Last Friday was just one of those days that basically nothing went the way I wanted it to. After a long morning of shuffling things around and fun things falling through, I decided I really needed to change my pouty attitude and find other ways to enjoy the day.
My new plan involved picking Caleb up from school and take the boys to the park to enjoy the beautiful fall afternoon we were having. One of our best friends met us there for a bit and then a crew showed up and took down the fences around all the new playground equipment! We had been waiting for those fences to come down all summer! The boys had a blast! The new equipment is fabulous. Noah discovered he loves to climb (scares me to death!). As the sun started to go down, we decided it was time to go home and spend the evening with daddy, who was getting off work early.
Then we got to my car. There was a lovely pile of shattered glass next to the front passenger window. I wanted to scream profanities and vomit all at the same time. But, instead, I exercised my best mama self-control and did neither of those things in front of my children. I called the sheriff's department, knowing full well it would be a waste of time, which it was, but felt like I should tell someone "official". And, yes, I am one of those stupid mom's who leaves her purse in the car while we're in the park so I don't walk off and leave it for someone to steal when I'm distracted with my kids. (I KNOW this is a stupid thing to do, so no lectures are necessary, thank you.) This time, I will say though, in my own defense that it was actually covered. And then it dawned on me why the thieves would have been motivated to break in....my husband has a hand gun that he carries at home and work, but until he has his concealed carry permit (don't even get me started on that ridiculous process), he transports it to and from work in a small, locked safe that is usually attached to the bolts holding the seat in. The connecting cable had snapped a few days before, so the (praise the Lord) EMPTY gun safe was sitting on the passenger seat. Never even occurred to my naive mind how attractive that would be to some dumb thugs. And, no, it was not hard after that to find my purse.
Let me just say that I am so thankful that not only were we safe and protected, but the gun safe empty (SUCKERS!!!!), and my wallet only had $4 cash in it. That said, I lost my expensive prescription glasses I am bound to 24/7 ( I was wearing my equally expensive prescription sunglasses in the park), my ID, checkbook, credit cards, etc. All my cards come from the same bank so one phone call to a very kind customer service associate took care of that. The rest will take time and some money to replace.
So that long, drawn out story brings me to the title of this post. My six year old was completely dumbfounded that someone would break into a car that doesn't belong to him (or her) and take things that were not his. I cried when I realized that he still assumed that "bad guys" only exist in movies and that people are all good in real life. It was really hard for him to understand. I explained that there are people that make really bad choices and do mean, bad things. As he mulled that over, he started to panic. "But, Mom, what if the bad guys follow us home?" "What if they come back and take more stuff?" "What if they hurt us?". All those questions and the worried tone in his voice shattered my heart just like the window glass.
I realized that it's only just beginning.....as he grows and matures and experiences more of the bad side of the world we live in, his innocence will slowly be lost. And there's very little I can do to protect him from that. But, what I can do is prepare him for it. He asked me to pray on the way home (which I was already doing since I was driving home with my sunglasses on after the sun went down!) and then later at home just spontaneously prayed again on his own. The rest of the evening involved more praying and a lot of re-assuring that those same bad guys were not going to find our home. (Which I could thankfully do since nothing in my purse, drivers license included, had our new home address on it).
A very bitter loss of innocence, indeed. Oh, my sweet boy, how I wish I could protect you and insulate you from all the bad stuff in the world.
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