Jesus, Jewelry & Coachella

I know I’ve talked so much on air this week about Coachella, and I’ve posted like crazy about it across all my social media…. but the one thing I didn’t post on any of my social media or share on air was that I was actually burglarized at Coachella.

The first night someone came into our hotel room (we believe it was an inside job because there was no forced entry) and stole my entire bag of jewelry, and then I would later find out that they took my entire wallet as well.

Let’s start with the jewelery, if you know me at all you know I’ve been a jewelry fanatic for over the last 10 years. I’ve collected it, bought it, shared it, lent it out, swapped it – I’m just obsessed with it. So of course, knowing I’m going to Coachella I bring an entire bag of it: earrings, rings, chokers, necklaces, bracelets – and I’m not talking one or two pieces – I brought about 10lbs of jewelry total.

So I get home from Day 1 of Coachella and am looking for my bag to put my jewelry away – can’t find the bag – it’s 1am, it’s been a long day, I figure I’ll look for it in the morning. Well the next morning I woke up super sick, I felt like I couldn’t even move and honestly wasn’t sure if I would even make it out to Coachella that day. I slept literally all day but decided to pull it together so I could at least catch Gaga’s performance that night. As I started to get ready I began looking for my jewelry bag again and couldn’t find it, I figured it HAD to be somewhere under all our crap. It’s a small room we were staying in and I had flipped it upside down looking everywhere for my bag…I finally stopped looking and realized that it had to have been stolen!

I was in pure disbelief! I couldn’t believe that someone from the hotel staff had stolen my bag! Something like that had never happened to me before. I called the front desk immediately and let her know I had a bag stolen, she let me know she would come over in a little to scan the lock on our door to see who gained access to our room. I then called the police so I could make a report and have it all on file. I sat there waiting for someone to come and was still in shock that it was gone. I think I still had hope that it would somehow turn up somewhere – that it wasn’t actually gone.

As I’m thinking all of this I decide to get up and get something out of my purse sitting on the floor – as soon as I pick it up I couldn’t believe how light it felt (my purse is always heavy and full of crap). I instantly realized my entire wallet was gone. All of my cash, gift cards, everything in it – gone – including the Michael Kors wallet that everything was in. Now it was all real to me – I was burglarized. I could not believe it. I felt so angry and violated that someone came into our room and took my stuff!

I called the front desk yet again and let her know she needed to get here like 5 minutes ago! I’m furious now, especially because it had to have been someone on staff since they’re the only ones with access to our room. She throws me major attitude back and I start crying out of frustration. I hung up the phone to collect myself, up until that point I had been extremely calm about everything.

I now sat waiting for the police and woman at the front desk to come to my room so we can start figuring out what the hell happened. All of a sudden I felt such a wave of peace come over my mind and body. I kept thinking of my pastors and their sermons about material things – how at the end of the day it’s not like we can take any of it with us when we go. That if we put our value, worth and happiness in material things we will constantly be disappointed because things like THIS happen.

Here’s the thing, I’ve never been a name brand, materialistic type of person. There’s nothing wrong with being like that – I’m just too cheap to be.

But now I’m in this situation where things I did love and value were stolen from me and I had to just sit and focus on my Faith. It really is what I cling to, especially in situations like this. When I’m able to focus on my Faith and the God that I serve and how much bigger HE is than anything else, I’m able to take a step back from the situation and remind myself of what actually matters.

(Don’t get me wrong – I also demanded a very very strong drink in that moment as well)

At the end of the day it’s just stuff. I’m okay, my friends in the room were okay, and we still enjoyed the rest of our weekend. I refused to give the people who stole my things anything else, they were not robbing me of my joy.

This really is such small stuff in the big scheme of things.

I felt so grateful to have the wise words of my pastors to comfort me and calm me in that moment. I tried to focus all of my attention on their words versus focusing all my attention on all the things that were taken from me. I’ve lived in a home that’s been broken into, I’ve lived in a home that was trashed and vandalized, and I told myself the same thing that night that I told myself in those other situations: My G-O-D is B-I-G.

(Coachella Recap Video)