Someone's Not Listening

Yesterday

(blow out that air, Heidi)

was one of those days where you either have to laugh or cry or scream or maybe all three.

I'm choosing to laugh.  So join me in a little chuckle while I tell you about my crazy day including my toddler-esque temper tantrum with God.  (Oh, yes, I did.)

It was going to be a busy day.  I knew it, and I thought I had planned well enough that I was going to be able to handle it.  Terence was working both RenFest and his regular shift, and I had a baptismal service and the Cub Scout Blue & Gold Banquet to attend on my own with all the kids.  I got things off on the right foot, heading out for a long run first thing.  It was a seven mile trek, and though half my friends probably think that's an easy jaunt for me, it's really not.  That's about the longest distance I've run in two years.  (Even at my running best, the farthest I've ever gone in one stretch is 8 miles.)  It was a little ambitious-- OK, very ambitious-- for such a busy day, but there you are.  Sometimes I'm crazy like that.

When I got home, I chased the kids through some chores and got some laundry going.  So far, so good, even though I was feeling quite worn out from such a long run.  Then when S went down for a nap, I added some more onto my plate by doing some painting.  At the time it just seemed like the efficient use of a small window of time to work on a project that I've been putting off for way too long.  Huh.  Probably I should have put it off a little longer.  It left me just barely enough time afterward to jump in the shower and get dressed up for the baptism.  I hopped out of the shower and found that my friend Kristi had called several times, unusual to say the least.  So while I went to get S up and dressed after her nap, I called Kristi back.  Kristi was having a crisis day (much worse than mine, actually), and she was wondering if I could take Justin to the Blue & Gold.  Not a problem (one more kid is easy when it's Justin) but because of schedules, he would have to come to the baptism with us.  Right while we were having this conversation on the phone, I discovered that S had had a poop explosion during her nap.  There I was with the phone on my shoulder and a baby girl caked in brown smelliness.  It was EVERYWHERE (including in her hair), and we were supposed to leave in 15 minutes.  Yikes!!!

Now I was really under the gun.  (Can you feel my anxiety level rising?)  In record time I managed to bathe S, get her dressed for the baptism, strip her bed and start a load of poopy laundry, and clean myself off a bit.  Justin showed up in the middle of this and I started the process of loading the kids in the car.  Despite everything, we were right on schedule.  With everyone in the car but B, I went to grab my keys and my phone from my desk.

No keys.  No phone.

Now I must admit that I frequently lose my keys.  This wasn't the first time that I've run through the house in a panicked state, checking counters and desks and dressers and bathroom sinks and under papers and in jacket pockets trying to find missing keys.  But I couldn't find them in any of the normal places.  At this point I realized that I needed a little divine help so I prayed for help in finding the keys.  I also reminded myself that the real test was how I treat everyone around me while under pressure and that I needed to be calm and not take out my anxiety on the kids.  Instead of losing my cool (yet), I calmly went to the car and asked M to help me search the house.

M and I turned everything upside down.  She found my phone on S's dresser but no sign of my keys anywhere (which I could have sworn I had left with my phone).  By this point we were definitely running late.  Since I was supposed to play the piano I needed to text the other sisters in the Primary presidency and let them know I was going to be late, but of course since my cell phone died earlier this week, I was using a phone that doesn't have any of my contacts.  I had to pull up the ward directory on the internet and track down some phone numbers, which slowed me down even more.

At this point I was starting to get frantic.  In desperation I called Terence, hoping he would be able to help, somehow.  I also was silently praying over and over for help, reminding the Lord that this was for a good cause, I was supposed to be helping at a baptism-- if ever there was a cause when His intervention was justified, surely this was it!  Terence was exasperated with me, but quite calm.  He tried to suggest places where they could be and hysteria bloomed while I ran through the list of places I had already checked (included trash cans, toy bins, under mattresses, in laundry baskets, etc.).  He rationally pointed out that someone had to know where the keys were.

And here's where it got silly.  "Of course someone knows where the keys are!" I shouted back at him.  "God does, but He is refusing to tell me!!!!"  I then went into a rant about how I'd already prayed but I wasn't getting an answer, either God wasn't listening or He didn't care or maybe He wasn't there at all (not that I really believed that).  Really, I was behaving like an out of control toddler.

I think I even shocked my husband for once, and it takes a lot to do that.

At this point I had been searching for my keys for 45 minutes.  I got a text back letting me know that it was OK, they had the piano covered without me, and anyway, it was too late no matter what for me to do any good even if I found the keys right that second.  So I had the kids get out of the car and told them we were going to miss the baptism.  Poor Justin was so worried.  He was afraid he wouldn't get to go to the Blue & Gold Banquet after all.  He and M continued looking for the keys, and I locked myself in my bedroom to get away from the two crying younger children and tried to calm down.  (Terence was trying to help me work through it all, but then my phone battery died.  Yeah, it was that kind of day.)

Gathering my wits about me in the relative peace of my room, I started to feel like an idiot.  Especially for pitching a fit with God for not answering my prayers exactly as I was demanding.  In the middle of this pondering I suddenly knew quite clearly that the last place I had left my keys was my desk.  So I went out to check my desk one more time.  My desk was a little cluttered, but not too badly, and it didn't take long to confirm that my keys were not on there.  Earlier I had scanned around the floor area, but I hadn't really dug into the mound of the clutter shoved against the wall at the base of the desk.  (It kind of builds back there-- one of B's chores is to clean up the office floor, and frequently she just takes stuff and shoves it as far out of sight under my desk as she can.)  Poking around in the pile, I found the dustpan holding a pile of paper.  Under the papers and sitting in the dustpan were my keys.

Right where I most certainly did NOT leave them.  :-)

Looking back, I think that there was a reason that my prayer to find the keys wasn't answered right away.  It's even possible that the Lord was trying to answer my prayer but I was too worked up to hear the answer.  At any rate, the most important thing was not that I get to the baptism on time (or at all).  I think I was really supposed to learn a lesson about slowing down and listening and letting answers come in God's time, not mine.  Even when I think He really should give me what I want right that second (because, after all, I'm asking for something righteous, right?), His ways are not my ways and I'm not always going to understand when the answer doesn't come like I think it should.  It's a matter of faith.

It's also quite possible that the Lord was trying to teach me to be more prepared.  Tomorrow I'm going to get a backup copy of the van key made.  I'm also going to start making a valiant effort to hang my keys up on a hook instead of leaving them willy-nilly all over the house.  After all, faith without works is dead, right?