Everybody misplaces things from time to time. Car keys, T.V. remotes, reading glasses … pool tables. Well, okay, maybe not everybody misplaces pool tables, but I did once and the story still boggles my mind.
My parents had generously given us money to buy a pool table one year for Christmas, knowing it was a gift our whole family could enjoy. We shopped around and eventually ordered one from a store in Greenville. When it came in, I hopped in our truck and went to pick it up.
The pool table was one of those “some assembly required” deals, so it came in two very heavy large, flat boxes, which the guys at the store helped me load in my truck. The boxes were so heavy the guys said there was no chance they could slip out of the back, which had to be left open.
I trucked on back to Greenwood, thinking I would unload the boxes in our garage before going to my sons’ school to pick them up. But when I got home, I couldn’t hoist the heavy boxes, so I hopped back in the truck and drove to the school. As I waited for my boys, I got out, leaned on the back of the truck, and began talking to a friend. As I did, a low-level warning signal began going off in my brain, but I couldn’t quite wrap my conscious thoughts around it.
Finally I realized what was disturbing me and, glaring at my empty truck, I interrupted my friend and cried out, “OH NO – where’s my pool table?”
I then retraced my route from home to the school two times. I was in disbelief that I could have driven all the way from Greenville with those heavy boxes securely in the back, only to lose them somewhere in busy traffic in the middle of Greenwood. But unless they were beamed up by an alien spaceship, that was the only explanation.
I didn’t find the pool table on the side of the road anywhere and I felt queasy as I imagined explaining this unexplainable loss to my kids, my husband and my parents. When I got home and dialed my husband’s number at work, I felt just like Lucy calling Ricky Ricardo to confess some hair-brained, really-dumb thing she had done.
Joe was as baffled as I was and neither of us had any idea what to do to try to find our lost pool table, so we resolved that we’d have to use some of our savings to replace it – or move to deepest, darkest Peru under assumed names so my parents couldn’t find us.
But, lo and behold, the next day, we got a call from a man who supervised the city trash collectors. He told us that one of his crews had seen the boxes bounce out of my truck and land in the street. These honest guys retrieved the boxes, which had our name and phone number on them, and turned them into their supervisor.
The pool table was undamaged, but I was left with nagging questions about how I could possibly not have noticed those boxes sliding out the back of my truck and into the street.
Life can be like that, too. We can lose things that are precious and not even realize they’ve slipped away until it seems too late. Our kids grow up and leave the nest and maybe we realize we never took time to really enjoy their short, short childhoods; we look across the table at our spouse and perhaps discover that through selfish, mutual neglect, we hardly know this person we’re married to; we let distractions, delusions and misplaced priorities dilute our faith and we have to admit that we are, in practical terms, atheists, living as though God didn’t exist.
Yes, important stuff can bounce out of our trucks and perhaps the only warning we have is an uncomfortable, low-level sense that we’re missing something important.
Pay attention to those warnings. Take inventory. See what slipped off your truck and ask the One who sees it all to restore it to you. Don’t worry – God specializes in restoring what’s lost.