Like many people, I spend lots of time looking for things I’ve misplaced.

This isn’t a new problem for me, but it has gotten worse as I’ve grown older. Added to the age factor is the reality that I have more things to keep track of today than ever before.

My phone is the item I lose most often.

For Christmas, both my kids bought me a Tile, which is a small square of plastic that has a button I can press and make my phone ring. I press the button, follow the sound of the ringtone, and find my phone, every time.

If I lose one Tile, I have a replacement on hand—somewhere.

This week I have worked in our yard a lot because the weather has been nice, and the flower beds needed tending.

As I moved from one flower bed to another, I often failed to take with me one of my pieces of equipment. Usually, it was the metal, wooden-handled dandelion digger-outer.

I estimate I have spent two hours this week looking for that tool. I don’t want to leave it where Dan will mow over it and sling it into a window, or worse, into a neighbor or into me.

Since the item poses potential danger if left lying around, I cannot rest until I find the thing. I was outside looking for it in the rain yesterday.

This week, I suffered a new loss that caused me great angst. Let me explain.

I use WordPress to create the blog posts you read, this one you are now reading, in fact. My posts usually contain some photos or other images I have retrieved from my camera or downloaded from a website.

After I retrieve these images, I place them inside my Media Library on my WordPress site. I have dozens of images in my WordPress Media Library.

While perusing the Web this week, I came across an article that began like this: You probably have dozens of images in your WordPress Media Library that are taking up space on your computer.

Now, because I’m impulsive and because I knew the article would include technical terms I wouldn’t understand, I read no further but immediately acted.

I went to my WordPress Media Library and started deleting images.

“Boy, I’m freeing up lots of space in my computer,” I thought.

Well, and this is beyond my scope of understanding, images I had previously used from my Media Library and put into blog posts (but was now deleting from my library) began disappearing from those posts.

Possibly my latest blog post, when you opened it (Hardy-Har-Har), contained wide blank spaces or even random question marks in the middle of wide blank spaces.

I had put images there.

The images had been stored in my Media Library. When I deleted them from my library, they disappeared from wherever I had used them in posts.

It reminds me of the movie Back to the Future when Marty McFly, living in the past, began taking actions that would lead to his family members never being born. He carried a family photo that he looked at off and on. Parts of his family members in the photo were fading away because of the things he was doing in his present, which was not the real present but the past.

I called my tech friend, Brian, who explained that I had probably “linked” not “embedded” those images from my library into my blog posts. Whatever that means.

When I deleted the images from the library, magic fingers (Brian did not use the term “magic fingers.”) reached out from my library to all my posts that contained those linked images and deleted them.

HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

People of my age and station in life know how this blunder made me feel. They understand the thought process I then followed.

“What business do I have trying to have a blog? I’m too old and too stupid. I should never post another article! URGHHH!”

Yet, here I am, posting another article. Hope springs eternal.

I can relate to the bumper sticker that reads: Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.

In order to end this article (containing images, I hope), on a happy note, please allow me to say I have also found some items which brought me great joy this week.

I had not previously used and mislaid these items. In fact, I can take no credit for having them at my disposal.

I found a pink dogwood tree and a white dogwood tree, visible through the window of my home office. I found purple lilac clusters hanging from bushes, and young redbirds fliting about learning to use their baby wings. I found lush green grass and new leaves and a glowing sun.

God, who never loses anything, placed these items in my world for my enjoyment.

The wonder I experienced from finding these things far outweighs the frustration I felt from losing other things.

Unlike people and things, God is reliable, all the time.