The Uninvited Thief

The thief comes to steal … he sneaks into our back yard, steps onto our back porch and breaks the window pane in our door, walks through our home as if he owns the place. Self-serving, he had the gall to walk up the stairs to our bedroom which means he had to walk through our living room to find the stairs. He rummaged through our drawers looking for anything to take. The thief comes not only to steal inexpensive sentimental jewelry, but childhood memories and special gifts from restored relationships. The silly earrings I purchased when I worked at Newtown drug store when I was twenty. The silver heart locket that my best friend Dawn gave me in high school, still held her friendship note. Gone were my husbands special sterling silver pins. Gone were earrings I bought in California, a trip to begin restoration with my mom. My vintage wedding jewelry … gone.  A large sum of money that we received three days prior was tucked away to pay bills. Gone.

Then there was the cheap plastic hand held video recorder. I don’t care about the device so much as the memory he stole. A trip to Park City, Utah so my husband could reunite with the Block and Tackle band I’d heard so much about. After all the stories of back in the day, I was excited to hear them play and record their reunion. Thankful for the photo I took, but the music was gone.

Curtis’ dad was a ski instructor, skied Tuckerman’s wearing old leather ski boots and wooden skis and worked on top of Mt. Washington. His vintage ski pins were gone. I know he or they exited through our dining room because our business camera was in that room. Instead of taking our pillowcases, they grabbed Curtis’ red day pack to dump everything in and sort through their plunder later.

About a week before we were robbed Aunt Donnie gave me, Burn’s Poetical Works, which my grandmother Ivis had passed onto her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The burglar didn’t care to take the old brittle black book, but he would have had to pick it up so he could dump my great grandmother’s jewelry into the red day pack. Jewelry that laid carefully on the poetry book waiting for a proper home. Jewelry my aunt entrusted to me when she gave me the book.

The thief’s actions brought police to our home who wouldn’t let me in until they checked it out because he could have been hiding. Now I had a new bunch of strangers walking through our home and bedroom. I wanted to see the crime scene for myself, but I had to trust their badge, their report. I questioned the truth. How do I know they didn’t pocket things also? I believed that the police didn’t steal anything. It’s just in the immediacy of the violation I was shocked and couldn’t believe any of it happened at all. I just wanted something to make sense.

Shouldn’t your home be your sanctuary? A place to express yourself, rest, recharge, restore? At least that has been my goal. But when we were robbed, I mean burglarized, I no longer felt safe. I was violated. For the longest time when I came home from work, I entered with trepidation and locked doors. I no longer felt safe and when Curtis went on business trips I brought a shovel into the house, slept with a bat next to my bed and 911 at my fingertips. Every noise took on a new meaning. Fear of a different kind crept into my comfort zone.

I found that as I walked up the stairs and got closer to our bedroom, my stomach turned ill.

It didn’t take long to realize that it was because I was walking in the same path of our enemy.

It was bad enough that the enemy entered our home, but he had the audacity to enter our inner sanctuary, to cross the threshold of our bedroom. He had to walk over there to that side of my bed to open my drawers that he rummaged through. He touched my jewelry. My clothes. He saw where I kept my personals. My sentiments and my memories. Our cat Lacer witnessed the whole thing. He stole from me and my husband and left me violated. I curled up and cried. I felt sick and trapped because moving wasn’t the answer. I was angry and now guarded again in a new-old familiar way.

The only thing I could do was change the path that I walked on. I had no control over what the enemy did to me, but I had control over what I did with the stench of his residue left on the scene.

So I rearranged the bedroom furniture, vacuumed and mopped the floor and polished every surface of furniture that evil had touched. Eventually the knots in my stomach subsided, the shovel went back in the shed and the bat still collects dust.

I rearranged my walk by redirecting the path into our room.

The thief has tried to rob me many times. He came to rob my childhood, rob our home, our jobs, our marriages. He makes me think I’m fat and keeps me fat because his damn foot is on the scale and I know he screws with my wardrobe. He attempts to kill my dreams, steal my joy, implant fear and take my peace.  He knows just where to hit me in the gut so why not sprinkle infertility and whisper, you’d be a lousy parent anyway because he knows that I grew up abused and afraid of the dark. That my feet once hurt from the corridor of eggshells when I feared dad’s headlights coming up the driveway. He knows I want a sense of family, to be loved, needed, have purpose and to be safe. Now the oak trees grow and block the sun making it harder to grow wild flowers when that is what I enjoy. The enemy will attack on the matters of my heart and soul.

He steals, steals, steals. At least he tries.

These are the days to guard my heart and pay attention to the lies of the fierce battle.

The thief tapped into my reservoir of past pain, stirring up the day to day uncertainty of never knowing what physical force or intimidation my dad would impart. I thought I had overcome that fear. Well the fact is I had, it’s just ongoing work. So perhaps he attacked to trip me up again. Well he did, for a little bit. The thief attempted to make me regress and paralyze me with fear.

But you see, this time … I recognized the enemy.

Apparently he is the one who is stupid because

he didn’t remember that my past made me a fighter! (link)

 

He messed with the wrong person then, and now, because I buried my fear in October 2012! (link)

With effort, I fight the illusion of fear.

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (link)

 

Turns out my husband’s bible was in the red day pack that the thieves stole. I wonder, if after they sorted through our things which held more sentiment than monetary value, if they found a better way to look at their life?

What has tried to steal from you and redirect your path,

but you refuse to let it or them win?

Spring ushers in life after the dead of winter and gives me eternal hope. I am thankful God put Curtis in my life because he has provided love, stability and encouragement while I work through my past!

NOTE: what I learned about the difference between robbery and burglarized: When I made the mistake of saying we were robbed, I was corrected. We were burglarized. Both mean taking someone’s property. However, a robbery involves person-to-person interaction with force, intimidation, and/or coercion.