finding things in unexpected places.

I have a habit of losing things.

I’ve always been like this. When I was 12, my family took a trip to Madison. My parents bought me this cute UW Madison zip-up, and it was in my possession for all of a month before I lost it. My dad still brings it up.

Within the last few years though, I’ve noticed things that I’ve lost return to me at the most unexpected times, in the most unexpected places. Last year, I lost a pair of knockoff Chanel sunglasses I bought on eBay. I don’t even remember when I realized they were lost, I just kind of looked up one day and realized that I hadn’t seen them in awhile. I had turned my bag and my car upside down in search of them, and after a few months just kind of gave up.

Then one day I got up out of the driver’s seat of the rental car I was in and I heard a small noise. I looked down, and there they were. My sunglasses. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t have this car when I lost the sunglasses, and I had searched my work bag so many times — I literally had no idea how they suddenly were right in front of my face.

But there they were. So with a smirk and a shrug, I accepted the fact that somehow they had made their way back to me.

This happened again this week with a ring I had lost earlier this year. I had gotten the ring at an art fair a few years ago in Minnesota, and I still remember the day vividly. I was wandering around with a friend of mine from college, and the ring itself was made out of a part of a plane. It’s gold and has the word “the” engraved on the side. It’s a vague enough word that you can make the meaning whatever you want it to be, which really appealed to my hopeless romantic self. I bought it, excited to have a piece of jewelry that was unique and special and serendipitous.

And then I lost it. It was the same thing — I didn’t even realize it was gone until I looked up and realized I hadn’t seen it in awhile. I tore my room and my jewelry bag apart, finally resigning myself to the fact that I probably would never seen my ring again.

Then this week, I was loading my sheets into the washing machine when I heard a “ding!” I looked down, and there it was. My ring. I stared at it in shock, getting a weird sense of deja vu. I hadn’t been looking for it, and by all accounts had given up on seeing it again, and yet there it was. Sitting at the bottom of my washing machine.

(This same scenario happened with my Minnesota necklace last year, except I found it in my backpack where i KNOW I had looked before)

I stood there for a second marveling at my ring — thinking about all the things I lost this summer, and all the things I was trying so desperately to find.

I spent most of the summer finding and losing relationships, my faith, and in a lot of ways, myself. I’ve turned everything in my life upside down, looking under the floorboards and around corners, to try and find a part of me that I didn’t even know was missing until I took two seconds out of my too-busy life and noticed it’s absence. I keep hoping that I’ll wake up one morning and find it right in front of my face, just like my ring.

But maybe the same principle applies. Maybe the trick with finding things that are lost is to stop looking, and let yourself be surprised when it comes back to you at an unexpected time, in an unexpected place.