Even when it’s not easy …

Some­times it’s hard to know what to do.  Some­times there’s a social bar­rier that makes it dif­fi­cult.  Once in a while, you know what to do, there’s noth­ing stop­ping you — but your­self.  Your mus­cles freeze up, you just stand there star­ing.  Sure you want to help, but you can’t — your body doesn’t want to.

That was tonight.  But I had backup. Let’s take it from the top.

A lit­tle girl (and I mean little…try 4 or 5 years old) was run­ning across a large park­ing lot in a shop­ping cen­ter.  Every few feet she’d stop and look back behind her, as if run­ning from trou­ble.  I glanced her way, but didn’t look for lok, think­ing there’d be one of her par­ents behind her with the claws and play-scary face try­ing to catch her.  But there was no one.  I looked, watched and thought.  Something’s not right here.  A lit­tle girl, no par­ents, no super­vi­sion, busy park­ing lot, and all of this not in one of the best parts of town.

As I watched, my coworker used his brain.  He had a dif­fer­ent point of view.  He was in the dirver’s seat and saw her in his rear-view mir­ror while backingout of his park­ing space.  He actu­ally never started mov­ing.  for me, I was ready and will­ing to stop him from run­ning her over, but couldn’t bring myself to take action to find why she was there in the first place.  He got out and called the police, and got back in his truck and fol­lowed her to the gas sta­tion at the corner.

The girl was help­less and scared.  He asked her if she was lost, she was.  Her mother had goten upset and told her to go back to daddy’s house — which hap­pened to be across the park­ing lot and a major street, not to men­tion the side streets that link those together.  As best I could tell, dad was at least a quar­ter mile away.  And she was alone.

A lady pulled up to my coworker as he calmed the lit­tle girl down and gave her a com­fort­ing smile.  The lady offered a hoodie and waited with them until the police arrived.  The police took­the girl to dad’s house then when to ask moma few questions.

I don’t know her name, but pray for her fam­ily.  And for my coworker, Jay, thanks for doing what’s right and giv­ing help and hope to a lit­tle girl when it may not have been easy.