February 15, 2008 will be a day that will live vividly in my memory for a long time. My wife was away on a trip, it was Friday, and I was headed home from work. I was on the phone with my friend (we had previously arranged to go out for dinner) and I had just a few minutes until I reached my house. I got to the driveway, retrieved the mail out of the box, hit the overhead door opener and headed for the garage. It was almost 6:30pm and I guess I didn’t notice that the lights were on in the house.

As I got out of the garage and headed up the back steps, I noticed the inside entry door was open and the lights were on. As I got to the door I looked inside and saw our little dog standing in a pile of broken glass. The glass had been broken out of the door and the trim was torn off the wall and laying on the floor. I wasn’t sure what to make of things at first. A flood of emotions hit me at once: fear, uncertainty, anger – for a moment I was beside myself. I of course got our dog out of the glass and immediately called my wife.

We have a friend that comes over to look after our dogs and let them out when my wife is gone. I didn’t know if some kind of accident happened or what. I even got delusional to the point that I thought it possible the dog or cat ripped the trim off the wall. When my wife answered the phone, unfortunately, she experienced ALL of my emotions. I demanded she give me our friend’s phone number so I could call to possibly get some answers. It turned out that our friend didn’t come over that day. As I walked through the rest of the house, I found most every light on. Then I opened the door to the bedroom and I had my answer.

The bedroom had been ransacked - dresser drawers opened, the mattress moved, stuff laying around everywhere.  I immediately knew what happened. Our home was broken into. At this point I called the police. I called my friend who I had previously scheduled dinner with and told him what happened. He hopped in his truck and arrived minutes after the police. I called another friend from work and he told me to get out of the house - probably good advice, but that never entered my mind – I had already been through the house to see that my uninvited guest had made his way all throughout the house. He was long gone. I was left feeling completely and utterly violated.

In my next posts, I want to share some valuable things God showed me as a result of this horrific day.  Stay tuned.