Chapter 78 One More Story - from my book Changes
Chapter 78
One More Story
In writing about prayer, I thought about moving on, to another subject, but the story I am going to tell next is too priceless to leave out.
There are a lot of little answers to prayer, or asking spirit / your higher self / your subconscious, that can be explained away by the fact that at one time you knew the answer; like: where did I put my keys, my purse, my glasses. Those things are somewhere in your subconscious and can be drawn back up.
But there are some answers to prayer that cannot be explained in that simple way, and the stories point to a force beyond ourselves and our memories. This is one of those stories.
I was in the library in Cottage Grove, Oregon. I would go there sometimes to get internet service since we had no phone or internet service on our property. While I was there I got a phone call from my husband. He was at the thrift store in town and had lost his keys. He wanted me to drive to the thrift store to help him find them.
As I drove there I admit I was annoyed. He was always losing his keys at home and making everybody help him look for them. Often they were in the pocket of his jeans where he said he had just looked, or in the pocket of his jacket hanging in the closet. All places he said he looked already.
Once on our honeymoon, he couldn’t find the old style key to our motel room. In the morning when we were getting ready to leave, I found the key outside, still in the lock of our ground floor motel room room! They were there all night!
I have to laugh about these idiosyncrasies of his, but sometimes they can cause real problems.
Anyway, as I drove into the thrift store parking lot I saw my husband and the kids outside the car looking for the keys. They had pulled everything out of the car - mostly garbage, coats, blankets, and empty water containers - and were bottoms up, waist deep in the car, searching the floor and under the seats.
I could see there was really no point in my trying to squeeze in with them so I asked my husband if he had already been in the store.
He said he had.
I asked if he had already looked for the keys in the store.
He said he had looked everywhere he had been in the store.
I said, “Ok, well, I’m going to go ahead and look in the store again.”
I went into the store feeling overwhelmed and frustrated about the task of finding the keys in the store. I had not been in there with him; I didn’t know where he had walked.
I said a little prayer, “Heavenly Father, please help me find our keys.”
Its I walked into the store, I was already tired just thinking about trying to find keys.
I saw a couch in the little furniture section of the store so I went and sat down to rest a minute before looking.
As I sat there, for no reason at all, and without any thought about it, I bent over and looked under the couch.
There were the keys!
They were under the couch!
“Wow,” I said, “Thank you Heavenly Father!”
I picked up the keys and, with a big smile on my face, went out to the parking lot where my husband was with the kids, still searching the car.
I said, “Look Honey, here are the keys!”
He said, very surprised, “What? You found them? Where did you find them?”
I laughed and said, “They were under the couch in the store.”
Then I asked, “Were you in the furniture area when you were in the store?”
He said, “No, I don’t think so.”
I asked, “Do you remember if you sat on the couch when you were in there?”
He said, “No, I didn’t sit on the couch.”
We both said, “WEIRD!”
It was obvious to me that I was led right to where they were. It was the only place I went in the store!
Who knows how the keys got there, but I know I didn’t find them by myself!
Experiences like these are a testament to the power of prayer, and a testament to what Tom Brown Jr said when it comes to prayer, “The greater the need, the greater the result.”
There was no way I could have remembered where the keys were. The only way I could be led to them so quickly and easily was by an unseen force guiding me.
