Consider It All Joy...

"Mama, where's my ______?" This is Bella's latest most asked question of late, and it's been driving me quite up the wall. My highly distractible daughter (Dan would call it "interested") has always had a hard time picking up after herself. Not for any lack of moral certitude or good will mind you; she knows that it is a practical, laudable, even virtuous thing to do. It's just that as she's 'picking up', she remembers how much she liked playing with that particular toy 20 minutes ago and feels that it needs a bit more playing with before it put away in what I'm sure she thinks is some sort of 'toy purgatory' (ie. her closet). She'll decide that she needs to put a bit more color on her coloring page, or that she must build one more thing out of her Duplos, or that her trains need one more turn about the tracks (or elsewhere). It is also another endearing and aggravating trait in Bella that she sometimes doesn't play with her toys with their intended purpose in mind (silly grown-ups!). I have seen her go along with stamp and ink all over a page and when I turn to sneeze, find that she's decided that stamps also look good on her shirt. I'll find rocks in her tea cups and puzzle pieces in her bike basket; and heaven preserve whatever toy or stuffed animal has merited the honor of being "put to bed". Sometimes you can't find them for days.
Anyhow, of course the natural consequence of these tendencies is to be always losing things, for two-year-olds (and their mothers) cannot possibly remember all the odd places in which their toys have ended up. Thus The Question is asked and I, depending on my mood and the number of times this question has been asked in the past hour, will say, "Well, where did you put it?" in the kindest tone possible. Bella will usually adopt a blank stare and echo, "Where?" This is usually the point at which I throw up my hands and offer the 'reprimand accusatory' wherein I declare that if she had put away her toys properly, she wouldn't find herself in this predicament. More often than not, most of my words will have fallen to the ground as she runs off to find another toy just as beloved as the one that was lost, and leave me wondering if she really loved the lost toy in the first place. I scour about the house for awhile, lose all hope of finding the thing, lament its loss more than she does, and try to move on.
Well, by God's grace, a little ray of light was shed on what I believed to be this deformative habit in my daughter...as we were getting out a box of rather neglected Duplos this morning, Bella opened the lid and discovered that Charlie, one of her favorite (and 'lost') trains, was lying right there, nestled among the blocks. She was so overjoyed at the epiphany, I didn't have the heart to give her an "I told you so" or explain why this was not the wisest spot to put her lost friend. It was as if she received a brand new train right then, and yet it still was her old friend. It dawned on me that sometimes we do have to lose a thing to find it, and that this 'deformative habit' does lend itself to a true sense of adventure and romance. For this two-year-old, the momentary sadness she feels at realizing a toy is lost is a small price to pay for the joy of its unlooked-for return. Though the toy wasn't in the 'right place', her attachment to the thing was - and that made it all the more a cause for rejoicing when, like the mercy of God, we find it in the place we thought we knew, and surprised us yet again.