The Invasion Robbery and the Power of Fear

Gil and I had lived in Tanzania for about a year when missionary friends asked us to house-sit (and dog-sit) for a couple of nights. These friends lived in a large, two story house that they often used to host teams, so it felt like a vacation for us. 

We spent the day watching movies from their VHS collection (this was 2002!), and went to bed that night in the downstairs corner room that our hosts had set up for us. Their Schnauzer dog, Stanley, was on the second floor landing, sleeping in his crate. 

At around 5:00 the next morning, I was awakened by the distinct sound of metal scraping against metal. The kitchen door was adjacent to our bedroom, and very clearly, I could hear the iron security grate screeching open. 

My heart stopped. What I had been dreading was actually happening: We were experiencing an invasion robbery. 

We knew a number of friends who had experienced this terror. A gang of thieves entered their homes in the middle of the night, tying up the family, sometimes injuring them, while they robbed the house of its valuables. For the whole year we had lived in Tanzania, I had been terrified that this might happen to us. Now it was. 

I frantically poked Gil in the dark. “Gil!” I whispered, “I just heard someone open the kitchen door!” Instantly awake, now adrenaline was pumping through both of us. We strained our ears for what the thieves might be doing. We could hear thumping and bumping and men’s voices.

Our bedroom door didn’t have a lock on it, so we darted into the attached bathroom and locked the door. Then we waited and listened. It was the days before cell phones, so our only choice was to wait it out and hope the thieves didn’t find us. It’s a good thing our hiding place was a bathroom, because both of us needed the toilet. Our hearts were hammering; I was visibly shaking.

We heard Stanley barking frantically, then stop after a few minutes. “They’ve killed Stanley,” we told each other, wide eyed. From the sounds we heard, we could tell the thieves were dropping things down from the second floor balcony. We envisioned how ransacked the house must be.  

After about a half hour, Gil had an idea. He remembered that the gardener and his wife lived on the property in a small house just behind the room we were in. Maybe if we could get his attention, he could call for help. We pulled back the bathroom curtain and started calling into the inky blackness, first quietly, and then progressively louder, until finally we were yelling as loud as we could. No response. With terror, we concluded that he must be tied up….or worse. 

An hour went by. We figured by the time the sun came up, these guys must finally decide to leave. But we could still hear the banging and thumping throughout the house. As the sun grayed the sky, we peered out of the window in apprehension. It suddenly dawned on us that the glass had been closed on the window. Oh. No wonder the gardener had not heard us. In fact, just a few minutes later, the gardener appeared, hose in hand, casually watering the grass. To our amazement, not only was he not dead, but seemed clueless of the mayhem going on inside the house.

Stunned, we waited a few more minutes until the sun flooded through the window. Now that an hour and a half had passed and it was fully daylight, we figured that it had to be safe to leave the bathroom. Just in case, Gil grabbed a large vase, which he held over his head. Still shaking, we quietly opened the bedroom door, bracing ourselves for total destruction.

You can imagine our disbelief as our eyes took in a completely normal living room. We went up the stairs, and Stanley was happily wagging his tail, patiently waiting to be let out of his crate. Nothing was out of place. Everything was in order. We checked the kitchen door, and it was still locked, with no sign of tampering.

It was impossible. And yet, we couldn’t deny it. The invasion robbery had been one hundred percent, totally and completely, all in our imaginations. 

As we slowly got over the shock, we replayed the event together. I must have heard the gardener’s door open at 5 am, not the kitchen door. The thumping and voices we heard must have been regular, East African city, morning sounds, unfamiliar to us in a different neighborhood. The large, echoey house with all its open windows must have carried the noise closer than it really was. And Stanley was barking because….he’s a dog. 

The rest was just our overactive imaginations stimulated by what we perceived as an imminent threat. 

We had been so terrified that it took us the rest of the day to calm down. And after that, we were just embarrassed. So embarrassed that we didn’t tell a living soul about this incident until at least a year after it happened. Someone once said that humor is tragedy over time. So go ahead and laugh at us. We laugh at us too. 

Perhaps, though, I’ve never had a better example in my life of the power of fear. And these days, there is a lot out there to fear, isn’t there? Whether it’s socialism or terrorism or a pandemic, imminent threats seem to be lurking around every corner. Are they legitimate threats? Perhaps, yes. But how much am I allowing the fear of those threats to control me? How am I letting them keep me from living life to the fullest, from doing the good work I need to do? How am I allowing them to keep me from loving other people? 

Invasion robberies continued to be something I feared for the entire time we lived in Tanzania. I could easily rattle off a dozen families I know personally who had this happen to them. It was common, and it was traumatizing. We were wise to take careful precautions, to make our house as secure as possible. I have no regrets about that. But we managed to live sixteen years in Tanzania without it ever happening to us. I think about the number of sleepless nights I experienced, the amount of mental energy I expended over something that never materialized. What a waste.

So I have to ask myself what I am wasting my mental energy on now. What worries am I ruminating on, over and over, that may never actually come to pass? How much is my fear of a situation skewing my perspective on life, making me see scary things that aren’t even there? 

God forbid that I lock myself in the bathroom, squandering my time over imagined fears. 

Related posts:

I Am a False Prophet

Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest

When Feelings are Sovereign

Clinging to the Crutch