Mary’s Armor
It had been a usual day at work when I hung up the phone from speaking with a lady (who for reasons of confidentiality) we’ll call “Mary.” She works at Inland Regional Center.
“You’ve been an absolute delight to talk with” I exclaimed. My chuckling co-worker in the next cubicle over wasn’t so convinced.
“Haha Carlitta. You really poured that on thick didn’t you…”
“No not at all. I really meant what I said to her” I replied. “I don’t usually pay those kinds of compliments if I don’t mean it. She really was nice to talk to.”
Three days later, I sat huddled around the computer screen, cringing at the news reports coming out of San Bernardino, California. A queasy apprehension lulled in the pit of my stomach. My mind was on Mary. Was she there? Had she been hurt? God I hope not…oh how horrible. For hours all I could imagine was the horror at the center, all the lives that had been lost and many who will be scarred physically and emotionally – forever. Why? I don’t know.
But at a minimum, I believe it is because evil lives. However, evil does not rise up one day and inadvertently strike like a lightning bolt into human beings. Evil is ancient, cunning. It is broad reaching and breeds across barren grounds of twisted hunger, generational despair, isolation, and occasionally mental illness. Guns will never cure it, nor defeat it. It must be called by its name and fought with the only armor Ephesians 6 says we should use to slay it. Perhaps Mary had some of that same armor on that day. Others we now know, didn’t have a clue.
Before last week Mary and her co-workers were just like many of us, trying to make a living, while serving the neediest most fragile of our citizens. But that has changed. Fourteen visitors from the local health department had come to Mary’s building for a Christmas party and never went back home.
A week later I’d still hoped to blog about how illness struck my home in early September, as fatigue and exhaustion took me away from my monthly blog posts; and then I’d apologize to my readers.
But all I have done the last week is think of Mary, and she was one of the lucky ones.
