No one likes to learn through tragedy. However, if we allow ourselves to be students, we can learn something in every situation. As a result of our home break in, I believe the Lord showed me a few things. Some occurred to me immediately, some after the fact, but all spoke to me.

Life is Precious 

There are many things we can lose in life or that we can have stolen from us, but nothing is more precious than life itself. Life cannot be replaced, things can. Some of the “things” taken were of sentimental (and monetary) value: one was the watch my wife gave me on our wedding day with a personal inscription on it and the other was a much treasured ring my mother gave me years ago.  Again, though, these were just “things”. Let me tell you about the truly precious things.

First, I have to mention that my wife (who works from home and is alone every day) was not home the day of the break in. She was off on a trip for a few days. You can only allow your mind to think of what could have befallen a woman home alone with little or no defense after being taken by surprise. I was very grateful she was not here during the break in. I am very grateful she will not have to live the rest of her life suffering from physical and or emotional scars from this. I am also very grateful that she is with me here today.

When I got home and looked at what had happened (broken glass everywhere and lights on all over the house), my attention was  immediately drawn to our little Glory (English Cocker Spaniel) who is very up in her years and is now blind and deaf (defenseless).  She was standing in a pile of broken glass just on the other side of the door. She was waiting for someone to come and restore peace again. I immediately grabbed her out of the glass, checked her for cuts, and put her in a safe place. The next thing I did was to look for my cat. Thank God, she was unharmed as well.

I shudder to think of what could have happened to a small dog that just got in the way of someone trying to move through my house very quickly before being noticed. She could easily have been kicked, beaten, killed, or even thrown outside to roam aimlessly in the cold to freeze to death. The same could have happened to my cat. I did find a heavy iron lug wrench (tire iron) on my bed.  Who knows what runs through the mind of someone who breaks into a home? I was very thankful that both pets were unharmed. When we weigh our losses in something like this, our priorities immediately become defined.

I think too often in the materialistic society we live in; “things” become too important to us. The stuff we accumulate in our lives can increase to an unhealthy value. We should never want to be at the place where we begin to devalue life.

Your true friends step up and prove themselves in times of adversity

As I mentioned in the initial article, I was on the phone with my friend on the way home from work. We had plans to get together, but we did not plan our evening to go the way it did. When I got home and called my friend, he was on his way – immediately. When he got to my house, his presence was a true sense of peace to me. My thoughts were going in a thousand different directions. He stepped in, helped restore order to my home, helped clean up all the broken glass, fixed my broken door (for the time being), and offered to stay the night if I needed (after he had stayed long into the night already). His being at my side calmed me down and enabled me to regain my wits again.

The next day, my friend and his brother came to help replace my broken door with a new one. I am able to do quite a few things around the house, but tear out a door (frame and all) and put in a new one is not one of them. My friend’s brother is a carpenter (a very good one). My friend picked me up in his truck, took me to pick out a door, brought it back to my house, and his brother was there to put it in. By Sunday everything was restored to normal (physically in the house) and my wife did not have to come home to the effects of what I witnessed. 

Proverbs 17:17 tells us “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity”. I think if we can go through life and honestly say we have one or two TRUE FRIENDS, we have been truly blessed. How many people can we count on to be there for us at any time, and under any circumstances? We must count these people as gifts from God and treat them as such.

More to follow – (and these won’t take as long- I promise!)