When Your Wallet Falls Off the Top of the Car

 

Today, my daughter called me in tears. A phone call from my 17-year-old usually means bad news. She is not part of the generation of phone callers. Her preferred mode of communication is Snapchat. She texts occasionally. But phone calls?  Only if the situation is dire.

My first panicked thought? Car accident. I remembered making a call like that to my parents when I was 17 or so. A friend and I had driven to Sacramento, about 40 miles away from our home town, to write a story for our school newspaper about a homeless shelter there. I pulled into traffic on a one-way street and ran into someone.  It was a minor fender bender; no one was hurt. Looking back, that accident would have made a better story for the paper than the one we actually wrote.  I think  I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, though.

The car was fine. My daughter was distraught, though, because her wallet was missing. She thought she left it on top of the car after she got gas. A few minutes later when she went to 7-11 to buy a Slurpee, she couldn’t find it. She checked in the car, then drove back to the gas station to see if someone had turned it in, but no one had. She walked up and down the road (my mother alarm bells go off at this information, but I demonstrate remarkable self-control and don’t mention it).  She said, through more tears, that it was just gone.

I told her it was OK, that we all did things like this, and that there was nothing in the wallet that couldn’t be replaced. Yes, it would be a nuisance to get a new driver’s license, student identification card, debit card, library card. We would do it, though.  We would fix it.

I used my best motherly soothing voice.

She didn’t seem convinced.

I told her to sit in the car, eat her lunch that we packed that morning, drink some water.  I told her to slow down, catch her breath. I called my husband, and he said he would leave work to meet up with her.

That could have been the end of the story.

Somewhere, though, in the midst of those phone calls, my insurance office left a voicemail which I almost ignored. They call occasionally to see if we want to discuss our policies; I was not in the mood. But this voicemail was different.  The secretary said a man named Bill had just called and told her that he was pulling onto the freeway when he saw papers flying around. He stopped and picked up what he could.  Our insurance card was there, with the only phone number in the whole bunch. He hoped they could reach us.

I called my daughter back.  I called my husband back.  I told them the good news, that someone had picked up some of her papers.  Then I called Bill. (Some days, God’s grace seems to show up through a lot of phone calls, no?) He answered right away. He said he picked up what he could.  He had a $20 bill and seven $1 bills.  Also, her drivers’ license, debit card, library card, and student ID card.

In other words, he had everything.

Some days, you leave your wallet on top of the car and think everything is lost, but somebody sees and stops and picks it all up and then figures out a way to let you know.  It’s not everyday this happens. Sometimes, the wallet is just gone. On those days, it’s not that God forgets us; grace just looks different from what we expect or hope. Today, though, my girl got to see God take care of her in a practical way:  through a stranger named Bill, a local heating and air conditioning contractor, who stopped on the side of the freeway to gather up what she forgot and who made sure it got back to her.