The Conversation.

On Friday, since the day was nice and the breezes gentle, I went up to sit under a covered deck on the third floor of the building where I work to take a few minutes to engage in prayer and take a break from writing year end evaluations.

I had only been seated a few moments when I began to hear bits and pieces of a woman shouting in anger from the street below. I stood, looked over the balcony and saw a young woman I work with, angrily yelling through a rolled down window at a man seated in the driver’s seat of a car parked in one of the angled parking places near the entrance of our building.

Her back was mostly turned toward me so I could only see her face part but I could see enough to know this was not just a disagreement I was observing but a full on confrontation. She is actually very lovely and while I did not know her well, she had always been very sweet and kind. As an IT support person, her job was to trouble shoot workstations issues and I had never seen her be anything but patient and helpful. Yesterday, however, her features were twisted with anger, her face red and she gestured and pointed wildly at the man in the car.

Because of distance, I could only hear snippets of what she was screaming. Things like, “I can’t believe you would do something like this” and “After all of our time together to have you suddenly change your mind” and “There is no going back now.” She suddenly turned and stormed away through the front door of the building. The man continued to sit in the car and I could see him shaking his head back and forth and pounding the steering wheel with one hand. It was only then I observed there was a third person there, a woman sitting in the passenger seat of the car who was also waving her hand in a way which clearly demonstrated she want the man to drive them away. After only a few more moments, he backed out of the parking spot and sped away with his tires spinning as he accelerated.

I sat back down so I could re-engage my breviary but just then the young lady burst through the doors and out onto the deck. She looked over and saw me sitting there. She locked eyes with me, her features drawn and pinched. Realizing I must have overhead the encounter with the man in the car in the street, she burst into tears and kept repeating, “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry,” shaking her head back and forth.

I got up, went over to her, and putting one hand on each shoulder, guided her into a chair. I sat next to her and just waited. She quickly regained her composure and wiped the tears away as best she could. Without looking at me she began to talk. Slowly at first, spilling out parts of sentences which did not make much sense. Then seeming to gain momentum, she told me the story. It is a quite simple story, really, and one that is all too common.

She had been married for a couple of years to a man she been in a relationship with for over 8 years before the wedding. They had traveled through Europe and worked on fishing boats in Alaska together. She worked as an IT support person and as waitress to support the man while he finished his degree and became a CPA. It was time, she thought, for children. It was time, he thought, to fall in love with someone else and leave.

When the story was done she finally looked at me with a face which had given up anger but had fallen into sorrow. I told her I would pray for her because that is what I do best. Finally smiling, even if it was just slight, sly smile and said she had heard I was a monk or something like that. I smiled back and told her, yes, I am something like that and invited her to seek me out again if she wanted to just talk. She said she would consider it but we both knew it is unlikely another meeting will take place. For her sake, I hope we don’t if it is because she has to once again talk herself back from the abyss of anger.

There is one more thing. Now I can ask you all to pray for her as well. Pray she will be blessed in ways only God knows best for her.