Happiness

When was the last time you felt true happiness? Was it when your children were born? Maybe it was accomplishing a long-term goal...something you had worked on for months, maybe even years? How about when you met your significant other and knew you were in love? That was probably happiness.

Today, I experienced true happiness. Today, I found my lost keys.

Yesterday morning, I discovered that I couldn't find my keys. Frustrating. Especially frustrating since I have been so careful these days. My keys go in 1 of 2 places. I have a little hook on our bedroom wall. At the end of the day, they go there -- hanging up and ready to go. Usually, though, during the day because I'm in and out, I leave them in my purse's side pocket. When my keys went missing, I looked everywhere. Do you know where everywhere is? It's behind furniture, under cushions, outside through every square inch of grass in the backyard and front (including the neighbor's front yard), behind curtains, under desks...everywhere is anywhere you can possibly think of. I looked everywhere more than once.

I said a prayer.

I kept looking everywhere and was rather grumpy all day.

Then, last night, before Marcus and I said our final "goodnight" we were talking. I thought about my day, and I remembered that Samantha had been playing with my purse (which I discovered when I walked back into the family room and a couple tubes of lip gloss were scattered along the floor). Ahhhh. Yes. The keys must have been thrown out of my purse. My prayers had been answered. The next day, I was going to find those keys in the family room. Sweet dreams.

Today, I looked everywhere again. And this time, I checked everywhere I had not checked when checking everywhere before. Callie and I prayed. I moved every piece of furniture in that family room. Callie and I prayed. I combed the entire house and could NOT find those keys. Alright. I'm getting mad.

"Callie, come on, we're saying another prayer."
"Agaaaaaain?"
"Yes. I really need to find these keys and Heavenly Father's going to help me. Sometimes we pray more than once for things."

Hours passed with no keys. I was losing the faith people. I was frustrated and completely perplexed. Let's examine why I so needed these keys:

1. I'd have to pay a lot of money to get one of these keys with the chip in them remade.
2. Attached to these keys was my library card. I could get another one, but still.
3. Attached to these keys was my gym card. I'm not sure the procedure for "lost cards" but I didnt' want to find out.
4. Church keys. Yes. I also have church keys to the building and our YW closet and I didn't want to face the president, and our bishop, and tell them they were lost.
5. I didn't want my carelessly-placing-important-objects-down-without-paying-attention reputation with Marcus to continue! I used to lose them a lot, but I believed myself to be a changed woman. This would be a huge set-back in my attempt to prove reformation.

After dinner, I was in the kitchen with Samantha and Callie. I was sure that Samantha had flung my keys, but where in the everywhere were they?! In my mind, I retraced every part of that family room...and it occured to me: I had clean laundry in the room that I had moved to our bedroom. I didn't fold the clothes (of course), so they were sitting in our room now. That's it. That's where the keys must be. Since I knew that's where they must be, I felt comfortable waiting until I got the kids to bed...but then I couldn't wait. I started folding that laundry -- little by little removing the layers that covered those keys.

Then, in a moment of sheer relief, I gasped at the sound of my keys falling out of the 3T shirt I picked up to fold. Yes. My keys were there in all their jingling glory.

Callie rejoiced with me (maybe because I told her if she found them I'd take her bowling...do you think she still expects us to go?) and we said a prayer to thank Heavenly Father for enlightening my mind so I could find them.

So, yeeeeeah! Yeah because I found them, and yeah because it was (most likely) really Samantha's fault -- not mine! True happiness folks. It feels good.