You know how you never realize what you take for granted until it is taken away?

My sense of security in my own home was taken away from me last week.

I was about to get Sweet Pea up from her nap and go pick Little Bug up from preschool when I heard a knock on my door. I went to go see who it was and it was my next door neighbor and her 8-month-old baby girl.

I opened the door to a very panicked neighbor who said, “Elaine! My house was just robbed!! I left to run errands and came home and stuff is everywhere!!”. (The thieves had actually robbed TWO houses – my next-door neighbor and her next-door neighbor!)

As the morning went on we learned more of what had happened.

I’m not going to get into those details here but I will say a few things.

Because of surveillance cameras that were running we know that the robbers were there between the two houses for about one hour, our garbage man most likely saw the robbers but had no idea what was going on and my next-door neighbor missed coming home on the robbers by just seven minutes.

We had put out a play kitchen on the curb the night before trash pick up hoping someone would want it and pick it up. I almost went outside when I heard the garbage truck coming down the street because I wanted to see if the kitchen had been picked up by someone going through people’s trash.

But I decided not too. Or rather, God protected me from going out there because had I gone out, I would have seen the robbers walking out with stuff and getting in their car to drive away.

Part of me wishes I had seen them so we could perhaps have a description of these fools to give to the police.

But then I know that God obviously didn’t want me out there because I decided against going out to check on the kitchen. Inside I was working on the huge task of gathering all our toys and switching them around to make things like “new” to the girls. (By the way, this works like a charm. The girls play with “old” toys as if they’ve never seen them before.) So I was busy doing that and had a limited amount of time to get all the toys put away before I needed to leave to pick up Little Bug from preschool.

Needless to say, that night I could hardly sleep and the day after all this happened I was a Nervous Nelly the entire day. I kept the alarm set all day long, which, before this happened, was not something I did (I do now!) and I even asked Dave if he could just work from home that day. (He could not.)

I found myself battling “living in fear” vs. being aware of changes that we can do around our house to make our house less desirable to break in.

Battling the fear has been hard, though, but I refuse to live in fear.

God has not given me a spirit of fear. He is my protector and those are the things I need to force my mind to think about when I am laying in bed at night trying to go to sleep and my mind only wants to think about what could have happened to my neighbor and her daughter had she not decided to stop for CFC on her way home from running errands or what could have happened had I stepped outside and seen what was going on just next door.

It’s just unnerving. And my baby girl was sleeping just feet away from these people!! You think you are safe in your own home and then something like this happens right next door and suddenly my sense of security left with the robbers in the red car!

But I know WHERE my security comes from. And it is not in the best alarm system or having a dog (FYI: apparently thieves don’t mind small, yappy dogs because my neighbors have TWO and they still broke into their house) or having surveillance cameras on my house.

My security comes from the LORD and knowing He is in control of it all.

I am just so thankful of His protect over my neighbor’s family and my family that day.

And I am thankful for being made aware of things we can do to make our homes more secure. My neighbor’s now have a security alarm and we are going to have our security system upgraded this week. We are also putting two motion detector lights on the outside of our house and then…we will continue to trust in the Lord for His protection over us all.

- Elaine