Dear Person,
I don't know why you thought it acceptable to come up my driveway
in the middle of the night and take something
out of my car that didn't belong to you.
You took a potentially deadly risk by wandering onto someone else's property uninvited
and intending to commit a crime.
Apparently, you were pretty desperate for cash to have risked
being targeted by our motion-detection light or confronted
(and maybe shot) by an angry homeowner.
What were you thinking when you tried all the door handles to see if they were unlocked?
Why are you wandering around in the middle of the night planning wrongdoings?
Who did you think you are, committing atrocities against another?
Where did you learn this behavior?
When did you plan to be a criminal?
How do you live with yourself?
I'll bet you don't give a second thought to the pain you cause
not only the victims of your crime, but the neighborhood as a whole.
Your only goal is to smoothly take something that you haven't earned;
your only thoughts are how to get away before being detected.
As my mind replays the past few days,
from the first discovery that you left my passenger-side car door slightly ajar after your act of piracy,
to the searching of the car and our house from top to bottom,
to the signing of the police report,
to the calling of the last store I was in the night before so the security personnel could check
all the cameras to make sure I'd gotten into my car with my purse
so I could narrow down the location of it,
to the notifying of my bank (and other institutions) that my information
had been compromised;
it has not even been the inconvenience of your misconduct
that has been the most troubling to me.
No.
What disturbs me is how difficult I have found it to want to go outside my own home,
for fear you may be still watching our movements with intent to commit more depravity.
What troubles me is that you did this in the yard of my new home and haven.
What demoralized me was that you took with you, a total stranger to me,
some of my most personal information and private belongings.
But even for all YOU chose to do, what is by far the MOST bewildering to me is,
my own reluctance to CHOOSE to forgive you.
Your actions have really challenged my faith.
Your blatant scheme kept me bound by fear and loss.
I completely had forgotten how to "keep calm and carry on".
And as I coped with the choices you made,
I too, was coping with the choices I was making.
Because of anger toward you, I was acting angry toward others.
Because of distrust toward you, I was acting distrustful of others.
Because of your desperation and fear, I was acting desperate and fearful.
And that's just not like me, my husband, friends, and family reminded me.
Almost hourly.
One of the reminders prompted me to remember who I am.
I am not of this world, I simply live in it.
I am called to change the world, not be changed by it.
I am not to store up treasures: a home, a car, a purse--
here on earth, I am to stockpile heavenly abundance.
Heavenly treasure is living now as if my heart is already in heaven.
My life should declare that I am not actually the legal owner of anything here on earth.
If I hold all my earthly possessions so closely to me that I cannot
hear the faintest call of God for any part or all of it,
my heart is still tethered to the earth and its resources.
I came here with nothing and I leave with nothing.
Dear thief,
did you know that you have played a part in my need for contentment?
After the hurt that you caused us, I can admit that we now understand more clearly
that it is not what we have that makes us rich or poor.
Criminal person,
I am so sorry that your life's circumstances and choices
caused you to behave the way you did.
I am praying and hoping that you will soon understand
AS I HAVE,
the great love that God has for you.
Loved one,
Maybe you have no one who cares about you or regularly prays for you.
Well, now you do.
I care, and I will be praying for you because I forgive you
because I have been forgiven, too.
Sharing at Amanda's Serenety Now: Weekend Bloggy Reading :: Link Up!
