Our life tends to be pretty full. All I have to say is that we have two boys 18 months old and younger, and you parents will understand that our life is full these days. "Full" encompasses a lot: busy, joyful, tiring, rewarding, and sometimes scary. This week has taken it a little over the top. On Saturday night I walked outside to turn off the sprinkler. Up to that point it had been a pretty normal Saturday. After that it got interesting.
We have a few sheep. Why we have sheep and what we have learned is a story for another day. Two of our sheep have been pregnant. When I walked outside to turn off the sprinkler about 10pm, I heard the sounds of a baby sheep bleating. Lamb and momma looked healthy, but when I walked around, I realized that there was another newborn a few feet away, stuck in a wood pile. Thankfully this one was also healthy, although a little weak from struggling in the wood pile. I called a friend who knows more about sheep to ask a couple of questions, and he came over to check things out.
After he left, things began to get stranger. I found a home-made ski mask on the ground behind the house. All of you stuck in the grip of winter may think this is normal to find a ski mask. In the Dominican Republic, you don't need a ski mask for the cold. So I immediately went inside to find out whether there was an innocent explanation. In a Young Life household, props from skits and games with teenagers can frequently break out into daily life, but Rebeca and Sami had never seen the mask before. It was a sleeve from a black T-shirt that had been sewn up and had holes for eyes and mouth cut into it. Yet it was very small, so we were left wondering whether thieves were casing our house or my friend had been playing batman with his five-year-old.
I locked up the house, then went to bed about midnight. Rebeca is a night owl, and also addicted to a television series on NetFlix, so she stayed up watching the series and washing dishes. Yet she kept hearing strange noises outside. Several times she peeked out the window, but she could never see anything abnormal. When she came to bed at 2am, she told me about the noises, and as we were speaking we heard something that can't be explained by our dog or the night breeze, so I jumped out of bed and grabbed a flashlight and went to check things out. When I got to the kitchen, there was a 2x4 stuck between the door and the frame. While we are not always the neatest family in the world, my 2am brain quickly lept to the conclusion that there was a malevolent act in progress. The door was only secured by a slide lock up high since we have bars on the outside laundry area. When I stooped down to take a quick look at where the 2x4 led, there was a guy sitting on the floor who had already made it through the bars on the back porch and was about to make it through our wood door as well. I yelled at him, and ran to get an army surplus machete I keep in the bedroom and wake up Rebeca and Sami. The machete is evil looking, and I hoped that the look of it would be enough of a deterrent to keep me from actually having to use it. Rebeca got David into our room and started trying to get in touch with the local police.
Fortunately the thieves had not finished breaking down the door. We heard two motorcycles crank up and leave out at the street, but we also kept hearing noises. When you are juiced on adrenalin and fear, water dropping from the roof is a footstep and the rustling of leaves a crowbar prying. There is no 911 service here (they are starting it in the capital, but not in our small town). We called our local police station, and they responded "we'll see if I can find a patrol car to send your way" with a tone of voice that said "No blood? Nothing stolen? Don't bother us." After a few minutes we began calling friends with influence with the police and finally got one of them to answer that late at night. Five minutes later a police pickup truck with four officers arrived to see if there were still bad guys around. They had big guns, but no flashlights, so we loaned them a couple and made rounds with them of the outside of the house and the yard. The thieves had gone, but it was clear that it had been a minimum of 4 people. They had also been trying to break into the upstairs apartment that is furnished but unoccupied. Satisfied that the bad guys were gone, the police left and we locked back up.
As I sat with David (our 18-month-old) in the pre-dawn stillness my mind and heart continued to race. I struggled to keep from imagining new intruders. I prayed a lot. I gave thanks that in the end, the thieves had not stolen a thing except our sense of security. I had found them before the door gave way and not cornered them inside the house where they might have drawn a gun. After a while with these thoughts, I resorted to what I do in the face of challenges: I began to make a list of things we could do to increase our security. Yet I am very aware that our only true security comes from God. I could work hard, spend lots of time and money to beef up security and create new security processes in our family routine, but there will always be holes in our physical defenses. The Lord Almighty is our only true security. I am trying to help my trust catch up to my words and allow Him to be our refuge. Please pray for us in this process.
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