This morning I counseled a young woman whose husband owns a gun. He put it in her ear at breakfast. Raisin bran, coffee and a gun in her ear. Her eyes were red and she sniffed. I handed her a Kleenex. Her 5 year old son leaned against her, his eyes dull as if trying to unsee what he had seen at breakfast. Though he knows more about guns and abuse than I ever will I asked a colleague to take him to the kitchen for juice while his mother and I talked. Life suddenly became intimate and intricate for me. I turned off my radio… the Captain & Tennille singing. "Love Will Keep Us Together." I slid my Chai latte grande behind the computer and asked her how I could help.
"I don't know." She said.
"Talk to me."
She did. She told me she felt worthless and she could never make him happy. She said she worried about her son. She said she was afraid to stay and afraid to leave. She said he would "track her down like a dog and kill her." He might. I don't really know. It has happened before, hasn't it?
I asked her if she would consider Safe Nest. "No," she said. "He will know where I went and the other women and children will be in danger."
For almost an hour I listened.
She hugged me before she left and told me she appreciated me. I had only listened. I had no solution for her and if I had, she may not have wanted it. People must do things in their own time and own way.
The lesson, of course, was for me. My Chai latte was cold and suddenly unimportant. My life is peaceful, no guns, no abuse. I eat breakfast in a sunny room with a cat purring in the next chair. I am blessed and this morning a young woman whose husband owns a gun, came to my office to remind me of that.
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