Yesterday evening, I received a phone call from Rooster. He’s been dog/house sitting for his friend’s family while they’ve been on a cruise. Thus, he hasn’t spent much time at home this past week.
His phone call instantly made me nervous because: 1) It came at 10:30pm, and 2) Nothing good usually comes from phone calls that late at night.
“Mama,” he said. “I can’t find the mailbox key, and my wallet is missing too.”
Oh boy.
The family lives in a neighborhood that has the kind of mailboxes that you need keys to open.
The wallet…well…I could only imagine the difficulty in trying to get things replaced…especially since Rooster will be leaving on Sunday, and his college is in a different state.
Still, he’s misplaced his wallet before, so it was my great hope that we’d locate it again.
I also immediately thought of my “word” for the year…RELAX.
What good could come from being anxious?
I calmly asked him all of the key questions: “Did you look in your car? Did you check under the seats? Did you look under the couches? Did you retrace your steps?”
He answered yes to every question I directed at him.
He knows the routine…the looking-for-something routine.
He is a boy, after all, and prone to such mishaps.
😉
I told him that I was watching a movie with Chicky, but that I would drive over afterward.
That seemed to calm him.
I also prayed.
Hard.
I left the house about an hour and a half later, and he called me on the way.
“Mama,” he said. “I found the key! It randomly showed up in my backpack in the pocket I checked a bunch of times.”
He’d been keeping the key and his billfold in an open pocket of a backpack he uses every day.
The first thing I thought, though, was that it wasn’t anything random.
“Honey,” I said. “I think an angel put that key in that pocket.”
See, I don’t believe in randomness, unless you’re talking about one of my students saying something random. You know kids. Their minds flit from one thing to the other quicker than a woman can change her mind!
😀
He still had not located the wallet, but I assured him we would.
That was a challenge that proved difficult, if not impossible.
When I got to the house, I checked the chair he’d spent the week sleeping on.
As I dug my hands into the crevices, I felt a sharp pain and quickly withdrew my hand…to see this…
Oh my word.
It was a nasty cut, let me tell you, and we could not find a band aid to save our lives.
I wrapped a napkin around it, and we continued our search.
We walked out to his car, scanning the ground with each step we took.
Imagine us doing this at midnight in the cold.
Yeah.
I love my boy that much.
😀
As we got to his car, Rooster apologized for the state it was in.
In other words, it was messy…oh so messy.
That’s my boy!
😀
He assured me that he’d looked everywhere, but I still had to put my own eyes on every inch of that car.
The wallet wasn’t there.
We returned to the house, and we formed a plan. He would get up in the morning and search the path to his car again.
I’d go home and look through his dirty blue jeans once more. I would also check the couch he’d been sitting on the last time he’d been home.
Granted…I’d done both, but I’ve been guilty of overlooking things as well.
I assured Rooster that God would lead us to the wallet.
In other words, I was RELAXED.
When I got home, I bandaged up my thumb and began my search.
I checked the couch, pushing my hands carefully into the crevices.
Nada.
My couches recline, so I lifted up the footrest on the side he’d been sitting on.
Then, I got on my knees and shined my flashlight underneath.
What a nasty sight! All I saw was dog hair, trapped by the metal bar contraption that allows the couch to recline.
And then I saw something lumpy.
Hmmm…
It was actually very near the outside of the couch, right under the armrest but on the floor.
I reached my hand around the outside bottom of the couch and pulled out his wallet!!!
It was dusty and covered in dog hair, but it was intact!
I think that when I’d pushed my hands into the crevices, I’d pushed the wallet all the way through the crack in the couch from where it had been stuck.
I excitedly called Rooster and gave him the good news, all the while praising the Lord for His help in locating the elusive billfold.
I’ve never much believed in coincidences.
I know that God orchestrates the happenings in our lives.
I am so grateful for His hand, which is there to guide us, if only we’d ask for help.
I’m pretty sure He’s helping us ALL the time, but that it’s actually rare for us to acknowledge that it’s His work, not ours, that is responsible for positive outcomes.
This is not the first time God has shown Himself so tangibly in our lives…especially in regard to lost items.
For this, I am grateful, for it is in this way, among others, that God has shown how very real He is and how He does care about the everyday things in our lives.
God is a personal God who knows each of us individually and meets our individual needs.
There’s absolutely nothing random about that!
Filed under: children, Christian | Tagged: Christianity, God | 1 Comment »
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