Here’s documented evidence that no prayer is too small. It’s also circumstantial evidence that God has a sense of humor, but we pretty much confirmed that with so many funny-looking people walking around.
While in Key West, I decided to buy
something chicken. This is, of course, because there are feral chickens everywhere.
They’re ubiquitous to KW and, even for sober people like me, it never gets old
seeing them strutting around.
Last year, I bought a Mile Marker Zero
magnet with a chicken, so I had a little something but, when I popped into a Life
is Good store and found the perfect pair of socks, I plunked down however much
they wanted and walked out. I’ve started buying a lot of fun socks lately –
they pack easier than rugs, I’ve discovered – and these were black/gray, so
they’d match my wardrobe. They have a chicken wearing sunglasses; he’s in a
crosswalk and the words “Don’t Ask” are emblazoned across the top. They’re perfect.
They sat in my drawer for a couple weeks
before I finally wore them, and I showed them off for a couple days before
deeming them ready for the laundry. My weekends are busy, so most of the time I
dump the laundry on the bed early and sort it later; I do it on Saturday
mornings – our Sunday – and that’s the day I pick up the church guests in the
morning.
Point being that I didn’t go through
it quickly, and that morning, I also had a command performance breakfast
meeting, so it took awhile for me to get back to it. But before I did, I
remember loaning a swimsuit to a visiting colleague in the hopes she’d join me
for water aerobics on Saturday night. We’d both had to attend the breakfast
thing, lucky us. (I did take home a lot of bacon. So much better than the regular
cafeteria!)
When I got around to folding, I couldn’t
find one of the socks. Anywhere. We have a communal laundry room and I made the
walk down there, figuring whoever used the dryer next would have left it out;
most people are pretty good that way. No
dice. I looked under, beside and behind both the washer and the dryer. I even
checked the lint-catching thingie, although I knew that was impossible.
At that point, I was convinced, even
though I really hadn’t had that much laundry, that I’d accidentally thrown it
in with the rest of the socks, the underwear or something else. I went through
everything, including the sheets, even though I hadn’t washed them.
All the time, I didn’t panic. It was
annoying that of all the socks I own, one of the brand-new (and really cute)
pair had gone missing. But I knew it had to be somewhere because it couldn’t
have just disappeared. We have some new people on our floor, but I couldn’t
imagine anyone finding and throwing away anything, let alone the cutest sock from
all Key West.
I put a note on the dryer I’d used: “Did
you find a sock with a chicken on this dryer? Don’t ask.” I figured whoever had
found it just hadn’t folded up his/her laundry and would laugh when they made
the connection between the note and the sock itself and fully expected to see
the sock the next time I checked.
But I didn’t. And I didn’t the next
time, either. Or the time after that. I stopped checking the laundry room every
time I walked by, but my faith didn’t flag. I scrounged through my room again –
seriously, it’s a one-room apartment, how many places could there be? I looked
under the bed, the dresser and in the little area where I keep the laundry basket.
The following Saturday marked a week,
and my hope still overflowed; it seemed likely that the person who had used the
dryer after me maybe didn’t empty everything and would run across it the next
laundry day. But alas, no sock appeared.
Over the Fourth, I washed my own
sheets. It was off-cycle but also a free day, so why not take advantage. But as
much as I wished the chicken sock to materialize, it didn’t.
And as trivial as it seems, I prayed
about it. I mean, I totally confessed to God that it was stupid (like He didn’t
know, right?), but I also said that I trusted the sock would turn up and asked
Him to reveal it to me. And like Mark 11:24 says, I believed that I would
receive the sock back to me. As silly as it was.
This week, my counterpart over at the
airport facility called and said she was swinging by to return my swimsuit. She
wound up standing me up for the water aerobics class and then got up super
early to get back to work on Sunday, so she hadn’t had a chance to return it. She’d
taken it with her, then dispatched it back with someone else, who forgot to
give it to me. (Good thing I didn’t need the swimsuit!)
She brought it back, unused. I ran it
home at lunch along with some laundry soap that a departing person left me. It
was fried chicken Wednesday, so I basically just dropped the bags and ate. But
after work, I started putting stuff up and when I dumped out the swimsuit bag,
my sock fell out!
It’s just so silly, but it brought me
joy. I really did have faith that it would find its way home and it did. I sure
don’t know how I managed to toss it in there, but it fell right out. I did not doubt
that it would turn up, but I didn’t expect it to turn up there.
Ask and ye shall receive.
