Thankfully Thwarted

My brother is to be married next month to a woman that is a delight to both side of her soon~to~be~enlargening family. Aubrey is extremely sensitive and strong, with a depth of compassion for others and a deep desire to continually sharpen her character and integrity serving as a continual inspiration to me. She is a blessing.

This beautiful woman was accosted last week by a would~be carjacker at 4:00 in the afternoon. While waiting in her car at an intersection for the light to turn green, with her driver side window rolled down (it was over 100 degrees that day, as is the wont for most of California in August), Aubrey reached across to retrieve something out of her briefcase, sitting on her passenger seat. When she leaned back, an enormously large man with several gold teeth was leaning into her car through her drivers' side window. Almost in her lap, he physically pinned and threatened her, demanding that she "Give me something now,*$&#! &%*! Give me something!"

Remarkably, Aubrey maintained such brilliant wits about her that she FLOORED her ignition with this man still halfway into her car. Speeding out into the intersection and into cross-directional traffic, she miraculously and thankfully did not cause an accident, and her action forced this huge man to let go of the car within a few seconds. Immediately rolling her window back up, she drove a few miles to a a safe spot to pull over and recover herself before safely finishing the drive into the quite anxiously waiting arms of my brother.

She was shaken and angered when relaying this incident to me, but grateful not to have been seriously injured. I found that while my initial reaction was immense relief and gratitude for her safety, not far behind that sprung ANGER and disbelief at the tragically poisoned nature of a persons' character that would lead him to perpetrate such an act onto another. The thought process required to believe himself so ENTITLED to accost and potentially harm a random stranger, ostensibly for her belongings, wholly eludes and achingly frustrates me.

There are an awful lot of sick tickets out there. My husband is a police officer ~ I hear some awfully vivid first~person accounts which regularly bring this reality home. I am not naieve. But when one such individual comes perilously close to harming my own immediate family, I find it, at times, difficult to resist the urges to fill my mind with blazing images of the dangers we face in living our everyday lives in this nation and become a bit paralyzed by fear-driven bewilderment. That a women driving alone could be so openly accosted in broad daylight at an intersection and no one came to help?? For goodness sakes, it is awful and maddening. An already turmultuous sense of safety is wavering even more for me upon digesting this news. I suddenly feel so vulnerable and at risk, after listening to my dear future sister~in~law's musings about the unsafe world we tread in. For the life of me, there are some elements to the manifestations of sin nature that I am incapable of understanding.

I am deeply thankful that my future sister~in~law was spared any lasting trauma from this frightening assault. She will heal and rebound from this happening in due course. But in the meantime, the mundane and unpredictable dangers of those who prey on people at random were brought home through her experience. And I am left haunted.