There is a woman who works in my building who has we have helped on several occasions. She’s an absolute delight to help, because she’s always nice to us, and really appreciates our help. (There’s nothing like a customer who calls demanding your help, while at the same time treating you like a lowly peon. The type who is never happy with whatever answer we give. I despise working with people like that.)

Anyway, about year and a half ago, this woman told us that she was having problems, that her husband had started drinking, and wasn’t a very nice drunk. She said that her first husband was abusive and she was not going to that kinds of treatment anymore. But then he wanted to work things out, and stopped drinking, and things we’re better.

But for the past month things haven’t been so great: when I talked to her, she said he’d started drinking again. Then last week she told us that she was taking a job in the north east where her daughter lived. She’d put in her two weeks notice at work, and was looking forward to being close to her daughter and grandchildren again.

But she hadn’t yet told her husband she was leaving. Last I talked to her, she said she was getting ready to pack her stuff and tell him, but was pretty sure she’d be living out of a hotel her last days in town. I suggested that she have someone to help her—to know what she was doing and when, so that she could call them and let them know she was safe. She said that was a good idea, so I’m guessing she’ll arrange something with her daughter.

I’m glad that she’s taking control of her life, escaping from a bad—and possibly dangerous—situation, but the situation makes me mad. Here is a beautiful, kind, and intelligent woman, yet she has had two marriages to abusive men. Why do these things happen? In a just world, things like this wouldn’t happen, yet the do happen.

I truly hope that she finds happiness when she moves back home—moves to live closer to her children and grandchildren that she obviously adores. I just wish that there was some way that I could guarantee that happiness for her. That I could say to God, “Okay! Enough already! Give her a happy life from here on out.

But I don’t think that God is taking my calls anymore, if he ever did, and so I’m left with nothing but hope that things will work out for her, and a wish that there was someone to blame when things don’t turn out the way they should.