Finding

TERESITA TANSECO-CRUZ

It was a busy morning as I rushed to write a check for a payment I needed to make. I went to get the corresponding statement from my night table, where I kept it handy. But suddenly, it was gone. I rummaged furiously through a load of recent mail and other documents but came up empty. Meanwhile, the all-too-familiar vexation shows up promptly in full force.  Where is it?! Didn’t I put it right here?! How can I lose things all the time?! I’m hopeless! I’m so disorganized! Where. Is. It ??!!  Then I broke into tears.

And that’s when it happened. Strangely, perplexingly, the tears seemed to be streaming not from extreme frustration but profound, unexpected comfort. Sitting on the floor in the mid-morning silence amidst mass disarray of papers, I sensed God’s presence simply but so overwhelmingly. He might as well have been sitting on the floor next to me. I was talking with Him calmly, intimately. I was sorry, I said, to get so unhinged again despite the promise of explicit trust in Him when anxiety came knocking. The joyful tears streaking my face were clearly not about looking for something missing but finding a very present God who seemed to be asking quite naturally: “Where else would I be?” Just like that. No drama. Only unsurpassed fidelity, love, compassion.

How can you not fall in love with Him?

And just like that, I spotted the lost statement sandwiched between the wall and the table, peeking out to be noticed. No drama there, either, save for a curious appearance of the document “twinkling” at me.

Misplacing things, followed by stress-filled foraging, had been my blight long before “senior moments” arrived on the scene as convenient culprits. Every time I located what I was looking for, I heaved heavy sighs of relief, sometimes right under my nose. One might say that just being more organized, staying calm and focused while combing through drawers and cabinets, would save me all the grief. One might say that.

But I believe that feeling God’s stirring, almost palpable presence that morning was His personal visit to the center of one of my afflictions. He allowed me to see that my habit of “losing” things was, on the surface, a sign of disorganization, attended by the frantic commotion of searching. More crucially, though, it reflected my disorderly interior life, hounded by the plight of restless seeking.

I am now learning to quickly reach for God’s hand before I look for a missing item so that the process remains what it should be: a task to be done soberly, not a monumental struggle between agitation and tranquility. Stress continues to lurk at every corner, accustomed as it is to dominating “ the hunt.” But I believe it will keep losing its grip as long as I continue to tighten mine on God’s hands.

As for my life’s most compelling quest, my restless seeking…I ask and trust God to tend it with His unceasing love and trademark mercy. Humbly, gratefully, I pray He continues to shepherd me in my ultimate “looking for” – that I may find Him in all things. Then with Him shall I find things I still misplace from habit. Fearless trust, for example, or humble waiting…or equanimity…or even twinkling bills.