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.

Yesterday, I was having a vortex kind of day.

You know the sort of day I mean. I felt caught in a force that was sucking me downward.

I wanted/needed to do many things.

I have obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as attention deficit disorder.

These conditions make time management difficult.

But I work hard at it.

I plan. I make lists. I use sticky notes.

I  anticipate, contemplate, create, and recreate, but mostly I agitate.

Yesterday I was going nowhere but crazy.

On such days, I seek out Dan.

In tears, I try to tell him how I feel.

But I can’t find the words to express the desperation in my soul.

Dan holds me. I cry.

He says, “Deb, it’ll be okay. Calm down. You’re trying to do too many things. Let some of them go.”

He is right. I am always trying to do too many things. I can’t let even one of them go.

After talking to Dan yesterday, I sat down to pray.

Sentence after sentence poured out of me.

“God, I’m so tired. I’m pedaling as fast as I can but getting nowhere.

I’m aiming to earn an A in life but getting a C-.

I can’t finish one project because another one calls louder to me.

I want to use my gifts to bring glory to You.

But I’m just spinning my wheels.

I’ve got lessons to prepare, articles to write, emails to answer, cards to send.

I want to finish my Bible study on the book of Matthew, but I can’t get past chapter two.

The scrapbooks I’m making for my grandchildren are barely started.

I’ve got books to read, online courses to complete.

My website needs to be updated.

I can’t get my online newsletter off the ground.

I have things to say, Lord. Things to write. Things to share.

But today I wonder if any of them are worth saying, worth writing, worth sharing.

I’m not getting any younger, Lord, and ‘I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.’

I’ve got to work harder, move faster.

I’m caving in upon myself.

I’m splintered.

Failing.

Going down for the third time.

What is wrong with me?

You didn’t create me to live a life of chaos and frustration.

Where is the peace I am supposed to find in You?

Where is it?

Where?”

And then, perhaps from God, came an answer.

“You’re not trying to find peace in Me. You’re trying to find peace in yourself, in your accomplishments.

Look at how many of your sentences begin with the word ‘I.’

When will you learn, Child, that peace will never be found in you? It’s found only in Me.”

My tears flowed harder, and I answered, “I don’t know, Lord. When will I learn that?”

 

My friend Roger told a story that caused all his listeners to sit up and listen. I have never forgotten it.

One fall day Roger drove through a neighborhood with lots of trees. Leaves fell steadily from the branches and colored people’s lawns with splashes of orange, red and gold.

Many homeowners had raked or blown their leaves to the edge of the street. Specially designed trucks made regular trips through neighborhoods and sucked up the leaves.

In front of one house Roger noted a long row of piled leaves. He considered driving through them and enjoying the swirling mass of color rising behind his car. But at the last minute, he decided against it.

He glanced in his rear view mirror after passing those leaves. As he looked, he saw two small children pop up, hands raised, scattering the crunchy leaves.

The sight made Roger sick. How close he had come to destroying the lives of two little children.

I tell this story every fall. Resist the urge  to drive through piles of leaves.

Remind people you know to do the same.

Last night I was in the kitchen, cleaning up from dinner, when I heard Dan calling for me.

“Deb,” he yelled. “I need your help!”

I dried my hands and headed toward the sound of his voice.

I found Dan standing in the hallway. His arms were outstretched, his legs were planted firmly on the floor, and his body was locked in an awkward position as if he were playing freeze tag.

“Watch your step!” he said. “My glasses have fallen off my face and I need you to help me find them before one of us steps on them.”

Last month Dan and I observed our 45^th wedding anniversary.

What does being married for 45 years mean?

It means whatever one of us has experienced over the years, the other one has too. This includes significant events like becoming parents and insignificant events like eating tens of thousands of meals together.

Side by side we have traveled over a million miles, and we have slept together every night, with only a handful of exceptions. We have shared all our money and held down numerous jobs. We have faithfully paid our bills.

We have endured a miscarriage, Dan’s various health problems, Debbie’s ongoing struggle against depression, and a heartbreaking church split.

Between us we have said goodbye to seven grandparents, four parents, and numerous other family members and friends.

We have been blessed with two wonderful children and four super-spectacular grandchildren. We have enjoyed mostly good health, warm friendships, trips to faraway places, and (except for a short period at the beginning of our marriage) enough money to buy everything we needed.

