Happy sumauter (summer/autumn/winter all in one week) to you! I began this post as a follow-up to our last musings about lost stuff, deciding what should be kept and what is clutter that invades our peace. My searches for missing treasures can be the effect of too much stuff, OR, more often the result of my forgetfulness. This chronic condition gave rise to the following “lost and foun- er…forgotten” experience.

The good news is that my earring is not lost. If you met me on a recent Tuesday in Wal-Mart, or Kroger and noticed I was wearing a hole in my head on one side, and a pretty pearl (credit to my niece-in-law) on the other side, you may be right in assuming I am easily distracted; but if you thought, “oh, she lost an earring”, you’d be wrong. To make matters worse, I didn’t swoop through unnoticed; I talked to people! I thought the young produce boy looked at me with passing amusement just because I couldn’t find the plastic bags on the other side of him, so I said he must’ve been drinking muddy water. Oh well. He no doubt thought I was lost beyond finding.

My day started out on the dorky side anyway. Good neighbors who never stop by, stopped by… and caught me still in my pajamas, complete with tennis shoes because I like to work in the house in comfort (it’s an ankle thing), I had somewhere to be at 10:30,  and I saw no reason to get dressed twice. Later, as I put one earring in, I heard my dog bark and remembered I’d left him on the couch, so off I hurried to set him off the couch; enter husband who, due to back pain, asked me to run his belt through the back loops of his pants. At that time, the washer stopped and I lugged the basket of sheets out to the clothesline. Coming inside, I realized it was time for that 10:30 thing, so I left. Driving down the highway, I asked myself, did I ever finish getting ready? No, only one earring, and no time to go back. I removed it and put it in my change purse. OH, but that’s not the end.

Back home, with three jobs to be doing at once, I postponed the shopping until my very unobservant husband was ready to go with me. I put in that other earring I had first left at home, and knowing the first one was in my purse, we left the house. But I drove. The rest is history. Nobody told me, (and I have very short hair) that I was wearing only one earring; husband, store employees and friends, some with whom I spoke at length, all acted like I looked normal. Girls, this is not the same as your wearing mismatched shoes – at least you didn’t go with one bare foot. Imagine my embarrassment when I stood before the mirror at 9:30 PM to remove my earrings and makeup.

Suddenly I recalled how chipper I’d been, smiling and speaking, happy to be alive and interacting like a woman who knows what she’s doing…confident and fearless. I can just imagine people were thinking, “wow, poor thing, she should’ve taken that other earring out, bless her heart”.  The bad news is that I am just forgetful; and easily distracted. I don’t even know if I was really wearing makeup. ??

Do we look through a dark glass? Do we turn from the mirror and forget who and what we are? Spiritually speaking, it is quite possible to do so. According to scripture, we can look into God’s word with understanding, and then turn around and do right the opposite. That life stuff again, distractions, maybe too little room in our faith to let the word grow; even a strong faith can get tangled in strands of ‘something shiny’, and we forget whose we are. “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He Who has made us and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” (Psalm 100:3 NKJV)

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.  But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:23-25).