Saga of the Found Wallet

 I just began to journal...and it made me realize I never concluded the previous saga of the lost wallet. There is more to that story, I tell you. 

My journal began..."Sometimes I think my brain got fried. The ability - really, the capacity - of my soul to hold grief, pain, trauma, suffering, silencing - I'm guessing has been greater than most. I used to think of myself differently; blaming myself for being weak, fragile, IN-capable. But if I honestly look at my life journey, I must arrive at a different conclusion than before. 

I sacrificed myself on the altar of survival."

I stopped there. 

Yes, that last line describes decades of my life. I needed to find a way through, a way to cope and survive as a mother of young children, in a struggling marriage, in a world that has normal everyday demands that a severely depressed person can barely hold up underneath. It's not the world's fault. It's not having children, or a husband, or any of these things that made my life hard (though those things do bring hard realities). It was that my capacity to hold my life, all that brought me to each day, all that went before - there was no room in my life for ME. I can almost hear the ultra-evangelical out there saying, "Life isn't about you! It's about Jesus!" Yeah, well, Jesus lives in me, and if the me that I am is fraying at the seams, I believe He would want to weave some new thread into the threadbare me, and make room for my whole, fragile, wounded self to find healing rest beside still waters. He restores my soul. He makes room for me. He inhabits a ME that takes space. He wants to enliven the me that has shriveled, so that living waters flow from an abundant well. So, in fact, I daresay, my life IS about me! Christ in ME. In that there is hope and glory!

I told in my last post how I had lost my wallet. How this was a sore point - almost an obsession in my prayers. I had adjusted. I had begun to let it go. And yet every day I would think about it and say, 'Surely God, You know where it is, I know you could bring it back somehow.' I wrestled theologically - how could a small loss throw me off so easily? How could I traverse deep trials like my son almost losing his life and limbs to an accident, and a lost wallet feels too heavy? I think it was in part the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Only my back had been broken beyond repair, figuratively, for quite some time. 

I couldn't let the wallet go completely. I felt I was on some crazy journey with God, in the depths of my soul. He spoke to me so profoundly and clearly through the circumstances of my life. I circled back to the parable of the lost coin, the lost pearl, the lost son. I suddenly pictured myself as the woman sweeping through her home to find that lost coin. And though I searched, and revisited the restaurant where I think I lost it 3 or 4 times, I did not find it. Instead, I discovered that a wallet holds gifts. Treasures. Resources. And what if I was the wallet?

Maybe my life holds gifts. Maybe I have gifts. Gifts God has given. And they don't serve much purpose if they stay safely tucked away inside me. A gift card is *potential* gift. It becomes a real gift when it is spent, used. "Oh Lord," I mused, "Will You spend me - use me - help me bring these treasures in me out of the encased shell of my hardened soul?" Finally, we were getting somewhere.

It was a Tuesday night, and as my head hit the pillow, even though it had been 5 weeks since my wallet disappeared, I once again circled back, "Lord, even though I'm beginning to get it - the wallet thing isn't really about the wallet, it's about me, and seeing that You're calling me to dig up the treasures and gifts You've given me, and to bring them to full use in Your hands. Really, I get it. But now that I hear this, You still could have me find it. Just sayin'" Yes, my prayers are that  blunt. (Aren't yours?!)

The following day I was meeting with a directee (I'm a Spiritual Director which I can tell about sometime). I came up from my basement office and Timo - that Timo - the walking miracle child, stood in my kitchen and held up something brown, and rectangle, and said,

 "Hey, look what I found!"

My mouth simply gaped. 

He had been looking for a lost phone cord and even though I had dug through the car, under seats, every nook and cranny, multiple times, over 5 weeks, he discovered my wallet wedged up above a heating element under a seat. We realized we would have never found it there - it was in such an impossible location. We would have sold our van before finding it! Beyond the strangeness of finding it there, I marveled that God would take me on this 5 week journey to self-discovery, and growing in trust, yieldedness, patience, rest, and discernment. In that moment I was the woman who found her lost coin. I wanted to throw a party: "Rejoice with me! For I have found my lost coin!" My immediate thanksgiving went more like this: "Oh Lord! You SEE ME! You SEE me! Thank you! Thank you!"

My response was less about the wallet being found, and more about me being found. My prayers had been heard. My small burden was lifted. My gratitude was poignant, powerful, profound.

Even now, weeks later, whenever I pull out my wallet, I whisper a prayer of thanksgiving. "Thank you Lord, for providing for every need I have. Thank you for the gifts You've put in me. Help me to use them well." 

I still have yearning and deep prayers about burdens in my life. I pray endlessly for a child whose choices freak me out. I pray that my own lostness be recovered - the lost voice in me, that the buried pain would emerge with fruit for bringing life to others. I journey with Jesus through trust and fear and hope and despair. I see my plain, brown wallet and think it is a kind of mirror for my soul.

Sometimes there are seasons of hiddenness and confusion for me. What was my wallet doing for 5 weeks under the seat? Nothing. Not buying things. Not being used to give an i.d. card somewhere. Not being a reference for insurance. It was doing nothing. Hibernating, perhaps. It was grit under my soul-skin. It was still bearing fruit in its absence. Maybe I have seasons of hiddenness. Where I feel like nothing is happening. Where I've reached a plateau and no fruit seems forthcoming. Maybe I can trust God to bring riches out of these pockets of quietness. Maybe I can trust Him to restore my soul.

Prayer is work.

Stewarding my self is work.

Listening to the Voice of the Good Shepherd is Life.

I can do little else.