The Woman Outside the Bathroom Window

A Rainbow

God's Promise of Love

2 Chronicles 32:7-8 KJV
"Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles."

The woman outside my house had screamed for at least five minutes. Long, shrill, high-pitched cries came from outside the bathroom window as I prepared for my bath.

Someone help that poor woman! Why isn't anyone helping her? I wondered.

It was January 1989, and I was lost in my own thoughts in the bathroom as I listened to the woman outside. My son, who had been kidnapped by my husband in December, had been missing for a month now, and we still had few leads in our search for him. 

My last four weeks had been consumed with trips from Georgia to Ohio and Kentucky to pursue leads, to consult with my detective, to talk to old friends, to see if I could find any clue to the whereabouts of my four-year old.

At night, I would search city streets in Lexington, Kentucky, looking in vain for our missing van and hoping to stumble upon the man I most and least wanted to meet in a dark alley.

When I lay down to sleep, I was chased by nightmares fueled by my fears. Bloody images of my husband and son surrounded me as the story always resolved itself in my troubled psyche in tragic images of death.

I couldn't sleep; I didn't rest during the day, I had to try to teach when I was in Georgia, and when I was in Ohio with my parents, or in Kentucky looking for the man who would eventually become my ex-husband, my principal would call from Georgia to tell me he didn't know how long he could keep my job available for me.

I told him to do what he had to do. My son came first in my life, but then new fears arose in me.  How would I survive without a job?

Fear chased me all day for over two months during the search for my son. I didn't realize how much I had been broken by my fears and lack of rest and the stress and the pressure until the evening in my bathroom as I prepared for my bath and heard the woman's cries.

As I listened to her, I began to pay more attention to her voice. Then I began to pay more attention to me. I was sobbing. Sitting on the toilet, sobbing. Crying. Screaming. Outside of myself.

I was stunned when I realized I was the woman outside the window crying for help. I reached deep inside myself and pulled myself together as I prayed, Please, Lord, HELP me!

He did.

Fear is a horrible place to be in life. I know. I have seen its darkness. God helped me get through it. Now, whenever I get afraid, I look to God's hand first. I know now not to wait until I reach a breaking point to seek God for help.

I found my son a little over two months after he was kidnapped, but that didn't mean life was immediately a bed of roses for us.

God's mercy and grace carried us then and still carries us today.

I can't allow my fear to control me, and God has helped me fight fear through the years. That was a dark place in my life, and a night I rarely talk about; however, God is faithful and strong, and He can face whole armies.

What do I have to fear, if He is on my side?
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Lord, thank you for healing and restoring the woman outside my house that fearful night in Darien.