The Story Of Getting Our Windows Smashed In

How could I ever feel safe again? This is the question that keeps running through my mind as I sit in my sunny living room. Trees sway outside in the breeze, but to me their shadows are ominous.

Would I ever feel safe again?

Last night I sobbed while I prayed. I tried to ask the angels for guidance, to seek out the love that was in my heart and bring it forward, but I was too distraught and overcome with fear.

Fear, that terrible feeling I keep trying to get away from, it had claimed me at last.

Two days ago it came crashing into my life, fear, in the form of five iron horseshoes thrown at our sunny kitchen window.

The vandals yelled something about trying to teach us a lesson. That is another question that keeps ringing in my ears. What’s the lesson? What am I supposed to learn from this seemingly random act of violence?

When the single policeman showed up, we could quickly tell he was disinterested in solving the case. Despite the fact that our young children, babies, were home at the time of the incident, the cop didn’t think the destruction of our peace was worth his time.

He kept asking us to tell him why this happened, as if we should know why glass had shattered through our home while we relaxed on a Saturday afternoon. He even went so far as to imply that we should have assumed such things would happen because of the neighbourhood we lived in. Why did we live here anyway?

He didn’t even bother to take my name down.

What did we expect? Regular people who were down on their luck, doing the best they could to make it work. Similar to us. We are good people, decent people, who just wanted low rent with a private home and a yard for our small children to enjoy.

Yes, we knew this wasn’t the most desirable location to live in, but we assumed that if we kept to ourselves and stayed out of trouble, no trouble would come our way.

Until it crashed through our window in a spray of glass.

I huddled with my children, my babies, in the bathroom, worried our attackers would use the side bathroom window to get us.

My children only asked if they could keep watching their show that had been interrupted, their little minds not being able to process what was happening.

I could hardly process it myself.

Someday when they are a bit older all the pieces will click into place, and they will understand the severity of what they were forced to endure. They could have died, should they’ve had the misfortune of innocently being in their dining room at the wrong time.

I said many prayers of thanks that we were all sufficiently okay. Shaken up and afraid, but unharmed.

I assume the policeman would have taken our situation more seriously if one of my children had been hurt, but why must it be the worst case scenario before our lives hold any value?

What about the peace of mind we lost?

Now our sunny windows are boarded up, and our green lawn has glass hidden in the blades. What about my heart racing in the middle of the night, certain the loud bang I heard was our attackers coming back for round two? It was only our cats, getting into mischief, but this discovery only added to my feelings of guilt and shame.

Would I ever be happy again?

So far we have spent our days as normally as we can, working to give our children some normalcy and balance, while also making room for conversations about our big feelings. So far they seem relatively unaffected, although they do miss eating in front of our sunny window.

This morning we ate breakfast by the window, now covered by wood until further notice, and I kept imagining a horseshoe blasting through my son’s skull as he innocently ate his breakfast.

How could the world be so cruel?

I’ve long since struggled with fear, as we all do, although I haven’t been much of a worrier. While I know bad things happen to good people, I’ve told my children to not worry about disaster. Bad things happen, and worrying about it won’t prevent it. The best anyone can ever do is to try to live a good life and make good decisions. We can’t waste our energy worrying about some unknown danger turning our lives upside down.

Now it’s all I can do to stop myself from worrying about unforeseen disaster.

Last night while I cried and prayed, I said a special prayer for the people who did this to us. There is suspicion that the incident involved children, young teens, who had once been seen messing around in our yard.

A neighbour had warned me to be on the lookout, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I never saw these kids, and quickly forgot about the warning, until that fateful night when my landlord was hammering wood over our precious windows.

I said a prayer for these imagined aggressors, young men with displaced anger in their hearts. I prayed that they felt satisfied with the job they had done, hopeful that they wouldn’t feel the need for a part two of this destructive saga. I prayed that they would grow to regret their actions, and instead would turn away from a life of crime and violence. I prayed that this would be the last thing they did to us, or anyone else, and not just another crime in a long life of violence and hate.

I prayed for peace in their hearts, as I longed to find peace in mine.

Light and love. I kept saying these words to myself as I struggled to fall asleep in my warm bed. Light and love. Light and love. Light and love.

Only love is real, this I know to be true. I firmly believe that we were made by a creator, Source, The Universe, God, or whatever other name one might call the energy of us all. I know that I was made to experience this life and rise to my challenges, to bring my best self forward and to expand my own consciousness as I learn to express myself with love.

I am here to be the light, to guide myself, my family, and anyone else who might need some inspiration to find heaven in their own hearts.

I know I am made of pure love, that only love is real, and it’s through expressing and embodying love that magic can occur.

Light and Love.

Later that night I slipped into an old yet familiar nightmare. Halfway between my dreamscape and sleep paralysis, I felt my consciousness awaken in a dream. Terror immediately engulfed me, as it always does in these dreams, but this time I wasn’t going to be afraid.

I told myself to let go of my fear, for I knew my creative mind would manifest my fears in very real ways within the dream.

Light and love. Light and love. Light and love.

As I said these words to myself, my fear melted, and I was able to simply be lucid in this vivid dream, which quickly turned into one of the most beautiful dreams I have ever experienced.

I awoke feeling lifted, full of love, and hopeful for the future. I knew this fear would pass, if I allowed it to. I knew I had the choice: I could be engulfed by fear and anger, and wallow in self-pity and shame over my unfortunate circumstances.

Or I could choose light and love.

It seems my spiritual journey is being fast-tracked by this experience, and while I still have much to work through, I’ve already found some powerful answers within myself.

As I sit here writing this, I am nearing the 48 hour mark since my world was shattered. I have opened my front curtains for the first time since the incident to allow the light to flow in.

I know this journey won’t be easy. Even as I type, shadows and movement from outside catch my eye, and my stomach involuntarily drops away. Fear rises in my belly, and I find I have to force myself to let it go, and stop worrying that at any moment a projectile is going to burst through my window.

I have to remind myself, constantly, to focus on love. And light.

I don’t have much of a happy ending to share. My landlord is busy working on getting our windows replaced, and has taken our request for more security features more seriously than ever before. Eventually we will be able to eat our meals in the sunshine again, and hopefully in time the fear of random violence will pass.

We met some of our neighbours, and while they couldn’t do much to help us, knowing that they were concerned about our quiet little family warmed my heart and helped to ease my fear. I felt seen and loved, if only a little bit.

We shouldn’t waste our lives worrying about things that are outside of our control. I want to be happy, and I will not allow some vandals to ruin that for us.

We still love our home. This house has stood here for over a century, and while this is the worst thing that has happened here in recent memory, I still trust this house will keep us safe. It’s our home, for now, and we are literally in this together.

Someday we will move on. Someday the memory of the incident will become quieter, hopefully only to be recalled by will instead of invading my thoughts. Perhaps I will go back into therapy to work through the trauma. Perhaps not.

I do know that I will keep praying, more than ever before. I will dedicate more time for meditation and channeled writing. I will make communing with the divine a higher priority, for I know now with even more certainty that the angels are always close by, watching over us and keeping us safe from harm as best they can.

While sometimes disaster is inevitable, or part of our soul’s plan, I now firmly believe that our guides are always helping us walk the path that was chosen by us.

I also know, now more than ever, that I am a being of light and love, and that expressing this is my true purpose.

Light and love is the way forward, and it’s this message that I shall cling to when the fear starts to rise up like bile in my throat. Fear will not win. I am choosing to focus on the light, and all the love.

Light and love. Light and love. Light and love.

*******

I wrote this post in the summer, two days after our windows were vandalized, but it took me many more months to be ready to share this story. In truth, I was struggling with the fear of being judged. Moving to Edmonton, and specifically to our quaint house in an up-and-coming neighbourhood filled me with great fear and worry. Were we doing what was best for our children? When this incident happened, I was very tempted to see this as a sign of our mistakes, that we are not making good decisions for our children.

I didn’t want to share this story for fear of being judged, but the real judgement I was running from was my own.

As of publishing, our windows have been replaced, and we again enjoy our meals in front of the sunny windows. I still occasionally feel some fear and paranoia when I see people walking slowly past our house, but for the most part I’ve let it go.

Like I said, there is really no point in worrying about the unpredictable. Instead, I try to make the most of every day, trusting that I am being guided and that our lives are already working out beautifully.

Editing this story has again reminded me of this valuable lesson: to focus on light and love.

-Diane