Hurricane Ashley

Remember that woman in Atlanta, Ashley Smith, who was all over the news a few months ago because she convinced that Atlanta courthouse gunman, Brian Nichols, to turn himself in after a shooting spree?

"During the ordeal, Smith says, she pulled out Rick Warren's book "The Purpose-Driven Life" and read to Nichols a chapter called "Using What God Gave Me" to gain his trust."

It was an amazing story: Christian woman uses her faith to quell a violent murderer. Very uplifting. An inspiration to Christians everywhere.

Well - turns out, "What God Gave Her" was some crystal meth.

From Yahoo.com:
"In her book, "Unlikely Angel," released Tuesday, Smith says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord. She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, and she dug into her illegal stash of crystal meth instead."

God really does work in mysterious ways. And so what if it took a little crystal meth for God to use this woman to stop a raging madman.

"It's hard for people to understand the miracle of the story," she told the newspaper. "This was totally a God thing, to me in my life. This was God getting my attention, going, `I'm going to give you one more chance.'"

Whoa! Now this is "mysterious!" We all got it backwards. God didn't use this woman to stop a murderer! He used the murderer to stop this woman...from using drugs! Four people died so this woman could realize, "Hey, maybe I shouldn't do crystal meth anymore."

You want mysterious ways? That's some fucking mysterious ways.

But, you know, sometimes God has to do things like this. It's not like he didn't try other things. The woman's drug use had already caused her to lose custody of her five-year-old daughter, her husband had died a few years earlier from a stabbing in a bar brawl and...

"She writes that she asked Nichols if he wanted to see the danger of drugs and lifted up her tank top several inches to reveal a five-inch scar down the center of her torso — the aftermath of a car wreck caused by drug-induced psychosis. She says she let go of the steering wheel when she heard a voice saying, "Let go and let God."

Clearly every single other "mysterious way" God had tried to get this woman to stop doing drugs had failed. Come on! It doesn't get much more mysterious (or nonsensical) than whispering "Let go and let God" right before you make someone ram their car into a telephone pole. So God just did the next logical "mysterious" thing - he made this guy kill four people and look for a hideout in her apartment.

And now - six months, one book deal, and $70,000 in reward money later - she's off the drugs.

Chalk up this little turn of events next to God using Hurricane Katrina to stop the gays, and it's been a very ruthless and succesful year for Christianity.

Praise the Lord.