“Where are they?” I muttered. I looked over to see if he had heard me as I dug frantically through my purse again. Still no luck.

I walked back over to his car and looked in the seat I had just left. I checked the console, the floorboards, checked under his seats. Nothing.

I could feel my frustration growing, and I knew my neck was probably turning red in embarrassment by now. I had to pull myself together. It wasn’t a big deal, right?

Maybe inside his house? We had been in there for a while earlier. I walked back in, attempting to retain my dignity. I looked at the couch where my purse had been. Even picked up the cushions. Nothing.

Headed to the kitchen. Sometimes I like to set things on a countertop because it feels more like home. Still nothing.

He asked me where I thought they might be. “I don’t know! I really thought they were in the side pocket of my purse!” I could hear the exhaustion and frustration in my voice now. I needed to leave before I had an irrational meltdown from being so incredibly tired.

I retraced my steps. Retraced them again. And a third time.

Still no luck.

Now I was embarrassed. How and why I do these things, I will never know. But it was way too late right now and I knew that I should be heading home. He looked tired. I was tired. I knew that he had to work at 6am and I was scheduled to go to the gym with a friend at 4:30am.

I went back to the car. Looked through the middle pocket of my purse. Dumped everything into the seat. Nothing. At this point, I am considering giving up.

I looked back through his car. Still nothing.

I walk back over to mine. Look down at my purse and think “Well, maybe I just didn’t dig hard enough.” So I reach into the first side pocket. Nothing. I reach in the other side pocket…

There they are. My monstrous key chain was in the pocket I thought it was THE WHOLE TIME.

I just needed to dig a little deeper.

Just like life. Sometimes we search and search and search for something. A relationship, a career, our dream home, our perfect friendship. Thinking that the great things, the beautiful things must be over there somewhere, or maybe just far, far away. So we search. We look. And in our searching and striving, we tend to overlook. We tend to see the times our kids misbehave instead of realizing that they are awesome about 85% of the time. We choose to move to another romantic relationship instead of figuring out how to grow through challenges together. We despise our work instead of looking at it as an opportunity. We dream of fancy houses and forget to love and care for our current home. And we keep looking for people to treat us “just-so” if we are going to be friends instead of choosing to learn from different perspectives.

But in reality, what we are searching for is probably exactly where it should be, exactly where we just looked, or where we originally thought it was, just waiting for us to decide to dig a little deeper.

Let’s go deep.

Love ya’ll.

Shannon Joy