I’m linking up with Ann Voskamp in making gratitude a habit.

This week, we filed our first police report. 

We woke up Wednesday realizing our 4-wheeler was gone.  Not misplaced, but gone.  Taken quietly in the night, just yards from a German shepherd, rolled through my flowerbeds (the police pointed out the tracks) and up the hill to the west.

We stored our 4-wheeler in front of our barn just yards from our house.  We have three outside dogs that make quite a ruckus at any squirrel running in the front yard. That night, they were silenced.

Who ever did the job had it well-planned, and had scoped us out.  We live on a major thoroughfare, and it happened in the dead of night when traffic was nil.  Probably about 2-3 in the morning by someone who knew how to do it right.  

I am thankful for a husband who was troubled, but calm.  

I could see his face, the trusting man raised on a dairy farm who knew all of his neighbors, and saw the trust was broken.

Yet it wasn’t.  

In twenty-five years, I’ve learned patience, calm, and faith from this man.  Not just faith in God but faith in trusting.  

I saw three boys look intently in their father’s face when they heard something had been stolen from right under our noses.

Their response would be measured by that of their leader.