Have you ever lost something? Something you cherished, wanted, needed? And you felt like you’d lost your mind searching for it?
On a recent Friday night I lost my keyless car fob – you know, the kind you keep in your pocket or purse that lets you operate your car. LeAnn and I had gone to Dillard’s together to replace Christmas gifts that didn’t fit. She was going upstairs to look at tops and I was staying downstairs to look for a belt. “Look for a sport coat too,” she said and smiled as I frowned.
I don’t enjoy shopping, but I do like to goof off, so after I found a belt I went to the sport coats and my eyes were immediately drawn to the brightest, loudest, largest pumpkin orange sport coat I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t resist pulling off my jacket, putting on the orange coat and taking a selfie that I texted to LeAnn upstairs.
We had a good laugh, looked at some real sport coats and then started to walk to the car when I realized my fob was missing. LeAnn had hers so we knew we could drive home, but we still needed to find mine because they’re expensive to replace. So, we retraced my steps both upstairs and downstairs, talked to clerks and eventually left my name and phone number at customer service.
Driving home, we realized that with LeAnn’s fob in her purse, perhaps I hadn’t even brought mine. When we got home, I retraced my steps there too, searched the pockets of everything I’d worn for two days, the bottom of the clothes hamper, drawers, cabinets and hooks. That night, I was restless in bed as I went through everything again in my head. I just couldn’t figure it out.
The next morning I was back inside Dillard’s as soon as the doors were unlocked. I went to the men’s suit department and retraced my steps again. With no clerks or customers around, I didn’t hesitate to get down on my hands and knees and look under displays and shelves. I went back to the full-length mirrors where I had posed the night before and looked around the edges on the floor but saw nothing. I turned to walk to the escalator and noticed a black padded chair facing the mirrors. There, deep in the back corner of the black chair was the black fob.
My guess is when I pulled my jacket off to put on the orange sport coat, I tossed the jacket onto the chair and the fob fell silently onto the cushioned seat. I was too amused with myself to notice it laying there when I put my jacket back on.
That’s a longwinded tale about almost losing my mind over losing something I needed but in the end was replaceable and in fact wasn’t lost at all.
There are other things I’ve lost and never found that had more sentimental or actual value. In high school we had a horse and one day after riding I got back to the corral and noticed my favorite watch had fallen off my wrist. I went back out on foot and retraced my trail over acres and acres of pasture and never found it. Today it’s probably buried somewhere under a house or commercial building off Renner Road.
Potentially more costly was the loss of my wallet in the backseat of a cab in Times Square on a cold, rainy night in 2002. I didn’t know it was lost until we got to our hotel room and I reached for it to get the card key. What followed was several hours of frantic calls to the cab company and credit agencies to freeze all my credit cards. And because we were just four months past 9/11, I had to call my parents for a copy of my birth certificate and walk to the nearest police precinct to get an affidavit of identity so I could board our flight home the next morning. My wallet was never found, and nobody tried to use the credit cards or pretend to be me with my driver’s license and social security card.
Still, none of that compares to the loss of a loved one. That’s the way it’s described, even by Christians: we “lose” our parent, sibling, spouse, friend. But the word doesn’t fit our faith. Yes, we no longer have them with us, but we haven’t lost them. As believers in Christ, we know exactly where they are: heaven. We don’t know exactly what that means or what it looks, feels and sounds like, but by faith we know they are there. In fact, we believe they’re where they were born to be and they’re waiting for us to join them.
We also talk about losing faith. I’ve never lost my faith, not completely. I think and write about heaven and such a lot, but sometimes it seems too fantastic to be true. And yet I go through this season of Lent and Easter retracing my steps — repeating the words and practices of faith that have been passed down to me through the ages and echoed by parents, pastors and teachers. The fact that I keep telling the story myself means I still have some faith too.
Still, I’m restless enough to keep searching for heaven – retracing my steps through the twists and turns of my life – until the day when my “faith becomes sight” as the hymn says.