Jehovah's Protection...Stems From Obedience!

[Timl1980]

* I am not at liberty to say where this came from, and I have embellished the account greatly. 

 

But a very small experience from a faithful sister STILL deserves to be highlighted, even if I must obscure the facts to protect the person involved. 

 

I hope and pray that the lesson I personally learned from this experience shines through in this story...because I think it is paramount in relation to what we are facing today, in the very last of these last days!

 

 

Part One: Into the Fire

 

Maria Elena had driven through blizzards and tornadoes to see her mother, but she'd never driven through a city tearing itself apart.

 

The smoke columns appeared first, dark fingers scratching at the Minneapolis skyline as she crossed into the city limits.

 

Her aged Corolla's radio crackled with emergency broadcasts from all over Minnesota...ICE raids throughout the Twin Cities, protests erupting at detention sites, the mayor declaring a state of emergency. Maria reached over and switched it off. Her mother lay dying at Mayo, and that was the only emergency that mattered.

 

But the city had other plans.

 

At Lyndale Avenue, protesters flooded the intersection, their signs reading "ABOLISH ICE" and "NO HUMAN IS WORTHLESS." A young man with a megaphone pounded on her hood as she approached the stoplight, screaming and gesturing for her to honk in solidarity. Through her foggy window, she heard the chant: "If you're not with us, you're against us!"

 

"I'm sorry," Maria mouthed, hands steady on the wheel. "I need to get to the hospital."

 

"Then honk! That's all you we're asking... just HONK and show us you're with us!!" The leader's voice blared out as his face pressed close to her window. Several other people moved to encircle her car. "Unless you support these fascist raids?"

 

"I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses. We remain politically neutral." Maria said loudly, clearly, rolling down her window a couple of inches, feeling the instant bite of the cold air as it clawed it's way inside.

 

The words landed like a match on gasoline. The crowd's energy shifted, faces twisting from passionate to disgusted. "Neutral?" someone screamed. "While families are being torn apart?" The leader studied her brown skin, her tired eyes...his nose wrinkling in disgust.

 

"You're Latina and you won't stand with your people?" He spat on her windshield. "Coward. Traitor."

 

The light mercifully turned green. Maria inched forward through the crowd, their hands slapping her car, leaving frosted handprints like icy accusations. Her heart hammered, but she whispered the prayer that had carried her through her mother's diagnosis, through sleepless nights, through every test of faith: "Jehovah, help me walk through this fire."

 

Three blocks from Mayo, she abandoned her car in a parking garage. The streets were safer on foot...ICE vans and protesters couldn't corner pedestrians as easily. She pulled her winter coat tight, tucking her long black hair beneath the hood, and stepped into the chaos.

 

The hospital's cardiac wing felt like another planet...hushed, sterile, untouched by the inflamed city outside. Her mother slept, sedated and small, machines breathing for her. Maria kissed her forehead, walked back out to the waiting room and sank into a visitor's chair, finally allowing herself to cry.

 

That's when she noticed the girl.

 

In the next room, a teenager sat alone, frantically typing on her phone while tears streaked her face. Caucasian, maybe fifteen, wearing pajamas and mismatched socks. Maria recognized the look...abandoned by adults who thought they knew better.

 

"Are you okay, sweetheart?"

 

The girl...Sophia, according to her wristband...erupted in a mixture of fear, anger and frustration.

 

"The doctors just won't listen to me! They keep saying it's anxiety, but I know something's wrong with my heart. It races and skips and they just talk over me like I'm not even here!"

 

Maria sat beside her. For the next few hours, she forgot about the protests, forgot about her mother, forgot about everything except this frightened child who needed someone to see her. She helped Sophia document her symptoms, taught her to use medical terms the doctors couldn't easily dismiss. 

 

Then, a few hours later, when Sophia's heart monitor finally captured an episode, Maria was holding her hand.

 

"You saved my life," Sophia whispered after the nurse came and agreed to finally adjust her medication. "They finally believe me."

 

"You saved yourself," Maria squeezed gently. "I just reminded you that your voice matters."

 

Her mother was sleeping peacefully, so Maria decided to leave and go to the sisters house that had been lovingly provided by the HLC just outside of Minneapolis.

 

The security checkpoint at the hospital front doors was overwhelmed when Maria left. Guards were processing protesters who'd tried to block the ambulance bay. In the confusion, it wasn't until she'd walked six blocks that she realized, to her horror, that her handbag with her ID, green card, everything, it still sat beside her mother's bed!

 

The realization hit just as the black unmarked SUV pulled up alongside her.

 

"Ma'am? We need to speak with you."

 

Three ICE agents emerged, hands on weapons, eyes scanning her brown skin like a crime scene. Behind them, a woman lay on the sidewalk, blood pooling from her temple while protesters were screaming at other ICE agents for pulling her violently from her own car.

 

Without thinking, without hesitating, Maria rushed to her side.

 

"Don't move her neck," Maria commanded, her nurse's aide training taking over. "Someone call 911!"

 

"Ma'am, step away from the subject."

 

"She could have a spinal injury..."

 

"NOW!"

 

The agents surrounded her, the woman's blood still on Maria's hands. The lead agent, young and jumpy, gestured to his partner. "Check her status."

 

"I need to see identification," the partner said, his voice routine but firm.

 

Maria's stomach dropped. "I...I left it at the hospital. With my mother."

 

The young agent smiled coldly. "Sure you did." Two more agents moved in on either side of her, pinning her arms behind her back.

 

As the handcuffs clicked around her wrists, Maria heard her mother's voice from a thousand prayers ago: "Mija, sometimes Jehovah's protection looks like the very thing we fear most."

 

The van doors swung open like the mouth of a whale, ready to swallow her whole.