So Monday morning we are about to leave for school when Zayra tells me she can’t find her red folder. Now at Oaks Academy the red folder is very, very important. All homework, assignments, and notifications travel to and from school in the red folder. You take it home everyday, custodian of the vital information, and you take it to school everyday to turn in all your classified documents and get it refilled. If you don’t have it, there’s some sort of consequence that’s along the lines of being attacked by the Horrbius Terrabius (a most wickedly vile creature made up by Zayra).

Therefore, there was a little stress factor going on in the Pallikan home yesterday morning. After some fruitless searching, I told the girls we’re gonna do what we always do, sit and pray. I told them I will ask the Holy Spirit for some help. So I sat down in the living room on the ottoman and asked God for some help thru His Spirit. “If You will, would You please help us to find this red folder? Would you show us where to look, Holy Spirit? We need Your help here.” Very simple and straight forward.

I stood up, looked to my right, then turned all the way around, and there it was, sitting on the chair right behind me that goes with the ottoman I was sitting on to pray. Are you kidding me? It was hiding right there in the wide open.

Same thing happened a month or so ago. I pulled in the driveway with the girls after school, and handed Gabriela the house key to go in while I park the car in the garage. In the 8 inches between getting out of the car and stepping down on to the driveway she lost the key. No joke. It took maybe 2.5 seconds. Honestly, I thought it fell through some sort of wormhole into another dimension. (Probably because I believe that can happen, and I watch Twilight Zone and X-Files most nites, and I think about stuff like that ALL THE TIME.) There was no explanation! I got out and searched everywhere, under the car, in her shoes, nothing. My thought was then to give in to defeat and just drive over to Target to stay warm until Ana got home.

But then I said, no, we’re gonna pray first for help. So we got back in the car, out of the unforgiving twenty degree wind, and I said, “OK girls, let’s pray for help to find these keys.” As soon as I closed my eyes, Gaby yelled, “Found ’em!!!” What??? I didn’t even start praying yet. “They were in my hood!” Apparently, when she got out of the car, she reached back to adjust her scarf or something and the key fell out of her gloved hand right into her coat hood. Weird.

So in that case, just the threat of prayer seemed to turn up the lost item.

I wonder how many times when we are fretting, we just need to sit and pray, not for that which we don’t have and think we need, but for that which we already have and just lost or cannot seem to find. Be it courage, strength, the ability to change, or even someone to help…

How many times do we have the answer but simply can’t see it through the cloud of our fears, unbelief, and anxiety?

Settle down.

Ask for help.

Pray.

Believe.

Listen.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria