When bad things happen - trying to remember "gratitude"

This week, we joined a club.  The members of this club are our many friends and neighbours in Colonia La Madera who have had break-ins and robberies.  Some people still try to call them "crimes of opportunity" and there may be a bit of a tone of  "blame the victim" as,  it is true, we don't always take the precautions that are available.  But when Gene dozed off while reading his Kindle on the outside terrace, and I chose to go to bed early after a fabulous day out on the water with our friends from Calgary, Lynn and Barry

.....well, I just didn't imagine that a robber would have the audacity to sneak past Gene on the fully lit terraza, enter our unoccupied bedroom, and grab Gene's laptop, his digital camera, and my purse with my cell phone and digital camera inside.  It was only the barking of our faithful watchdog Cori who was at my side in the rear bedroom, signalling his bugling type alert and waking me instantly from a sound sleep at 11:53 p.m. that the robber made off into light of the full moon on a cloudless night with our things. 

We searched for a couple of hours, even having the assistance of Raul, the owner/developer of our condominio and our friend.  We called Scotiabank at 2 a.m. to cancel my card, and after a few short minutes of sleep woke early to begin the search of our neighborhood, hoping that perhaps some items might be found. 

I was excited to see my FM3 card behind a chainlink fence in some weeds in a nearby vacant lot, and that got Gene into searching all of the tropical plants around our building,where by the "grace of God"  Gracias a Dios...my BC Driver's license was found. 

One of the things that didn't occur to me when the incident happened was to phone the police...but the next morning our property manager encouraged me to go with her to the "tourist police" station to file our report.  I know this is a necessary step as in a previous card loss, our bank has refused to cover the charges on the card by the thief unless a police report has been filed.   So with a bit of skepticism, we drove over to the police, where once again I witnessed the highly dysfunctional system called policework here in Mexico... After 2 hours, 3 trips to the nearby store to pay to photocopy the police's work and several questions about the beach I preferred and my drinking preferences, we got back into our car accompanied by a police officer and his assistant who wanted to witness the crime scene.  I found myself thinking that perhaps they were imagining themselves in a CSI-Zihuatanejo episode as they carefully measured the distance between the entrance to our terrace and our front door...but the highlight of their visit to our apartment was the demonstration of our dogs electric "fence" and the collar he wears.  I could see the wheels turning in the police officers brain as he imagined what he could do with such a device.  However, it was a bit unnerving to have our property manager whisper to me in an aside "stay with them in your house" while they walked from room to room taking photos of the "crime scene"...I hope their camera doesn't end up in the hands of another robber who might now get an advance look at our property.  

So at one of my 4 weekly  yoga classes at Zihua Yoga studio, which are a big part of my life here in Zihua, and are even beginning to appeal to Gene who is a regular at Saturday a.m.'s easy does it yoga, I had to dig deep when Ana asked us to focus on something that we were grateful for in our lives.   But then it became clear.  I still have my husband and my dog (in no particular order of appreciation) and even though I couldn't photograph the fabulous collection of flamingoes, ibis, crane, and egrets at Playa Larga today....I could give thanks for my life, the life of my husband, my friends and my health and realize that no theft of material possessions by desperate people has changed that....yet!!