We tended our kids through countless ear infections, a couple of broken bones, numerous trips to emergency rooms, troubles at school, chicken pox, multiplication tables, baseball leagues, summer camp programs, heartbreaks, and class projects too numerous to count.

We have read aloud all 700 Berenstain Bears Books 700 times each.

We have had both wonderful and undesirable neighbors.

We have contended with broken lawn mowers, dishwashers, ovens, water heaters, clothes dryers, refrigerators, garage doors, and furnaces and air conditioners.

We have grieved together as we watched friends’ marriages crumble and friends’ kids be destroyed by drugs.

We have loved and lost four cats and two dogs.

We have had lawns that wouldn’t grow, cars that wouldn’t run, and babies that wouldn’t sleep.

We have lived through months of remodeling a house. We have been so broke we couldn’t scrape together enough money to buy a new tire for our car.

We have fought nests of wasps and hornets, an infiltration of our home by ants, tomato worms that stripped the leaves off our plants overnight, chipmunks that ate the flowers out of our outdoor pots, mites that made holes in the leaves of our rose bushes, and those hideous, slimy leaches that ate our hostas.

We have also fought invisible enemies: the temptation to become discontent, to hold on to grudges,  to become bored with each other, to keep score of how many times each partner caused us to be late, and to become unbearably crotchety.

We’ve attended thousands of church services and Bible classes together.

We’ve lived through silly fads like leisure suits, pet rocks, men’s perms, disco music, bell bottoms, and streakers.

We have seen nine presidents come or go or come and go. We have watched our nation weather wars, riots, assassinations, sit-ins, hurricanes, scandals, college unrest, school shootings, and ongoing political wrangling.

We have learned to have comfortable repartees (a fancy word for conversations) like the one below.

When Dan observed me reading The Catcher in the Rye, he glanced at the cover, and asked, “Is that a western?”

(As if I EVER read westerns.)

I laughed and said, “Dan, if I were you, I wouldn’t ask that question of any other educated person.”

“Why?” he asked. “Do you mean everyone else except me has read or is at least familiar with the storyline of The Catcher in the Rye and knows it is not a western?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” I said.

Later that day, we watched our nine-year-old granddaughter practice her various swimming techniques: the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, etc

As she demonstrated the freestyle swimming technique, I asked Dan, “Does freestyle mean the swimmer is free to swim in any style he or she chooses?”

“No, Deb,” he said. “And, you might not want to ask that question of any other educated person.”

“Got it,” I said.

Together Dan and I have experienced umpteen thousand little incidents that mean nothing and yet mean everything in a marriage, like laughing at funny stories, watching the hummingbirds feed off our back porch, and looking for lost eyeglasses together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am inserting this final photo as a special tribute to Dan, who allows me to share openly conversations and other parts of the life we share. He also tolerates the little violas that crop up every year amid his neatly laid landscape stones. If it were up to him, they would be gone, but he leaves them because he knows I love them.

 

 

Thank you, dear readers, for faithfully following my blog or even for looking occasionally to see what I’ve posted. Many thanks go to those of you who comment.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is expose my writing efforts to other people. All writers are terrified of rejection.

Essentially, the writer says to the reader, “After hours of writing, rewriting, cutting and pasting, using the dictionary and thesaurus, checking and rechecking facts, doing endless proofreading, sweating bullets, and chewing my nails, I present this writing effort for your evaluation. Please be kind.”

But, regardless of the reception the piece receives, the writer continues to write. She must. She knows within each new piece lies the germ of an idea waiting to be discovered and developed. Often, the writer doesn’t know what she is looking for until she finds it. But when she does, writing becomes pure joy.

My good husband Dan very kindly allows me to share our conversations and experiences within my blog posts. Even though he and I wrangle over incidentals, he remains the best man I know. I never want to show him in a bad light. Usually, when I write about Dan and me, I am illustrating how difficult it is to communicate well, even in good marriages like ours.

I am honored that The Upper Room (www.upperroom.org) has chosen to publish one of my devotional pieces in its March/April 2018 issue. My article will also be featured on its website on March 2, 2018. I invite you to log on to the website on that date, read my article, and consider signing up to receive daily devotionals online from The Upper Room. I find them to be encouraging and insightful.

If you enjoy reading my blog, the highest compliment you can give me is to share it with a friend.