Lost

I've lost the camera I used last night to capture Zane blowing out his three candles for his third birthday. I've lost the image of him bursting through the streamers hung over his door and his excited smile over the balloons covering his floor. Brad insists that it will show up but I feel like I'm losing my mind. I feel like I've lost something forever. I know the camera can be replaced but none of those moments will.

I've searched our house high and low. I've gone through our trash twice now. I've gone through pine straw by hand, walked the yard at least five times. I've looked under couches and cushions, behind and below furniture, everywhere I could have put it and everywhere I know I absolutely wouldn't have put it. I can find it nowhere.

That's what I was doing this morning as I was supposed to getting ready for church. When we should have been leaving I just cried on my bed. I told Brad that rationally I should let it go and accept it for lost. But I was paralyzed. I couldn't get ready. I couldn't do anything. The world stops for me when something is lost.

I remember as a child my father's incredible rages he would enter when something of his was lost. Everyone had to stop what they were doing and at least pretend to look as he yelled and demanded of us to find what had been done with his lost item. I know I have a trigger for lost things because of this. In fact, I remember Brad asking me the first time after we were married where something was and totally flying into a defense of how I wasn't responsible for whatever he had lost. He was totally taken back and caught off guard by my "baggage".

I hate it when something is lost. In fact, when things are lost I feel unsafe. That makes total sense given the conditioning of my childhood. But on my hands and knees as I scoured the pine straw I realized that's part of what is going on in my heart right now. I have been questioning the "safety" of God, whether he really protects us, what his promises really are. He obviously didn't protect me and my family from the pain of losing a child. So, what does he protect us from? Is it just hell-insurance? What about right now? I see that I feel very unsafe right now because I will forever have to live with the fact that my third child is lost to me. Something great has been lost and I do not feel safe.