Thursday, July 31, 2014

What happened next

So this is a continuation of a post I started here.

Even in the midst of chaos and injustice, God was with us.  Even though we had wounds and were treated unfairly, He had us.  Even though the world tried to make us feel alone and isolated, God never left us.  He saw it all and was on our side.

We caused quite a crowd to gather and one of the people must have opened the gate that was trapping us.  Somehow we all got out of the gate and away from the canings. 

Once we were out of the gate and all had a moment to process what had just happened to us, I hear the boys shouting at me to look at one of the boys’ faces.  (He was the one that needed stitches.)  There was blood pouring out of his forehead.  The next thing I noticed was a Muslim man screaming and crying.  He was absolutely heartbroken over what he saw happen to us.  He was shouting at the guards and crying about the boy’s face.  He absolutely could not believe what happened and it was obvious that he was feeling our pain as if he was one of us.  He stood with us.  He realized the unfairness and defended us.  I will never forget that.  I don’t know that I would remember what he looked like, but I will never forget the urgency and pain in his voice.  He recognized injustice and stood against it, instead of joining the rest of the crowd delighting in the canings we received.  He urged us to go to the police and report what happened, so we went leaving him in his tears.

I haven’t had a good experience with the police here.  As we were walking to the police station, I wondered why I was even wasting my time.  I was sure they wouldn’t care or help us.  But we went anyway.  The man at the counter took our information, and sent us to buy medical forms to be filled out by a certified police doctor to be added to the file.  It was probably God’s leading that I went to the wrong place to buy the forms and had to go back to the right place. 

As I was waiting to buy the forms, a man came up and started talking to me.  I thought he was just some random person, so I didn’t take his questions so seriously.  Another man sitting there noticed that I was getting medical forms and that my neck was super red and told him he thought I had been assaulted.  I agreed that I had been and when he found out where, he got super annoyed and said he had enough.  At that moment, things started to happen.  He took me back to the office and demanded that they go and get the guards.  He listened to my story and sincerely cared.  He couldn’t believe that a man could beat my children or me.  He gathered a few people, we got in his car and went back to the school.  He took the guards by force and arrested them.  We went back to the station dropped the guards and then he took us back to the school to get our other visitors, boys and the things that were stolen from us during the scuffle.

As it turns out, the man was the one completely in charge of the station that day and is some high up inspector.  It was only by God’s grace that he found me buying those papers and anything was done.  If it wasn’t for that man, I know nothing would have happened.  The guards would have never been arrested.  There would have been no consequences for their bad actions.  But because God avenges for us, and sets the wrong right, we had justice.

When we went back on Monday with the medical forms, amazingly, the guards were still in custody.  I was sure that they were going to let them pay their way out.  But justice actually happened and they spent the night in jail.  We found the administrator of the school there trying to get them out and they wouldn’t let him until I made a decision of what I wanted to have happen.  They gave me the choice as to whether I wanted to go further with the case, or let them go.  The administrator begged me to be forgiving while the other man with him, just wanted to prove that it was our fault.  I wanted to be vengeful.  I wanted them to suffer and feel small like they made us to feel.  I wanted to abuse the power that I had, to decide what would happen to them, like they did to us.  I didn't want to show them mercy because they showed us none.  I almost made them stay just to prove the point that I could, but then I remembered how good God had been through it all and that revenge wasn’t mine to have.  I know God saw it all and despite the stories the guards told, I know God saw the truth and that we weren’t the ones that started it.  I know that He saw me defending one of His children and us getting beat as a result. I knew he wanted me to show forgiveness.  

I always tell the boys that one day we will all have to answer for our actions, so make sure you are always on the right side because you will be held accountable.   I know that we will all be held accountable for that day.  God will set it all right.  He will deliver justice.  And His justice is way better than any I could ever hope to deliver.  The guards apologized and so did the school, and we let it go. 


We just let it go…

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