Lesson learned from a lost wallet

LIFE IS GOOD

by Buckley Jensen

On Saturday, November 10, Marcia and I returned from a week out of town.

The last time I remembered using my wallet was at Walker’s in Wellington. I am NOT one who loses things. I always put my wallet in the same place.

On Sunday morning, I went to fetch the wallet and it was gone! Holy Smokes! It had simply disappeared!

Thus started one of the great searches in history. I had no memory of the wallet after I used it in Wellington. Did I get home with it or didn’t I?

Over a three-day period it involved tearing the house apart, sifting through garbage cans, molesting the dust bunnies under the furniture and cussing myself mercilessly!

We were scheduled for a road trip to the Midwest on the 24th. How was I going to drive 3,000 miles without a driver’s license? How was I going to pay for anything without plastic?

How about those senior discounts? How was I going to get into Costco and Sams? Even my Golden Passport was in that wallet, along with things like my tax I. D. number, insurance cards, telephone numbers, and $105 in cash.

And to make matters worse, when I went to get the little black book with the credit information necessary to cancel all those credit cards, I could not find the da** book!

And while I looked for the black book, I couldn’t help imagining the grand time the crook who found my wallet was having.

The more I searched, the more frustrated I got. Life has been good the last three years. I have almost forgotten what it feels like to be angry, frustrated, incredulous, worried, and helpless all at the same time… and now a piece of leather small enough to fit in a pocket was ruining my life!

I immediately posted an in-house $5 reward for the wallet’s safe return. As I passed Winky (our alpha cat) snoozing in my favorite chair, I asked for his help and promised his favorite catnip with the reward money.

He opened one eye and yawned. That’s all! Cats are such losers in emergencies.

By Tuesday night, the reward was up to $105 and I was faced with the realization that a million dollars probably wouldn’t change the outcome.

I don’t generally bother the Big Guy about matters pertaining to my own stupidity. I am a believer that He helps those who help themselves, and I try hard to not bother Him except on matters of gratitude and things beyond my control.

Well, Tuesday night, I made an exception. I was at the end of my tether. About midnight I squeezed in a request on behalf of the wallet during prayers.

At three in the morning Wednesday, Marcia woke up and started worrying about the Webelo lesson necessary by afternoon. She got up to start preparing and at 3:09 a.m. I was awakened by shrill screams. She flew into the bedroom yelling like a Banshee.

She was clutching the wallet in her hands. Seems when I came in on Saturday afternoon I inexplicably placed the wallet on a pile of books and it had fallen among them in such a manner as to become invisible to all of our searching.

I had pulled those books out and looked behind them, but I did not see the wallet. We both agreed that had she not been looking for a specific rarely used book for her lesson it would have probably been weeks or months before we found the wallet.

I breathed the biggest sigh of relief in years and then lay awake for two hours thinking about the train wreck my life had been for three days.

I thought about how blessed I was that the biggest frustration of my life since 2003 was a lost wallet. My health is good; kids are in great shape; the wife still loves me; future looks promising; didn’t wreck coming home; house hadn’t burned down; BYU is headed for another football championship and the price of oil stayed under $100 per barrel… doesn’t get much better than that and I had about lost it over a wallet.

About five o’clock, I drifted back to sleep and dreamed that I had developed ulcers and they got so big they had to remove my stomach and I was slowly starving to death. I awoke, ravenously hungry, breathed another huge sigh of relief, and ate the biggest breakfast I’ve had in years. Life is Good!

But seriously folks, don’t you find it interesting that approximately three hours after swallowing my pride and asking the Big Guy for some assistance, the wallet turns up in the middle of the night?

I will probably get hate mail from the atheists and agnostics on this one, but that’s the honest truth. Next time, maybe I won’t wait so long before asking for help. buckleyjensen@hotmail.com