Now that we are back home (whew, I love the sound of that: "back home!"), Janie and I went to her first occupational therapy session today for her right hand. But the adventure wasn't the therapy. In fact, our adventure had nothing to do with her therapy or her injury... it had to do with my persistent inability to find my way around even a paper bag. Seriously, I am like one of those erratic houseflies that zoom all over the kitchen with no seeming rhyme or reason. They just buzz crazily around, no discernible meaning to their insane flying pattern. That is me when it comes to directions. I can get lost going anywhere... and I mean anywhere. Just ask any of my friends... or rather, don't ask them, since they may be on the phone talking to me telling me how to get to wherever I'm going since I got hopelessly lost. Sigh.
But this morning, it wasn't so much that I got lost going to the doctor's office that is less than 10 minutes from our house. O no, we found our way over there quite nicely, thank you. Though I must say, when you haul a 1000 pound wheelchair in the back of the car, along with crutches, and a giant purse, and a couple of books (just in case--you never know when you're going to get lucky), your attitude can take a bit of a beating. I digress. How unusual.
Anyway, after our appointment, Janie was whipped and had a splitting headache. We started back to the large multilevel parking lot... and of course, at that instant I realized I had absolutely no earthly idea what floor we had parked on. Janie thought it might be level 3, and seeing that for all I knew we parked on Mars, we headed up the elevator to 3... no car. Undaunted, I pushed the 1000 pound wheelchair up the steep ramp to the next level... no car. Well, maybe we'll go down to level 2... no car. By now, poor Janie's head is absolutely pounding, along with my pulse.
We wandered around the lovely multilevel parking lot for a while, and all I could think about was how awful this exhaust was probably for my daughter and her recovering brain. Finally after much futility and gnashing of teeth, Janie and I rode the elevator back down to the ground floor and started all over again. Sometimes you just need a fresh start in life.
Turns out we had taken a different elevator than the one we had taken when we first arrived. Who knew? They looked the same and really weren't all that far apart, but this parking lot is actually two parking lots connected to one another but yet distinct. That is confusing... and so are the parking lots. Suffice it to say, when you are a horrifically challenged directional person, this is disastrous.
But, miraculously--or at least close to it--we finally found the car. After starting fresh and going back down to the ground floor, going to the correct elevator, and then heading back up to level 3, we finally found it. Of course, even this still involved me parking Janie and the 1000 pound wheelchair by one of the super beautiful cement walls while I clicked my car clicker and listened desperately for the sound of my car honking. Don't you wonder why on earth God would entrust me with five children? He has an incredible sense of humor.
But I can tell you one thing: when we finally found that car, I felt like dancing and singing and shouting! I rushed to pick up Janie in the back corner of level 3 and got her back to home sweet home. And all I could think was--there is nothing like being found. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind but now I see."
For you see, we felt hopeless to find our way. We wandered and looked and tried and complained but all to no avail. All my ideas, all my strategies, all my energy was no help whatsoever. And we could have wandered through that industrial parking lot all day to no avail--we never would have found our car, because our car was in the attached-but-mystifyingly-separate-next-door parking lot. We were hopelessly on the wrong track.
And that is just the moment--the desperate yet wonderful moment--where Christ finds each of us. "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom 5:8) We were lost and hopeless and underserving and ungrateful, and the Savior came. He came not only to show us the way out... He was and is The Way, the Truth and the Life. He finds us and saves us and restores us and redeems us, even at our most unlovely and unpromising. What a salvation. What a Savior.
So tonight, I'm just rejoicing that He found me and saved me. I may get lost everywhere I go... but I'll never ever be lost from my Lord. He knows exactly where I am and He will lead me all the way home. To Home Sweet Glorious Eternal Home. To God--the seeking, finding Savior--be all the glory.
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