"He's going to kill you." I said, as the very man I was accusing watched football and smoked a cigarette in the next room, "He's going to kill you…and your children are going to watch it happen."

She nodded. Rarely do I speak so bluntly. But tonight I had to. I don't know if there is any woman in this neighborhood that I care for more than Evelyn. Our friendship came about clumsily. At first she was cool and distant but soon we would sit and talk in her kitchen, hardly noticing the time that had passed. I learned that - a lifetime ago - she came from a middle-class family and even finished high school. But she got pregnant, married an abusive man and quickly became addicted to crack and heroin. Now she's miles from her family emotionally and physically, mother of five children and living with another violent man. She survives in poverty, living off of government handouts and day labor.

Evelyn almost died last night and now I was sitting with her as she lay curled up on the couch, unable to move without excruciating pain. I had come over as soon as I got the call from the hospital that she needed a ride home. And in the hours I sat, metered out her pain killers, fed her children and held them in my arms…Evelyn, the kids and even her boyfriend told me bits and pieces of what happened the night before.

They started drinking after a dinner provided in a food box from the catholic church. A large portion of the day's wages was exchanged for as much beer as they could carry from the bar across the street. This was their nightly ritual. They sat on the porch and popped the caps into the gutters. Everyone was laughing at first. It was sometime before midnight that the fights began. She started it. Just like always. She threw the first punch. Sent the first bottle sailing across the small, dirty kitchen. But he finished it. The children watched as their father stormed across the cluttered room and picked up a chair. If he would have thrown it at her head she might not have survived but it landed in her stomach, breaking her ribs. And then for six hours her children watched as she struggled to breath and they listened as their dad, nursing another beer, yelled, "Let her die. Let her die. If you call the cops I'll kill myself! I swear I will!" Finally at six in the morning a neighbor called the paramedics. Evelyn, still hungover, swore up and down that she fell on the porch railing. Her insistence tied the hands of the police. He should have left the house in the squad car but instead she left in the ambulance.

And now Evelyn was entirely out of sorts. I held my breath as she poured painkillers into her hand. She cursed loudly at her boyfriend. She swore she was kicking him out but I'd heard this before…when he busted her nose, when she broke the kitchen table, when he last threw her across a room.

I wanted to talk more but she was in too much pain to do anything but scream at her boyfriend and children. Her oldest daughter, Marissa, sat on a mattress lying on the floor. She cried, falsely claiming her tooth hurt. I got up to go sit with her and wrapped my arms around her skinny body. She cried and I whispered, "It's not supposed to be like this. What happens here is wrong."

"Get up! The baby's crying. Don't just sit there, Marissa!" Evelyn screamed from the couch. Marissa pushed my arms away and stumbled into the other room to scoop up her baby sister.

I had held her for barely thirty seconds. She rested her head on my chest and clutched her hands into mine.

Late that night, back at my own home, I grew a little impatient. I wanted God to come back now and solve this mess. As generations have slipped past I've found little comfort knowing that for the Lord "a thousand years are like a day". So in the currency of heaven He's been gone two days. Lot of good that does Marissa. But that same verse won't leave me. In fact, it spins around my head and turns inside out. If a "thousand years are like a day" than Jesus' bed sheets are still warm and if a "day is like a thousand years" six hours of wondering if your mom was going to die is decades ticking on the wristwatch of God. Those moments when Evelyn struggled for each breath might have felt to her like a year…but it was an eternity to God. Because if everyday is like a thousand years then He knows the depth of each moment we suffer.

We wonder how kids like Marissa make it. How moms like Evelyn raise five children. How do they survive? Just maybe it's because a day is like a thousand years. God is beyond time, but to put it into human terms we must say that God is all time. And so he spends generations on a girl like Marissa. He refuses to let his children sit alone while their moms abandon them and their dads destroy their bodies.

Our days tick along in predictable minutes, seconds and hours. But God can pour 20 years of his compassion, kindness and power into a mere month of our pain. This is why the wicked won't prosper in the end and why God's children know a peace indescribable. God is constantly filling us with strength. At a rate that flows faster than despair.

God is simply deeper. He pours himself into our breaks and over our bruises. Our most painful minute is worth decades to him. I held Marissa for barely half a minute, I've sat in the kitchen with her mom at least an hour every couple of weeks for a year and a half…to me these were seconds, minutes and hours - but to God - ages of grace, generations of mercy and eternities of hope.

* all names and identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity. © Amy Beth Augustin Barlow 2003