Two weeks ago I was laying in my bed watching the local evening news, taking in all the gruesome details of peoples lives gone wrong, as is my nightly ritual. Little did I know that one of the stories was about to hit very close to home. I wasn’t really prepared to have Bob Evans tell me, in his most horrified and shame-on-you voice, that my old friend and neighbor (who I wrote about here) had just had charges filed against her for felony forcible sexual abuse. She was a teacher at a local high school, and had been caught having an affair with one of her 16 year old students. She was fired from her job, and was now facing 1-15 years in prison. My mind went numb.

You see, when she lived by me, and we saw each other every day, I would have sworn on a stack of Holy Bibles a mile high that she was one of the most normal, average people I knew. I knew she had problems with her husband from time to time (who doesn’t?), and I knew she had lots of problems with her husbands family(nothing new!), and I knew at times she was unhappy in her life (who isn’t?), and that she struggled to parent two young children(hello? sound familiar to anyone?). What I don’t know is how she got to the point of feeling so helpless in her life that she made a choice that would absolutely force a change.

I believe that this is what happens to so many people. They feel so unhappy and powerless to change their world, that they make choices that are effectively like dropping a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the middle of their life. I guess they do this in the hope that they can rise up out of that rubble, dust themselves off, and go on to find happiness somewhere else. After they get out of prison, or what ever.

And I guess I have been so shaken by this because I have been forced to wonder if this could have happened to me? I am so ashamed to admit this, but I have been totally guilty of being a passenger in about 95% of my life. And it’s possible I’ve heard the Enola Gay doing fly by’s over my house once or twice. It’s a scary thing. A big scary thing that I don’t have a lot of answers for. But I do know that I want to be a driver in my life. I don’t want the Manhattan Project cooking out in my garage to make my choices for me. I want to make my life happen, and not just let it happen to me. And I don’t ever want to end up on the 10 o’clock news.