Neighborhood shootings and the everlasting peace of God

I wanted to share a random and interesting thing that happened to us this weekend, which reminded us of God's amazing and everlasting promises.

Sunday morning, Erika and I had a leisurely morning sleeping in, and I woke up around 9:30 or so, let the cat out of the guest room where we exile him at night (otherwise he tends to come in and pounce on our heads at 4 AM), took a shower, got dressed, made the bed, etc, and around 10:00 finally made my way into the kitchen/living room area to make us some coffee. I clunked around in the kitchen a bit, then decided I should head over to the window to open the blinds and let the beautiful Sunday morning sunshine in. As I got to the kitchen table window, that's when I noticed that there seemed to be what looked like pieces of white paper shredded up all over the floor.

"Oh, Moses must have gotten ahold of something and taken it out," I thought. But then I realized there seemed to be a chunk missing from the wall at eye-level with me next to the window-seat area. And then as I walked around the couch to inspect it, I discovered that there were tiny shards of sparkling glass all over the carpet, intermingled with bits and pieces of our wall and of white paint. That's also when I found the circular hole in the window and heard the sound of lawn mowers outside through the broken window.

"Ok, so a rock must have come through the window," I thought. So I picked up my phone, called the building maintenance people to tell them we needed someone to come repair a window, but then I realized that there was the chunk missing from the wall too. A rock sure didn't do that after coming through the window! So I told the building maintenance people about this too, and said I thought maybe someone stabbed a spear or a long piece of pipe through our window. And as I said it I realized how dumb it sounded, but it still hadn't registered in my head what must have happened.

Then I headed over to kitchen to start making coffee, and that's when I found the 45-caliber bullet on the carpet and an indention in the wall where it had hit before falling to the carpet.

The rest of the morning consisted of me calling our sister-in-law Heather to see what we needed to do (as she is our source for any information on what we should do when we're not quite sure if we should call 911 or go somewhere else to report something), calling 911 and discovering that when you do that on a cell phone it automatically puts the phone into "Emergency Mode" which disables vibrate mode and text messages, watching cops pretend to re-enact the latest episode of CSI in our living room, watching neighbors outside walking around staring at the 3 cop cars at our apartment and thinking, "well, we thought they were such a nice couple, but I guess they weren't, he must have beaten his wife or something", Erika making waffles and offering them to the cops, the maintenance guy showing up and scratching his head as he stared at our wall and at the window, Moses freaking out and hiding under the bed as usual when we have more than 2 strangers in the house, and me getting into a conversation with one of the cops about sleep apnia and CPAP masks and him telling me I need to start using mine.

As far as we can tell, what happened was that a shooting broke out around 4 AM behind the King Soopers grocery store in the building next to where we live. Some people were shooting handguns, and nine shots were fired, one of which made its way into our apartment without us even realizing it. Of course, Erika and I are such heavy sleepers (Erika sleeps with earplugs since I snore) that we didn't hear a thing, or even notice anything odd until it was time for coffee. The cops said no one was killed in the shooting, but a girl involved in the fight was injured, though it wasn't too serious an injury. This was a big surprise to everyone, as our neighborhood is typically a safe, non-shady neighborhood. We're thinking about asking the building management to lower our rent!

The coolest thing about the story though is that God used it as a reminder to us that He is in control and that, despite all of the dangerous things that could be happening around us at any time, we know we are in His hands and that he is protecting us. Whether it's in the case of a drive-by shooting, a battle with immigration, an unknown future, a dark night of the soul, or any kind of opposition, God has us in His grip and surrounds us with His peace. Now we may not necessarily be in La-La Land during all of the opposition, but we certainly did sleep through this one!