Dear Mr. Thief...

Dear Mr. Thief,

   I do not know you but you know a bit about my family now. You decided on Wednesday September 25 to steal our luggage off of the top of our van at the La Quinta Inn in Amarillo, TX. Some would say shame on us for not taking everything in but we believe everything happens for a reason. Once you were able to go through our things, I am sure you thought you hit the mother load. You may have even felt 'ok' from taking from the 'rich people' who had so much. If you only knew... What you really took were suitcases full of blessings. The awesome new running shoes? Those were purchased through coupons that we were blessed with, Kohl's cash and an incredible sale. My son's Aeropostale shirts? They were gifts or were bought at resale shirts. The cute clothing for the little girl? All hand me downs and blessings from a friend. The cute pink Kindle Fire? Purchased from money given to us on a credit card so that we could read books as a family. The 'Awesome' shirt for a young man? That shirt belonged to our newly adopted son who has never felt 'Awesome' in his life until he was felt love from a family. And we must be rich if we adopted, right? Why, yes, we are; rich in friendships. Our friends raised $35k to help us adopt our son. Thirty-five thousand dollars...and no, our friends are not rich. They gave from their hearts and sacrificed for our family.  Let's not forget the Bible, prayer notebook, and handmade quilt in there. Sure, we can buy a new Bible but you cannot replace all of the notes that were in there that were made for our children. You cannot replace the fact that I cannot look back on all the answered prayers from the past year in my life. The quilt was handmade by my husbands grandmother who has now passed on so just another thing that cannot be replaced. And you know what? We went on with our vacation. Our vacation to the mountains.The vacation we prayed about for 9 months. The vacation where we were able to view God's majestic Creation and praise Him through the storm.  Vacations do not make us right either. We were blessed to stay in a house for free (yes, free!) the entire time where we could cook and not pay to eat out. We took $600 with us and we saved that for 9 months. 

   So when I think about the things you took, I get a bit sad over the loss and I feel a bit violated. But overall, I feel sad for you. Had you knocked on our door that night, we could have given you much more than what you took. No, we do not know your situation or how desperate you were. We have been in a hard place where there is no money. But here's the difference; we have Jesus. When we didn't have money for food, we would offer a prayer to Him and He always answered. We didn't make enough to pay our bills but the Lord always provided and the bills were always on time, just like God. We would have gladly offered you what we could have that night, money, food, etc. but we would have never left you without hope. We would have prayed with you and made sure we told you that Jesus loves you regardless of the life you are living. We would have offered to connect you with people who could help you. We would have loved you through it even though we had just met.  But...

   We forgive you and we will love you through it anyways. You can steal our things but you cannot steal our memories, family, friends, joy but most importantly our faith. Our prayer as a family is that you will read the Lord's Words in the Bible and know and love Him. We pray that one day we can meet in Heaven and rejoice together over stolen items. Our prayer is that you find a church that loves and embraces you as our church does. Many friends in our church are praying the same thing for you.  We pray you will find friends who will hug you through the hard times and pray for you. Please know you are being prayed for.

                                                                                                                Sincerely,
                                                                                                                 A Family in Texas