Turning Chicken Crap Into Chicken Salad

Did I ever tell you about the time we were robbed?

When we bought our little home in the spring of 2007, we knew what the neighborhood was like. It was on the edge of a gentrified area of town, but the remodeling had not yet begun on our street. We were the first to buy in that working-class neighborhood, full of single moms and elderly couples. 



The casa via 2007 (the yard looks a lot better now!)

One Friday night that summer, we were robbed. They took jewelry, two video cameras, some other valuable odds and ends, some food from our fridge and stuffed them in one of Matt's backpacks. They had broken the back door with a crowbar, taking it off its hinges. 

We called the police and filed a report. We started to research alarm systems. We went to bed that night, shaken. We prayed for our safety. We called our insurance agent so we could recover what was lost.

Two Fridays after that, we were robbed again. 

This time they smashed in a window, pulled it out of the frame and came in through our office. They took Matt's laptop and all our DVDs. It seemed to be the same person from the first time because they took a second bag from the same spot to carry the items they took from us.

We were stunned. We knew it could happen once. But twice? It seemed unfathomable. 

The police were unkind and cold this time, warning us to get out of our neighborhood while we could. We went to bed that night afraid and angry. Strangely, I felt compelled to pray for the person who had robbed us. I prayed he would be convicted of his crimes and stop hurting others. I prayed he would be get caught and that justice would prevail. And lastly I prayed for his soul, that he would turn to God and change his life.

We put our house on the market after that. I was afraid to leave the house, afraid of what else this person would do to us. I was sure that he was casing our house, waiting for us to leave. I lived in fear for a month.

Then one afternoon, as we were grocery shopping, a detective called us. She said she had an extraordinary story to tell us:

A few weeks prior, a police officer was driving down the street when he saw a man limping along with blood on his clothes. The officer stopped and asked if he could help, to which the man replied that he might as well take him to jail. The officer asked him why, and the bleeding, limping man admitted that he had just robbed a house and hurt himself as he was fleeing the scene. 

As the officer handcuffed him and sat him in the squad car, the man admitted that he had robbed many houses that summer, almost 40 to be exact.

 The detective then told us that this man had robbed our home. Twice. 

We asked how she knew that, and she said, "He admitted it. He told us he wrote you a letter of apology and gave it to a friend to deliver to your home, but the friend chickened out." 

She then told us that in order for the police to figure out which homes the man had robbed (it's not like the guy kept an excel spreadsheet of the addresses and items he took), they drove him around in a cop car to the areas of town he had stolen from. As they went from house to house, he identified the ones he had broken into, what items, if he could remember, he had taken. 

The detective told us that when they got to our street, the man pointed at our home and said, "I stole from that lady. I took that lady's jewelry and computer. I stole from her twice. She is selling her house. It's probably because of me." The officer who was writing the report noted that he showed great remorse as he talked about our home and "that lady."

In the report, as he went from house to house and described what he had taken, he never mentioned the people he affected. But when he got to our home, he mentioned me. 

I am the only person he referred to in the entire report. We are the only ones he wrote a letter of apology to. I don't think that my prayers and his actions were sheer coincidence. I believe that was God's divine work. We saw justice and grace come to life.

The man went to jail for a long time, and the detective told us that in all her years working on robberies she had never seen a person turn themselves in, or admit that they were sorry for their crimes. We never saw that apology letter, but regardless, we took our house off the market, started to trust our new security system and had hope for our little transitional neighborhood again.

The point of this story: sometimes out of the muck and mire of our lives, something extraordinary happens.  Or as my late grandmother Ginny once said, "God can turn chicken crap into chicken salad."

Happy Weekend!

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