Tender Mercies

I thought January was bad but February has not been any better! Our home was broken into on Wednesday and while it has been a traumatic experience I have seen first hand the Lord's tender mercies in my life. It all started with us not receiving our daily newspaper. I called the Republic and requested a new paper from their automated machine but was told delivery wasn't available in my area. That's stupid, was my first thought. But then I figured it was no big deal because I could just pick up a paper later and stop by the post office too. Jarom was home, pretending to be sick, so I figured instead of dragging him into a grocery store I would just drive over to the nearest store with one of those machines you drop a few quarters into and it gives you a paper.
About 9:30 we headed out and were only gone about 30 minutes before returning home. When I drove up to the house I noticed by front door was open. The security door was still shut but the door was opened. I just chalked it up to forgetting to close it. I parked the car and got the boys out of the van and as I opened the door into the house I saw our picture window had been broken out in the livingroom. I grabbed Jarom by the back of his shirt and we ran across the street to our neighbors while I called the police.
Apparently they were chasing the perpetrator around the neighborhood just as I called because my neighbor, from across the street, had seen him jump my fence initially and called the police first. So anyway they lost the guy but they know what he looks like and the car he drove so they'll probably find him. After calling the police I called Stacey (Allred) and totally fell apart on the phone and asked her to come over and stay with me. She raced over with her two boys and we loaded my boys in her van and the 4 of them played around while the police did their initial investigation of the house. After it was all clear they let me walk through it. Unfortunately these pictures don't really do justice to how much glass was all over the place. The guy broke a double paned window that is about 5 feet by 4 feet - it was a big mess. He made off with our new LCD TV, the x-box, all the games for it, both controllers, an area rug, and wouldn't you guess - half the cushions from each of our couches! Apparently he was getting frazzled trying to figure out how to get out of the house because the security door was locked, and the key hidden and every window in the house that opens up, Paul put a heavy piece of wood in each track so the windows can't be open. And to get the wood out you have to pull it out with plyers, you can't lift it with your hands. So he had no choice but to climb back out the window he broke, throw the cushions over our wall (that drops off like 9 feet) and throw the TV and x-box onto the cushions. He obviously cut himself from breaking the window and there were blood smears all over the place, so forensics came and took some samples for a DNA match. And then when I cleaned up the glass I found a bullet outside, so he obviously had a weapon which makes the charges against him more severe than typical breaking and entering. So anyway all this went down the day after my surgery and it was insane! But I contacted a glass company that came out that day and put in a new window, we've got all the paperwork for our insurance company started up and we are now looking at buying an alarm system for the house. Despite this being very stressful we were so blessed to have not been home when it happened, that our neighbor saw everything and called the police, that our home wasn't vandalized or severely damaged and that he only took things that we can replace and no one was hurt. There were so many tender mercies shown to us through this whole process - especially from our good friends Stacey and Emily (Mather). I can only feel gratitude and a little excitement over getting new couches!

No more pillows!

Who would take cushions?