the art of losing

You know what the funniest thing about praying for patience is?....you aren't just magically given patience, you are given MORE situations to practice your patience. I didn't know how impatient I was until I married Zak, and don't get me wrong- I love him, all of him, including his innate need to never be in much of a hurry about anything. for someone who is 6'6 and has legs for days I sure beat him to the car more times than not. but I'm not here to discuss how he moves slower than a turtle on a regular basis, except for when I challenge him to a race ( and yes we're both in our 20's), then it's like he has some sort of turbo speed. its uncanny really. anyways, back to my main point- I am an impatient person, and I hear the first step is admitting you have a problem. but the real first step should be realizing that everyone else should just step up their game a little. I kid, I kid. since I've known Zak , roughly since 2009, he has gone through a total of 5756 wallets. that may be a tad of an exaggeration, but honestly I think it's somewhere in the ball park of that number. its to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if our bank just has a stack of his debit cards sitting in the safe because they know every 6-8 months he'll need to cancel his old one, and order a new one. I've learned to accept it...mostly. its even become a bit of a joke in our home, but then Sunday happened. we were enjoying a nice day of Christmas shopping and as we were browsing through Kohl's I came across the perfect wooden sign. it read " I would give up shopping but I'm not a quitter" to which I completely related. so, as a normal 24 year old girl my first thought was to have my picture made with said sign and send it to my father in law, because its high time he understands that I can't give it up, because my momma didn't raise a quitter. as soon as I asked Zak to take my picture I should have known...he reached in his pocket and didn't pull out his iPhone...then he said he must have just left it in the car, so I shook it off. I put down my sign, and turned to find Zak deep in thought. He hadn't left his phone in the car-- oh no, that would be far too simple. he left his phone in a buggy...in a store, but he couldn't remember which. So my husband, who moves with all the grace of a sloth set out to look for the phone that he left in a shopping cart, at some store, with a sketchy timeline at best. I did my best to keep up, but I've been blessed with short, stumpy legs..and at 5'3 when my 6'6 husband wants to move in a quick like manner there is just no keeping up! So we hit up a few stores until we ended up back at the first store we started at- Target. while in target I had every intention of searching diligently for Zak's phone but ended up in the women's clothes by some "random" twist of fate. as I "looked" for the phone, and browsed through the clearance rack I decided to call his phone..and my heart sank a little when it was sent straight to voicemail. I thought I could show him how all my practice at patience was paying off, or I could go into straight panic mode. as I thought long and hard about which avenue to explore my phone began to ring, and my I saw "Hubs" flash across the screen. he. found. the. phone. not only had he found the phone, but he found in still sitting in the buggy, by the pineapples we sat in our cart that we later abandoned. and before you get all judgey that we didn't return the cart, or the pineapples, i'll only say this---maybe, just maybe someone was going to walk in looking for pineapples only to find our abandoned cart full of them! hence we saved them a trip through the store. but, luckily that was not the case. and zak really lucked out. the moral of the story is this- if you pray for patience, God will be faithful in giving you more opportunities to be patient. so you better not pray for patience, unless you're ready to search 3 stores, multiple buggies, and a couple of clearance racks for the phone your husband just lost. xoxo, Meagan