On the 3rd of July I lost my new earring. It wasn’t an expensive gem, but I really liked that it was lightweight and pretty. I checked online and bought what I thought was a duplicate. It wasn’t.

In retracing my steps from that day, I knew it had to be somewhere in the house because I hadn’t gone anywhere, although I did water the garden and the grass. After I stewed about it for a few days, I sent up a half-hearted arrow prayer.

In the weeks following when I swept the floor or cleaned a bathroom, that earring lurked in the back of my mind. Would I find it behind a door or under a throw rug? Nothing. I prayed again. “Please, Lord, give me eyes to see that little earring.”

Last week my paper jammed in the printer. I had to pull the printer out from the bottom of the pantry. It sits on a low platform with wheels under the lowest shelf. I removed the jam from the back of the printer. I went back to printing. It jammed again. This is unusual, because my printer seldom jams. When I pulled it out the second time I saw something on the floor under the printer shelf. My earring lay near the back of the pantry on the floor where it must have been for seven and a half weeks. How it got there, I’ll never know. If my printer hadn’t jammed, I’d have never found it.

Now . . . if I could only find a key to a lock box that’s been missing for over a year. . . .