This Week's Panic Attack

My PHONE!

I just had it and it’s nowhere to be found. I haven’t left the house, but I’ve searched every room and cannot find it.

I was on my way to fulfill one of life’s mundane tasks when I noticed the absence of this device. The feeling was identical to the panic when I misplaced a credit card. In both circumstances, the loss could be disastrous!

Maybe you’ve experienced this too. A rapid heartbeat, a rise in internal temperature visible on the skin, and the whirlwind motions expressed simply as running around with your hair on fire.

So that was me for the entire 45-second 'hour'. The task was left undone, and all thought was focused on only one thing as I scrambled around the confines of the structure trashing everything in sight until it popped up right where I left it. It’s terrible when the phone's color matches that of its ‘hiding place’.

Success! I was so very grateful. Like the discovery of the credit card, my life had been spared after personal foolishness.

This shift is abrupt, today because that’s how it felt to me when it happened.

Let’s go back. “My life had been spared”. So that would mean that everything important, everything that is near and dear, as the expression goes, was located in that device.

Its loss would be my demise. I would no longer function in the world. I would no longer be connected. I would no longer have breath. Adios, y’all.

And then, I was reminded. The ability to function, the connectivity to the world, and a constant and steady breath are not and will never be found in that phone. These things will also not be found in my job, bank account, house, or car. They will not be seen in what I do for a living and will fail to show up on my next vacation. All these things are found in only one place.

Do I ever appear deranged in an unceremonious panic when I notice the misplacing of the relationship between myself and my Creator?

I can only ask myself, "Well, why the ___(bleep)__ not?!"

My life has been spared – this time (and every time) through grace and mercy. I will not be required to run around the house in some demented pattern of exploration. I will instead spend some quiet time on my knees in thanksgiving and praise.