Sunny Side Up!
July 11, 2001
�2001 by Kathleen Gibson
Sifting through the Lost and Found�
My friend, holidaying at our house, was leaving a message on her previous host�s answering machine. �Hi Ieleen, it�s me! I think I left something at your place, if you wouldn�t mind checking. It�s something you can use, but I�d like it back if you find it. It may be behind the bathroom door, but it could be on the bed in the blankets. I hate to lose it. It�s yellow, it�s new, it�s particularly nice, and well,� here she lowered her voice to a stage whisper, �actually�it� s my bra.�
I clutched my middle�tried to keep my laughter in Saskatchewan. �What if her husband gets the message first?� I asked after she hung up.
She was aghast. �I never thought of that.� Our laughter sailed clear into Manitoba. �If you use this in your column, I will remain nameless,� she said, waggling her finger at me.
�Okay, nameless,� I agreed, through my gasps. �And bra-less.�
Another friend�s watch went missing at our house. It was a mystery, she said. She�d had it that very morning. She left, leaving instructions to mail the watch to her, should it turn up.
It turned up. I was flushing the toilet the next day when I noticed an unusual glimmer glistening through the crystal eddy. I bent closer. It was a gold-faced Timex watch, correct to the minute.
The brown leather strap disintegrated a few weeks after she got it back, she said later. (No doubt due to its second baptism�in bleach.) She got a new strap, and the watch hasn�t skipped a tick in the year since.
Yet one more friend called recently. �I swallowed a filling,� she said glumly. �A gold one. Guess what I have to do now?�
When I stopped laughing, all she said was, �Well, those things are expensive, you know!�
She mined for two weeks without finding the teensy nugget. Maybe she didn�t swallow it at all, she thinks now. Perhaps it fell out during the night and got lost in the bed. So she�s mining the bedroom.
Last month, during an out of province trip, I left a cardigan on the back of my restaurant chair. We had traveled half an hour before I remembered it. The sweater wasn�t worth much anymore, well-worn, nubby with fuzz balls, and we were in a hurry to get home. But it was a gift from my son. It�s the first thing I reach for when I�m chilly. When I wear it I feel his hug, and the care he put into selecting it. Leave it behind? Are you kidding?
We turned around. I�m wearing the sweater now, instead of regrets that I never went back.
God has a lost list too. He�s good at sifting through crap, and he hunts as diligently for the well-worn and tired-out as the sparkling and valuable. They were His Son�s choice, you see.
I once was lost, but now am found�.truly amazing grace.
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