Saturday, November 1, 2008

Inconsiderate/Selfish People REALLY Irritate Me

This morning at 5:30am our doorbell rang. All I could think, in my exhausted state of mind, was "this better not be some teenage trick or treaters!" Anthony answered the door and I heard a man ask "Is that your car right there?" referring to our Toyota Tercel that was parked on the street. Anthony confirmed that it was and the man went on to tell him that someone had hit our car and then fled. He and his girlfriend had heard the crash and came running to see what had happened. They had already called 9-1-1 so the police were on their way. After going outside and assessing the damage, Anthony came in and stayed up waiting for the police to arrive. I started some coffee because we assumed it'd take at least an hour for the police to respond to a "low priority" call like ours - nobody got hurt and there wasn't much they could do to fix the situation. Before the coffee had finished brewing, the police officer arrived so Anthony went out to talk to him. I didn't want to go outside in case the kids woke up from all the commotion so I went and laid in bed, waiting for Anthony to come in and fill me in on what the officer had said. He came in about 10 minutes later and didn't have much to say. The officer had said he was sorry this had happened...that they'd keep an eye out for the vehicle responsible for all this but since there wasn't really any paint missing from our car it would be hard for them to identify the vehicle that did it. This morning when we all left to take Anthony to work (since we didn't have time to really check out the car and see if it's even drivable) we all walked down and took a look at the car. The back end on the driver's half of the car is pretty well smashed in. The lights on that side are hanging by a wire and the bumper is pretty droopy all around. Anthony's planning on getting his hammer out when he gets home from work tonight and banging the tar out of the inside of the trunk, to try to re-shape it. He's hoping he'll be able to get it straight enough that he can screw on a new brake light/turn signal piece. Through this I've been trying to find things I can thank God for and after a LOT of thinking, I've come up with a couple things. 1) None of us were in the car when it got hit 2) the back end wasn't smashed far in enough to where it would touch the back tires making it undrivable - instead it's just going to a little on the ugly side. That's all I've got so far... Anthony mentioned that he once heard a wise man say (when his car had been damaged) "Well, Lord, why'd you let that happen? It's YOUR car after all!" It's a good reminder that all we have belongs to the Lord and He's the one in charge of our stuff. He gives and takes away. Plus, in the end, it's just a car... I've had to watch my response to all of this since I know I have little eyes that are also watching my response. I want to teach Alena and Tirus that it's wrong to do what these people did - not take responsibility for their actions. I also want to teach them that while it's okay to get frusterated when "bad" things like this happen to you, it's NOT okay to want bad things to happen to the people that cause trouble in your life. I figure if my kids learn this important lesson early on in life, they'll be way ahead of the game since most grown ups struggle with this issue.

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