Have you ever noticed that there are no pay phones anymore? Of course we don't notice this, because we always have our cell phones and have no need for a pay phone. Which I'm assuming is what Bellsouth was thinking when they got rid of them all. However, as anyone who has ever gone out without their cell phone knows, we are really, really used to having them. Not having my phone always makes me uncomfortable, as if I'm going to miss something vitally important. This is crazy, but it's just the way I've allowed myself to become programmed.

So what does this have to do with the adorable picture of this 3-year-old soccer player? Nothing, except that it was at my precious nephew's soccer game on Saturday that I somehow misplaced my phone. Not realizing this, I left the Bellevue area headed back home. Just a couple of minutes down the road, I tried to call Jeff to see what kind of progress they were making coming home from Mississippi. Since I obviously was having trouble finding my phone, I pulled off into a parking lot to conduct a full and complete search. Becoming ever more frustrated by the minute, I realized that I was going to have to go back to the soccer fields and hunt for my phone. Full of fear and trepidation over having to tell Jeff that I had lost my phone, I lugged all three kids back to the scene of the loss.

Parking as close to my original spot as I could, I had Bradley look under all the cars as we were walking towards the fields to see if he could spot it. I even asked a very nice (albeit suspicious) lady to call my phone just in case I could hear it ring. No such luck. When I got to the concessions stand and asked if anyone had turned in a phone, the lady told me that someone had already come and picked it up. Well, this couldn't be my phone, because no one knows that I lost it. She asked me if I wanted her to call it, so I gave her the number, hoping that I would hear it ring in the big bin of lost soccer balls, but no luck. So we headed back to the car.

As fate would have it, Bradley had to stop off at the Port-a-John, since it had been a good seven minutes since the last time he used it. As I'm waiting for him, the lady from concessions comes up and tells me, "Ma'am, your sister has your phone and she's waiting for you at the mall." Great news! I tell Bradley to hurry up and we're off to the mall. Just one problem. I have no idea where at the mall she is, and of course, I can't call her.

So we get to the mall, and I'm driving around the parking lot muttering "serenity now" over and over under my breath, hoping to see her standing by her car waving me down. No such luck. Bryant is starting to protest in hunger, and the other two are becoming really bored with this whole thing. Finally I park and unload them all, hoping to find a set of pay phones somewhere in the mall so that I can call my sister and get my phone back. As we're walking past the food court, she calls out to me. Sweet relief! She says, "I waited outside for you for a while, but Cooper was getting hungry." I told her that I had been driving around looking for her. She says, "Didn't the lady tell you that I said we'd be at Chick-Fil-A in the mall?" No. No, she didn't. That would have been a really useful piece of information.

So, you're wondering how my sister had my phone in the first place? Perhaps you're not, but I certainly was. This is the part where God truly was smiling down on me. It just so happened that a few minutes after I left, Jeff called me to tell me where they were. Someone had already turned my phone into lost and found, and they answered it, hoping to find whoever it belonged to. They told him that they had my phone. He called my sister, who was able to pick it up from the concessions stand because they were still at the field. Obviously she couldn't call me to let me know that she had it.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says to "give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Although I wasn't feeling particularly thankful for the wasted hour, I have to thank God for keeping it from being so much worse. After all, someone could be walking around with their SIM card in a brand new phone that just happens to have a picture of three adorable blond children on the face plate. Or I could have gotten all the way home and had to have driven an hour back to Bellevue to get my phone back. And in the broader scope of all the problems of this world, please. This was strictly a minor annoyance. Besides, I still made it home in time for kickoff, so all was right with the world.