s that have happened by our home in the last 4 years.
We sometimes get "flack" from others about how it's not safe to have our children in this neighborhood. My simple response is that we are in the safest place because we are in His will. There are countless amounts of times where Jesus gave us dreams, sent people, and feelings on how to pray and be safe. To these I will talk about later.
What we get to be a part of is teaching our kids to love people and see them how God sees them and to refrain from judgement and fear from people that obviously need a new touch from the Lord. As hard as it is we are visually confronted with people doing drugs, drunk, yelling crazy things, mostly naked, etc and our kiddos see it. We try to protect them with what we can but also it's such a great opportunity to be a teaching moment of love. "How does God see this person?" "What do you think happened to them?" "Let's pray for them."
About 3 years ago the kids and I were weeding the extensive rock wall outside our home and battling the PNW blackberry vines that never seem to end, we heard some yelling. I quickly sent the children in the fence and told Benji to call 911 as it seemed like it could escalate quickly.
It was a woman and a man outside our home and he was emptying her purse looking for her money that she owed him. She was crying and obviously distraught. I marched across the street and stared into the man's face and told him he needed to leave because I called the cops. He looked at me and left ( I fully believe there was an angel standing behind me). I started helping this poor lady (which was obviously a prostitute) pick up her purse and clean herself off. I grabbed her arm and told her to look into my eyes and began prophesying over her who she is. Jesus showed me how much of a princess she really is and how she deserves to be treated like one. This kept going for a little and she was finally calm and the guy showed up again. I chased him off and watched him walk three houses down from ours into his house. Yep. This was my neighbor and I wasn't aware. She left and I went back into our house.
The kids asked me what happened completely freaking out. I told them there was a bad man that was trying to take away this princesses purse and take her money, but Jesus took care of him. Perspective is everything.
The kids will still bring this up to us. "Mom remember the princess and that guy?" We walked them through healing of fear and how God protects us and that your parents will as well. Also, guess what? My kids are changing that woman's life by prophesying out loud that she is in fact a princess. Our words are crazy powerful especially when we partner with God's words over people and situations.
An update: The guy has recently sold his house and moved out of the neighborhood!!!!! I have not seen a prostitute by our house since.
