Yes, Deer

I HATE LOSING THINGS. I HATE IT. Like when we lost Jesus from our Little People Nativity set two years ago—drives me nuts!! I have a couple things that I haven’t been able to find since we moved, or maybe shortly before. One was particularly bothering me this month.

Chris bought Isaac this tiny deer scene carved out of Nara deer antler. He got it for a four-week-old Isaac on our (insane) trip to Kyoto and Nara two weeks before we left Japan. We did that trip exactly three years ago, and Eloise is the same age Isaac was then, of course, and I had a spot on the mantle that would’ve been perfect for it with the fall decor. We got the ink block print in Kyoto of a temple we visited that same trip.

I’d found the box it came in—neatly labeled but empty—shortly after we moved in. Where was it?! It’s so tiny and light that it could easily have been thrown away in packing materials.

God loves lost things. Lost causes, lost people. I love the parables about the woman and the lost coin, the shepherd and the lost sheep, the father waiting for his lost prodigal son. God tells us all through the Bible that when everyone else has lost hope, he hasn’t! I think of that whenever I find something I’ve been looking for. It feels like a special blessing from God. He knew where it was all along!

Eloise and I were up in the middle of the night (surprise) and I was thinking about the deer for some reason, probably because she looks SO much like Isaac at the same age. That afternoon, I went to get a fall tea bowl out of the tea cabinet, which I’ve searched multiple times trying to find the dang deer. I saw the box for the Miyajima torii gate. Could it be in there? I’d had them out together last fall, but then moved the deer into a snowy Christmas scene when I packed up the torii gate. Or maybe not, because THERE IT WAS, stuffed in the neatly labeled torii gate box! OH YEAH!!

Even when our house has been a comedy of errors and a complete mess, even when I was feeling lost and alone in sleep deprivation and so so so many poopy diapers and general filth, God is a God of order among chaos, light in the dark, hope in misery!