Target of Circumstance
Simply Sunday 02: You Don't Need the Whole Story to Love Anyway.
Happy Sunday! Each week I’ll be sharing a quick “Simply Sunday” story… one that invites us to pause and think about a practical theme that we can carry into the week ahead. While these Simply Sunday stories will incorporate a thread of my personal faith, you can join me here regardless of your belief background. My story doesn’t have to be your story for you to appreciate the practical theme I’ll be sharing.
One Spring evening, when our three young daughters were tucked into bed and my husband sat in the finally quiet house, soaking in the stillness, I made a typical trip to Target to pick up a few groceries. As much as I enjoy perusing the aisles from time to time, this night I was taking advantage of the Drive Up pickup option (can you say lifechanging service?!) and I didn’t plan to go inside. Thankfully, I wasn’t in my pajamas just yet though, because my otherwise calm moments in the parking lot quickly escalated when I started to drive away and heard a woman screaming loudly. The parking lot was dark but as I looked towards the entrance to the store I saw a woman being dragged inside the store by 3 men, clearly against her will. Something rose up in me, and I knew I couldn’t simply keep driving. Call it adrenaline, craziness, boldness, or maybe divine intervention, but the feeling that rose within me caused me to immediately throw my car in park right there at the store entrance and jump out to follow them in. With no idea what was happening, but recognizing that this woman was being dragged against her will, I couldn't not stop and find out. On my way into the store, I had to step over a puddle on the sidewalk, just as I heard the woman screaming for help because her water had broken.
I followed the moving cluster of commotion over to a red door, where a visibly pregnant woman was being dragged into what appeared to be a break room. I quickly learned she had been accused of shoplifting, and the security guard told me she just needed to "calm down” while they investigated. He described to me all the things they believed she had taken, listing them off in detail and value. I was stunned…not because of this woman’s accused wrongdoing, but because those involved seemed so focused on her accusation that no one appeared to be as concerned about her medical status.
Nearby, the woman's partner was standing by in a daze, and he reported that this was her 4th baby. All I could think about was how my 3rd baby catapulted into this world a mere four minutes after my own water broke... As a mother who has gone through labor safely in a hospital three times before, I could not fathom being here, surrounded by the neon lights and rough hands of store security guards, while my contractions threatened to bring forth a new baby onto the cold tile floor of this store at any moment.
Suppose this woman was in a desperate situation and actually had shoplifted, as accused. Maybe the stress and adrenaline rush of nearly escaping with stolen goods had triggered her body to go into labor. Or perhaps, this woman wasn’t really in labor at all. Maybe she had stolen some items, gotten caught, and used her obvious pregnancy as an escape card, hoping desperately that she would be released and set free. Could she maybe have spilled some water on the ground, a quick-thinking actress in a moment of panic? Or what if it was all a misunderstanding, and this woman was innocently and honestly in labor, right there in the middle of the store?
The good news is that we don’t actually need to know all the details of someone’s situation to choose to love them where they are.
We don’t even have to agree with their lifestyle, their choices, or their circumstances to show compassion, kindness, and grace. How often has someone extended grace to you when you didn’t deserve it? I could fill pages of another book with the stories – the daily stories of the ways God has shown up in my life when I least deserved it, didn’t expect it, and couldn’t explain it, all to meet me in the middle of my mess and love me where I am.
It is easy to extend grace to someone who appears to be following the rules, choosing a pathway similar to our own, or at least shares our own deep rooted beliefs. But when we are faced with an uncomfortable situation or person, how does that change our response?
If this woman wasn’t truly in labor, she would certainly have some explaining to do when she reached the hospital. The legal matters could be sorted out at that point. But if she truly was in labor, the three men detaining her risked the liability of a newborn life quite literally in their hands. As a bystander, it was not my place to speculate her legal fate; as a fellow human/mother/female/healthcare provider, it was my place to advocate for her health and safety.
Just calm down. Those words from the security guard ricocheted inside my ears and rattled my nerves. I'll be damned if I am going to let a woman - accused shoplifter or not - be detained without medical care while in labor right in front of me. One deep breath later, I looked him square in the eye and said, "Sir, she is in LABOR. Have you ever been in labor? There is no calming down right now. This woman doesn't need to calm down, she needs medical care."
As the woman saw me through the glass window of the break room, she screamed and begged me to capture the events on video and to help her and her baby. Instead, I used my phone to call 911.
I remained right outside that door where she was taken around a corner and out of sight. I requested to speak with a manager immediately, and demanded to know that this woman would be given humane treatment in the midst of this situation. The legal issues could be sorted out later; the medical issues couldn't wait, especially if these security guards didn't want to have a delivery and newborn liability on their hands.
Minutes later the police, followed shortly by the ambulance, arrived. I lingered to make sure she was taken to the hospital. I briefly recounted the events to a police officer who then told me there was a warrant for this woman's arrest in a neighboring state, but he assured me that she was being transported to the hospital for care.
As I drove home, my heart was so heavy with sadness. Sadness for this woman, who appeared to make some really poor choices during a desperate time in her life. Sadness for this baby, who would likely enter this world already swept into devastating social instability. And sadness for a broken world, where stones are cast one after another, despite the deeper issues that lay far below the surface.
I am not one to judge this woman for the actions she has been accused of, her motives for doing them, or her apparent criminal record. Rather, it has taken everything in me to not want to drive to the hospital and request to be by her side during labor. I wanted to hold her hand and tell her she has so much more to live for than the life she appears to have been living. I wanted to swaddle that baby, to whisper identity over them, to tell them that they have a great purpose in this world. I want them both to know that they are fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who loves them more than they could ever fathom - and that His love for them can not be bought (or stolen)... it's a free gift.
Each of us has a story. Some are wrought with devastation, both self-imposed and as byproducts of the broken society we live in. But may we never assume we know the whole story. May we be slow to judge and quick to advocate for others. And may we never be the one to suggest that a woman in labor should "just calm down."
It’s Simply Sunday,
Leigh
P.S. Fast forward a month later, and I was stepping onto a crowded elevator at the Children’s Hospital where I worked. I stopped short and could barely catch my breath… right before me stood a very familiar looking couple. She was wearing a maternity hospital wrist band, commonly used to identify the parent of a hospitalized infant, but she didn’t look at me. He locked eyes with me, and I knew in that moment who they were. The couple from Target, clearly now in the hospital after their baby had been born, and appeared to still be receiving care.
A million thoughts, questions, and conversation starters ran through my mind. But as the elevator doors opened, and the couple stepped off towards the hospital cafeteria, I stood speechless. I said nothing, and simply walked the other way.
What were the odds that I would run into this couple again? My hospital is in a different city than my hometown, where I first met them at our local Target. Of all the hospitals in this region, this was the one where they were. The one where I worked. And yet, I said nothing.
Sometimes, I think God reveals things to us for no clear reason. Sometimes it brings closure; other times, confusion. We don’t always have to know the answer or the rationale to recognize the profundity of it all.
But one thing is true…We are all connected in this world; we all belong to each other in some way or another, and if we are lucky enough, we get to experience this in the most unexpected times.
Excellent post, Leigh. And as we social workers like to say, "Start where the CLIENT is", listen to THEIR story, reflect back to them what you're observing so they know they are heard and seen.
The unexpected meeting in the elevator 1 month later was surely a gift offered to you, confirming that your insistance she be treated like a human being that night in the Target paid off with her getting the medical treatment that she and her infant needed and deserved.