Sometimes, we take the little things for granted… like a cell phone.
Today, in the midst of getting all of the kids into swimming lessons in the rain, my cell phone fell out of the backpack. I didn’t realize it had fallen out, but after getting everyone situated with their goggles and swimming teachers, I sat down and instinctively went to pull out my phone.
It wasn’t in my purse. It wasn’t in the backpack.
I double-checked. I triple-checked.
No phone.
I went back out to the car to see if maybe I had accidentally left it out there, though I was positive I had stuck it in the backpack. I searched in all the cracks and crevices of the car.
Still no phone.
I knew Jesse was going to meet us at swimming lessons in about 15 minutes, so I went back in and retraced all of my steps, thought about every possible scenario of what could have happened to my phone, and went through every article and item in both my purse and backpack.
Jesse got there and I met him with the grim news that my phone was missing. He looked through my purse and backpack just to be absolutely sure, he retraced all of my steps, he looked in the car, and he went to check at the swim club’s lost and found.
Nothing.
Gratefully, Jesse’s more tech-y than I and he has GPS tracking set up on his phone for mine. He checked that and we could see that the phone was right there at the swim club. I wasn’t sure whether that should make me relieved or feel like a crazy woman that I couldn’t find my phone when it was supposedly right there in the building and there were basically no other options as to where it could have been.
We turned on the Find My iPhone alarms and started hunting all over the building and outside and in the car for the obnoxious noise that it makes. Again, this resulted in nothing.
I began praying that God would please help us to find the phone and I tried to remember Lisa’s words of encouragement in her book Unglued as to how to respond in situations and not panic or become stressed.
I reminded myself that it is just a phone, after all. I’ve lived without one before and, if it was truly lost or stolen, I could survive without it again.
But I still was rather unsettled about the whole thing — and wondering where I’d left my brain that a bright pink phone could just up and grow legs and walk off like that.
As a last resort, I suggested that Jesse call the phone. I’m not even sure why. I guess I thought maybe by some weird set of circumstances, the Find My iPhone alarm wasn’t working or something and that the phone ringer would work and we’d figure out the phone had been right under our noses all this time.
Well, Jesse called my phone — and someone picked up! They immediately asked, “Are you the owner of the phone?”
I couldn’t be more relieved!
I guess they had found the phone in the grass near the entrance to the swim club and had retrieved it so it wouldn’t get rained on. And then they hung onto it assuming that the rightful owner would eventually call.
They were no longer at the swim club, but we picked a nearby rendezvous point and, within minutes, had the phone back in our possession! Not only was I so thankful that my phone wasn’t hopelessly lost, but my heart was very warmed that, of all the people who could have came upon it, it was someone with the integrity to want to return it to me.
And the next time I go out, I think I’m going to make sure that my phone is securely mounted in some zippered pocket in my purse — as I’m still not sure how it managed to fall out of the backpack! 🙂
Do you have a fun and frugal DIY idea to share? I’d love to hear about it! Read the submission guidelines and submit it 
