What If I’m Wrong?

What If I’m Wrong?

My two eldest daughters and I stood in line for free popcorn while we waited for dusk to settle enough to watch the movie at the park. I smiled as I watched pre-adolescents in front of me: their summer tans and buzz cuts, their frizzed braids and oversized teeth as they joked around and laughed.

Toward my left, a man and woman strode up with two young girls.

My six-year-old, hair still wet from the splash pad, fidgeted as we waited in line. Behind me, the man said, “You’re going to have fun. We’ve never seen this before. This movie.”

It wasn’t his words so much as how he said them. I watched from the corner of my eye as he put his arm around the older girl, who was about my eldest daughter’s age. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and brown freckles. The girls were dressed up, their hair clean and combed. But I watched that older girl. She shied away from the man, even as the younger girl, about four, squealed while the woman gently lifted her into the air. That older girl’s movement—the duck of the head, the deadened brown eyes, the pulling away of her body from his—made me stand up straighter.

I looked at the man’s ropy arms, scrawled with smudged tattoos, and at his thumb nail, painted dull yellow. He wore a blue and white striped dress shirt, rolled at the cuffs, and jeans. He too was clean and combed, but there was something about him that made me hold my girls’ hands tighter. I listened to him talk about the fun they were going to have, about the Lunchables he had purchased, and then—not even knowing I was going to do it—I found myself turning around and looking down at that older girl.

Looking into her eyes, I asked, “Is this your mom and dad?”

The girl looked at me, but it was like she wasn’t looking. The “Dad” quickly responded. “I’m her daddy, and this is Miss Angela.”

I sensed he was lying, but I didn’t know how to prove it. I turned around and got two bags of popcorn. I went and sat down with my girls. I had to take them to the restroom twice, and each time, I noticed that couple and those two little girls. They stayed to the back of the park, and then they didn’t watch the movie but pushed the girls on one large swing. It was such a “normal” scene, and yet my alarm bells kept going off.

Chapters from my friend Julie Cantrell’s novel, The Feathered Bone, which addresses human trafficking, scrolled through my mind. A man and woman working together. A child not allowed to speak. An adult who spoke for her. How they stayed back from the crowd, near the bathrooms. It was dark. It was crowded.

But what if I was wrong?

Our baby was tired, and we were tired, too, so my husband and I packed up and left. We passed the man, woman, and two little girls. My husband walked slightly in front of me, carrying our things, and I called him back. I asked him to walk with us.

I told him, on the way home, what I had seen. How the little girl had not talked but the man had spoken for her. The frenetic way he had talked. How strange and scripted their conversation had seemed. My husband is not an alarmist, so when he agreed I should call the local police department, I did.

I waited until we were home and then stood on the patio while I gave a brief description of the couple and the little girls. The police officer said they would send someone to check it out. I hoped they would.

My husband went to bed. But I stayed up, for once not inwardly grumbling as I picked up baby dolls from the floor, and then I walked into my girls’ room and watched them sleep. I wanted to do something. But there was nothing I could do. Earlier, pacing in the kitchen, I had told my husband I should’ve taken that child and run. But I knew that wasn’t rational. I had my two little girls with me at the time, and what if I was wrong?

I remembered when I’d been out in the garden earlier that week. It’d been almost dark, and as I raked the ground, I damaged the roots beneath the plants I wanted to keep. I knew this because I could see the roots, and I could see the potting soil the plants had come in, dark brown flecked with white, that stood out against the reddish earth. Three times I accidentally raked too hard and pulled up roots. Three times I damaged the plants while trying to help them thrive.

I heard Jesus speak to me in that moment: Don’t use a rake when it’s better to do it by hand.

I believed Jesus was speaking to me about motherhood—about being careful to weed my daughters’ flaws without destroying the “root” system of their spirit. But in that moment, kneeling on the carpet between my daughters’ twin beds while they blissfully slept, I knew that Jesus had been talking to me about my future. About my life.

After the park, I felt so helpless while thinking of those two little girls. I wanted to do something. I wanted to pick up a metaphorical rake and hack at the weeds of injustice!

But that is not always the best way. All my own strength is not enough, and I may even do more damage than good. In difficult, unprecedented situations such as these, going in low and carefully is best and will bring the most fruit in the end.

Earlier today, I spoke with a friend who had been at the park last night. She had also noticed the strange couple. Later, she had seen the little girl crying while holding on to the woman and the man forcing the girl to hug him before carrying her away.

We were at a luncheon when I heard this, and I texted my husband and told him I was going to call the police again. To make sure they had sent someone. He told me that calling wouldn’t help. That they wouldn’t be able to tell me what they had uncovered, if anything.

And I knew that. I knew that. Maybe it was their dad and their dad’s new girlfriend, and everything seemed scripted because they were trying out the dynamics of their new relationship. But then why did that girl cling to the woman instead of to her “dad”?

So here I sit, at my kitchen table, trying to figure it all out while my girls play-fight on the couch behind me. I remind myself to start small in difficult situations. That using a rake may be fast and physically satisfying, but it could do more damage in the end. That getting down and gently tugging out roots is more intimate, time and labor intensive, but that some of the most difficult weed systems need to be pulled out by hand.

I will continue starting small in this difficult situation. But I will continue. I will keep my eyes, heart, and ears open to the needs around me, and I know that praying is one of the best things I can do while I wait to see, feel, and hear how I am to move.

Have you ever been faced with something so fully out of your control? How did you handle it?