Not Her Normal Day

Mary Ellen woke up thinking that it was going to be a normal day - a normal day going to school, a normal day hanging out with her friends, normal,normal normal. No one told her that this day, her world would rock.

The school bus was late. Freddy looked at the big watch on his skinny wrist and looked at Mary Ellen and shrugged. She wasn't one of the big kids, but she was bigger than him and and made Freddy feel safe. The two stood together and looked down the road for the bus that was late. Mary Ellen looked over Freddy's big backpack and saw trouble coming.

From opposite directions, two groups of boys sauntered toward the bus stop. If the school bus had been on time, Mary Ellen and Freddy would be long gone. They hated it when the bus was late. It wasn't safe. Mary Ellen grabbed Freddy and pulled him back into a bush. There wasn't anywhere else to be, the menace was on them.

The boys started trash-talking each other from half a block away. By the time they met, arms were waving and they were in each other's faces. More than one gun waved threateningly. No one was going to back down. No one was going lose face. Mary Ellen patted Freddy's arm as she held him close to her. She did it instinctively while she watched what she knew to be a preclude to violence. She'd seen too much of it at her young age. She worried. She wondered what to do.

And then she knew. She remembered Sunday School. She remembered the story about Jesus sleeping on the boat in the middle of a storm. The men on the boat were afraid that they would die so they woke Jesus up. Jesus made the storm stop, just like that. Mary Ellen was told all the time that, because she believed in Jesus, she could do the things that Jesus did. He did those things to teach us.

Mary Ellen let go of Freddy and stepped in front of him. The two gangs were circling each other and the first outbreak of violence was near. The little girl stood at the edge of the circle. She looked all around at the angry faces. She thought, "This is just like a bad storm." She felt the peace of God rise up inside her and she shouted,"Stop!"

And then, as if a movie switched to slow motion, all the angry faces and flying arms slowly stopped and turned. Something happened. If a little girl yelled in fear to stop, she would not have been heard. Perhaps she would have been hurt. That's not what they heard. Bewildered, all the boys turned to see how such a little girl could command such a voice of authority. They heard her voice amplify and ring through them. They "felt" the command to stop. They turned and studied her.

She met their stares and said more softly, "Just stop."

One by one, the once angry crowd drifted off, in peace. Freddy came out of the bush and stood looking up at Mary Ellen and held her hand. "How did you do that?" he asked.

"I'll tell you on the bus," she said as the bus pulled up to a stop in front of them.