An Adventure.....a little unexpected.

I've decided to tell this story. One that God brought my way for two reasons(probably more, but I haven't learnt them yet) 1.)To help me get over my fear of asking for help(I truly think this is a pride issue) 2.)To spend some time really praying.

I'll call this adventure

THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

Everything was fine and dandy in the world of Carrie, until this morning at 7am. I am currently house sitting for a family from church while they are on vacation in Mexico. They have three dogs, and two cats, and they live in a house in town. My morning routine is that I get out of bed, let the dogs out, brush my teeth, let the dogs in, feed them, and then get on with my day. This house is a two story house and there is a balcony that runs all along the second story. We feed the dogs on the balcony. I let the dogs onto the balcony, and followed them out. I shut the door behind me because I didn't want them to get back into the house. I fed them, and played with them for a minute before turning to go back in. Well, a pulled at the sliding glass door, and it was locked. I chuckled a little knowing that the door couldn't be locked because I had just walked out the door, so I tried again, but this time harder......no, it was really locked. My mind sort of stopped. WHAT??? How is this possible? I just came out that door, how could it be locked?
This is when I decided that calm was the best. I tried every sliding glass door along the balcony(there are 5)....no luck.....I went to the kitchen window.....also no luck. This is the moment I started to cry. OK, what do I do? This is seriously funny....I'm trapped on a balcony. Well, I start to think of my options, and none of them are good. 1. Stay on the balcony(where is this going to get me.) 2. Jump off the balcony. The trouble with option two is that once I'm off the balcony what do I do? I don't have shoes on, and I'm in my basketball shorts and a sweatshirt. My hair is a mess, and I'm sure that crying helped my appearance a lot. My phone is in the house, along with my key's and everything else. So, I keep trying to get the door's and window open....again no luck. I tried everything. I searched the balcony for anything that might help me at all. Well, at some point I decided that I really needed to pray. So I prayed for a while. A long while.

I decided that waving down a passing car for help would be a good idea. I stood at the street end of the deck for a long time, waving at every passing car. Now, this wasn't pageant waving, this was fierce, "I need help", waving. No one would stop. I started to really get worried. I'd been trapped on this balcony for some time now. I sat down, and started to really cry(added to this was my extreme fear of heights). All of a sudden I heard a car coming, so I jumped up. It happened to be their neighbor, so when she got out of her car, I started yelling, "Excuse me, can you help me?" She finally heard me and walked over to the fence. I told her my situation, and asked her if she could call my dad. She was very kind, and got a hold of my dad straight away. So, my dad came to rescue this damsel in distress.....serious distress. He helped me jump off the balcony, and took me to work with him(in my bare feet, basketball shorts, sweatshirt, with disheveled hair). So now that the first problem was solved.....we had to figure out how to get back into the house.
I tried calling the family and seeing if they had a spare key hidden somewhere, but they didn't return my call. So then we tried calling the locksmith, but they told us that they couldn't help us at all, even if the family called from Mexico. They said that their insurance only allowed them to open the door if the property owner was present. Great....now we are really stuck.

*Note* I'm afraid of being in strange houses alone, so prior to this incident I had personally made sure that every window and door was securely shut and locked around the entire house.**

My brother Tim came and got me at the restaurants, and we headed back over to the house together to see what we could do. I broke into the garage somehow and we found some old metal coat hanger. Now, I mentioned before that there are 5 sliding glass doors around this house, so we tried each one again. One of the doors wasn't locked, but had a metal pole in the sliding path. So we started using the coat hangers to try to remove the metal pole. Two HOURS later Tim somehow used the hanger to lift up the pole and we walked into the house. It was incredible. I don't think these people have much to worry about. It was nearly impossible to break into their house. Praise God! It ended up being a pretty good day when we finally got back into the house. I got locked out of the house around 7 am, and got back in around 3.......now that really is an adventure.