Disturbance

I'm troubled today. We had quite the incident early this morning...think 2:00 a.m. We woke up to loud, severe pounding and banging coming from our neighbors. Unfortunately this was not the first time our downstairs neighbors had decided that 2 o'clock in the morning was the perfect time for home renovations. A week ago, they were vacuuming and assembling their closet doors at 4:30 a.m. We found out they work at night, so naturally the nights they don't work they treat as daytime hours. We also had problems two nights ago when we smelled tobacco smoke coming up through our heating vents. In Oregon it is illegal to smoke indoors in apartment housing. They were obviously ignoring this. I've been biting my tongue because we were so excited to finally have our own place and we want this home to be one we can stick around in for awhile. Last night however, my patience broke.

The loud banging sounds were not a hammer, but a man in his late twenties in a baseball cap attempting to get inside the apartment. I got out of bed and looked out the window to see a yellow cab idiling, the driver standing next to it waiting to be paid, and this man who then started screaming at our neighbors to let him in and throwing rocks at the windows. The cab driver was trying to get his money and leave, but the man apparently didn't have enough to pay him. Kyle was awake with me and we waited through 15 minutes of this before we decided to call 911. The man was screaming on and on at the woman who lives downstairs to let him in and then began threatening her. I was scared. Kyle got on the phone and told me the police were on the way. The argument over payment quickly escalated between the cab driver and this man. Just before I thought a fist fight was about to emerge we saw three patrol cars pull into our parking lot. Three officers moved in on the man trying to break in and called our neighbor out of her apartment. By now everyone in our complex was awake and watching this scene from their windows. We couldn't hear everything but in the end, the officers arrested our neighbor who was hiding out in her apartment and let the man go. We don't know what she was arrested for but our best guess is possession of drugs. This quick synopsis of events actually lasted about 2 hours.

I can only sit and speculate today about what was really going on. Was she selling to this guy? Are there going to be more angry men coming around trying to break into her house? Are we SAFE HERE? Was it really just tobacco they were smoking in the apartment? And finally...

HOW INCONSIDERATE, SELFISH, RUDE, AUDACIOUS, CAN YOU BE? I HAVE AN 8 MONTH OLD BABY TO PROTECT! I was scared out of my wits! I'm worried she knows we called the cops and are thus responsible for her arrest. I hate that they've made my nice, new apartment into a place I don't feel 100% safe in. And I'm not sure what I can do about it. We're frustrated and angry (haha, pretty obvious huh?!) but we're trying to alter our perspective.

I am really exercising my faith that with prayer I can feel confident again in the protection and safety of our home. I can't control what happens outside of my home, but I can control what happens within my home. I'm going to focus on that for the next little while....