This morning I woke up and got Gabe out the door for school. I had told a friend that I'd go to the gym with her and we'd do a spinning class (neither of us fans of spin….) and then a barbell strength class we love. I was kind of dreading the spin class for a couple of reasons - #1 my hiney gets sore from that class (even with padded bike shorts). #2 I've been fighting an infection the last several days and still feel sluggish from it.
Pray FIRST. So often I think that we get caught up in life. We know that prayer works, we know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers. But sometimes I think we leave prayer as a last resort. Kind of like I was doing – I thought I'd keep trying myself and THEN I'd pray for help if I couldn't find them myself.
As I was finishing my prayer I had a series of thoughts come to me. One of them was the idea that there was no possible way that someone stole my keys. Not only did that sound ridiculous and paranoid, but our dogs would have barked at them, the alarm on the doors would have beeped and we'd known someone was in the house. The thought kept going through my mind, "No, no one took your keys, your dogs wouldn't have been quite through that."
Then I went to search for my keys some more. I wasn't feeling led to any particular area. I didn't have a thought in my mind of where they could be. I kept searching, but my searching wasn't quite as frantic or worried as it had been before. I had a feeling things would be alright.
Lesson learned: The Lord answers our prayers – sometimes with peace, sometimes with reassurance. Our prayers aren't always answered with something as immediate as keys falling from the sky and hitting us on the head – but the answers do come if you give yourself a chance to have peace and listen.
At that time I started kind of laughing about the things I had been finding. I found where all the disappearing pens and pencils have been, Hunter's new Anakin Skywalker toy, some misc Lego pieces, a CTR ring, I found a bunch of my barrettes I never can seem to round up and $.29. I found a lot of useless stuff, lots of dust-bunnies and dog hair. And then I found one of Gabe's shoes. We'd been looking all over earlier in the morning for the shoe and I found it! Score!!!
Lesson learned: Sometimes we think we know what we're supposed to be searching for (in this instance – my keys), but we find something else (in this instance – Gabe's shoe). How often do we pray and pray for something in particular and feel frustrated that we're not getting it, all the meanwhile the Lord is giving us something so much greater. I think at times Heavenly Father thinks, "Oh my child, I have so much more I want to bless you with. So much more than this small thing you're asking for – just wait and you'll see."
After 2 hours and 23 minutes I got a text from Cory "Found them" and quickly a phone call. He'd found the keys!!! He'd been in a meeting as I had been searching for the keys and had tried to reassure me via text when he could, but he had no idea where they could be either. But as the meeting ended he went back to his van and searched around. Low and behold there they were – in his gym bag, under his clothes. We think he might have stacked stuff on top of the keys, scooped them up and dumped it all in his bag – including my keys. WHEW!
Then I looked at the clock – I had completely missed both of the classes at the gym this morning – bummer. I thought about how I'd joked about needing "divine intervention" to get through the classes. Maybe what I ended up with was "divine intervention" to get me out of going to the classes. J
3 comments:
Wow that's a lot of lessons to learn just from keys! :) I wonder how many lessons I've ignored because I didn't realize how much I could learn from the simplest of things.
Hope you and the family are doing well in Texas!
Great lessons! Adia has been teaching me a lot about this lately. The other day I was on my way to class, and we were running a little behind, and we got stopped in construction on the way to drop the kids at the sitter. I was moaning about how I was going to be late for my class and Adia said "don't stress mom, I'll pray and we will be out of here in no time." And she did, and we were! Later that night I was talking to her about it, and me of little faith, I told her that you can't always expect your prayers to be answered right away like that every time. I said "you don't always get exactly what you want exactly when you want it" and her eyes lit up as she said, "yeah, sometimes you get something better!" It made me smile, but It also made me realize that I need to have more faith. I know He will answer me, I just need rely on it more.
Fantastic post, Joanna. Thanks for sharing. I think you should submit this to The Ensign for publication...honestly, you're a talented writer, very in tune to the spirit. This is just what I needed this morning.
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