He answers prayer...

"He answers prayer, He answers prayer, He's so good to me!" =)

Ok, y'all, I got a big answer to prayer today. I'm soo excited, so I wanted to share! We had a few good nights without much barking, and then last night, it was awful again. I don't know what they were barking about, but the dogs were barking past midnight. They started again really early this morning. It was awful. I was sooo stressed when I got up this morning.

We met the neighbors on Sunday. They were out in their yard as we came home from church. They were friendly, and since their dogs hadn't barked on Saturday night at all, I was feeling very friendly. (I was hoping they'd decided to stop barking at night.) The wife is a stay at home mom to a 5 month old boy. She seemed very nice, and I gave her directions to the local Walmart, for which she was grateful. She made a comment about how the dogs "barked at everything that moved." They said they hoped that the dogs weren't bothering us, which led to me showing the location of our bedroom window and explaining that they did sometimes. No real response, but I as low key, so they may have felt that I was ok with it.

Then last night happened... and I was a wreck. I was so stressed, feeling like I'll never be able to count on a good night's sleep again. I prayed and stressed, and stressed and prayed. I was worried about going over, worried that if we asked for them to do something, it would hurt our relationship with them. I wanted to be able to make friends with the sweet mom, and I worried that taking any action would hurt the chances of that. I really didn't have a clue what to do.

Then, I looked out the window a few minutes ago, and I saw their hose start spewing water. It had been left on, and the connection wasn't good, and it gave way, and water was going everywhere. I thought, "I really need to tell them about this," and I realized that God might be trying to tell me that it was ok to talk to them. This was a ready made, natural opportunity to go over there.

So I went over there, and I talked to the wife. She got the water cut off, and I explained that it was hard on me when the dogs barked by the window late at night. I asked if they could consider putting them up at night or trying a bark collar. She wasn't the least bit offended, and she seemed interested in the bark collar idea. She said if it were up to her, they wouldn't have dogs. They'd only had them living with them since April. And she "didn't want anyone to be bothered by them." It was a great conversation, and I got a chance to invite her to MOPs next week.

I am so thankful. I feel like God really answered my prayer for direction through a broken hose. Hey, he can use anything, can't He? He is God, after all. So thank you for your prayers. I really appreciate you being willing to pray about something as dumb as my barking dog neighbors. Please keep it up; this may not be the last of it, but I feel so encouraged today.