Playing Phone Tag With the Police

Nine or ten days ago, the local paper posted a cryptic one-liner in its Police Beat section. “A camera and video recorder, reported stolen from a garage in the 2400 block of _______, were later returned to the owners with a note.”

The freelance writer in me perked up instantly. A mystery! Who took the camera? Why did they return it? And what in the world did that note say? Admit it. You’re curious to know what was in that note too.

So, like any Nancy Drew-style detective, I called the police to find out more. I tried to sound more sophisticated to the police sergeant with whom I was leaving a message by listing some of my recent published articles, but deep down I was just a girl following a story. The police sergeant and I played phone tag for a few days to no avail, until his vacation time started and the story became old news. That mystery stills comes to my mind though at times and makes me smile. Missing pieces and an incomplete story. Who? Where? When?

My life feels that way at times– like an incomplete story with some missing pieces. Our house has been on the market for two months, and we are waiting for it to sell before we settle on and purchase a new one. To stage our house, we packed up half our belongings. This week as our homeschooling year began, I pulled out two boxes of school books from the garage and unpacked them. To my horror, I discovered that one box of school books had been taken away in the U-Haul truck to be stacked, shrink-wrapped, and lifted 30 feet off the floor with other pallets. Aiye! It’s gone now, until we move someday, and some of my kids’ subjects are in that box! We have been scrambling to borrow and react to my mistake this week.

This limbo period, though, of waiting and wondering on our house and life feels like a mystery sometimes to me too. Wondering where, and when…. Missing pieces and an incomplete story. Curled up on a leather chair in a coffee shop for an hour this Tuesday, some verses in Isaiah resonated with me: