are sure God will work good out of this experience but
we are not on the other side of it yet. All this happened on a training
trip to Memphis on which Earnie (Earnestine) was able to accompany me.
The trip went well until about two hours before Earnie was to pick me
up at the end of the last day of training. She had stopped by Sears to
pick up something and was assaulted by three adult women who tried to
mug her. She was parked next to the front door of Sears and it was broad
daylight- 3 in the afternoon- in a part of town not normally characterized
by crime.
As she left the store for the car, one of them pulled a car behind hers
to block her and when she went to ask her to move, another hit her with
something on the back of the neck and the third one twisted her arm and
took her hand purse and knocked her to the ground. Then the two who attacked
her went to jump into the car and get away.
She reacted instinctively and got up and fought back (for better or worse)
and grabbed the one who had taken the purse as she was getting in the
car to get away and hit the woman hard in the sternum as she grabbed hold
of her and tried to pull her out of the car. She doesn't know why she
did this, and that is one of the curious unresolved issues. The car started
off and drug her several feet before she let go of her assailant (who
was by this time being assailed herself). Something told Earnie she had
better let go and so she did (thank the Lord) and she fell on the pavement
hard.
Another woman who had a baby with her saw what was going on and was yelling
for help, which didn't come until after they got away. the woman sisn't
call 911 though she had a cell phone in her hand, but Earnie thinks her
yelling may have helped speed the thieves on their way. Several people
were looking on but didn't help and were slow to come even after the car
was gone. I think the worst of what Earnie remembers is the foul language
that was thrown at her during the encounter.
Battered, dirty, bruised and badly shaken, Earnie discovered to her surprise
that the purse and her keys were on the ground - somewhere in the melee,
the thief dropped it. The car did not have a license plate, just an illegible
temporary tag. Since nothing was missing she decided she just wanted to
get out of there and get to me and so she came on to pick me up. It all
happened so quickly she didn't get a really good look at any of them.
She got to me as I was about ten minutes away at the training session.
Anyway she wanted to come home straightaway rather than get involved in
a
lengthy encounter so the police were not called in on it. I deferred to
her emotional state at the time. After I figured out that I could not
go find the would-be thieves and beat them up (my initial response) ,
we prayed for them and for ourselves and headed home. We drove home in
a torrential rainstorm because she didn't want to stay anywhere else that
night.
Please pray for her healing- nothing major, but general soreness and the
bruises where her arm was twisted and her hand where she hit the thief
is pretty sore a week later. I guess no one knows how they will react
in a situation until it happens- Earnie figures if it hadn't been her
it would have been one of the little ladies that was in Sears instead,
and who knows what would have happened to someone more frail.
The unpredictable emotional fallout has been a challenge-
she is still very jumpy and hesitant to be around people, and gatherings
of strangers make her very nervous. We are praising God who watches over
us. In retrospect, this could have been a LOT worse. In our lifetime together,
I have had two guns pulled on me, our house was shot up in a drive by
in Dallas, and we have experienced several other miscellaneous near misses
that could have been disasterous, but have been preserved. We are blessed.
|