A Little Story

I have a little story to tell. I was looking for my one of my favorite pairs of earrings last week on a day when I was feeling a little spunky. They are turquoise and silver and I wear them a lot in the summer when I feel like being colorful. It's very likely that I haven't worn them since last summer. I searched  jewelry boxes, drawers and travel bags all to no avail. I've thought about them over the week. It chaws me to lose things. I used a tactic my husband encourages where you try to remember the last time you knew where the now missing item was, but I honestly can't remember last month let alone last August. So this morning I was thinking that after church I was going to pull out my overnight bag and look in every single one of the pockets just as I was reaching for a bracelet in my jewelry box, and what caught my eye, but my missing earrings. I felt a surge of thankfulness, and I stopped to express my gratitude to God. See I know I looked through every drawer of both my jewelry boxes and I didn't find my earrings and yet here they were. Now I don't think God goes around planting earthly treasures we've misplaced to delight us, but there is something about the mystery of finding them and the way that sign connected me to my faith.

One of the things we committed to do this Lenten season was to attend mass each week for the holy period. We haven't been once. I'll spare you the litany of excuses, but you should know that this morning we all four were church bound. Teddy left early for a golf lesson and the rest of us slept in a bit. We are early mass goers so it would have been easy to say skip it again, but we didn't. The kids wanted to. I knew they weren't happy I was telling them not that they had to come, but that it would make me gratefully happy if they did. I felt that finding my earrings was a sign that the universe is listening, and that we need to listen too.

And it just so happens that we're halfway through Lent. The priest acknowledged that many of us aren't where we want to be. That maybe we're doing the things we said we wouldn't and not doing the things we said we would. To that he said: recommit. He acknowledged that it's never to late to make positive change. And that is where my heart was when I sat down in the third pew to pray this morning before Father even reminded me of God's grace. I'm ready not for a do over, but for a do better.