The Last Place You Left It

My wife called me, feeling more than a little stressed because she could not find her engagement ring.  She had anxiously been looking for it without success.  She turned up the volume of her search by letting others know via the Internet, thinking she might have misplaced it in the ladies washroom at church.  It was a burden on her spirit until she found it.

She told me that she found it but did not tell me where.  I said to her, "I know where you found it.  You found it at the last place you left it."  She chuckled a bit and acknowledged, "Yes, that is right where I found it."  And unless someone else has moved it or it grows legs and walks off, that is where you find everything you lose.

If, in your marriage, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" as the Righteous Brothers crooned in the 1964 hit, you can find it where you last left it.  Seriously.  Any marriage counselor worth his/her salt will, at some point, direct you to go back to that time when you felt it most and begin again doing and saying those things that gave rise to and sustained that feeling.  The feeling you had then can still be found in the place you left it before your relationship moved on to other pursuits than one another.

If you've lost the financial cushion you used to have in your savings account.  Go back to the principles of financial management you used to live by.  Reign in your spending, focusing on paying off debt instead of using credit, make paying yourself a priority by insisting that a portion of your income gets put into savings, make "tithing" or giving an indispensable part of your life, use a budget to tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.  Go back to whatever it was you were doing when saving was more important than spending.

Is your faith waning?  Is your prayer life slipping?  If your fervor for the Lord growing faint?  Do you look back to days when your Christian walk was so much clearer, bolder, better than it is now?  The answer to reclaiming that pinnacle of faith is the same as the other things you've lost: "This is what the Lord says: 'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls'" (Jer 6:16).  Pause for a bit, look back to the place where it used to be, walk on that path again.  Jus' Say'n.