Once the new license came in the mail I opened the envelope and put it off to the side. Later when I went to give it to him, it was nowhere to be found. I looked EVERYWHERE five times! Like the 5th time it would magically appear. Early on it dawned on me that perhaps when I was sorting the junk mail from the real mail that it made it's way into the junk mail pile and maybe I threw it away. That awful feeling kept nudging at me. Ugh! I would rather look through the trash than go back to the DMV. I was desperate. I asked my husband if he would get the trash from outside the house so I could search it. He warned me about how awful it would be because we had shrimp shells in that trash bag. Okay, I'll keep looking. I looked and looked and looked. Finally at 11 pm, knowing the license would be taunting me in my sleep, I asked my husband to get the trash. I put on some rubber gloves and pulled out the bag where I thought it might be found (if it were in there - this was a long shot). I sat down on the step in the garage and opened the bag. A terrible smell immediately escaped and I turned my head in disgust. But I looked on with delight because there was a pile of junk mail right there on top. Maybe I would get lucky. And I did! I pulled out the stack and pulled two items apart that were stuck together by some old gum, yuck! and then the very next item was a white envelope with the driver's license. I excitedly pushed myself up and limped back into the house as quickly as I could and announced I had found it!
Here's the metaphor I'm working on . . . Sometimes we want something so bad it hurts. We will look for it repeatedly in all the wrong places. No matter what, no matter how many times I checked all of those places where it "should" have been, it wasn't going to be there. The little voice kept saying to check the most unlikely place. The nasty trash bag full of shrimp shells that had been outside for a couple of days! It was right there all along. It wasn't even hidden. I just didn't want to look there.
I would have saved several hours of heartache if I had just followed my gut and gone where I didn't want to go. Sometimes we have to go to the trash (the not so pretty places) to find what we're looking for in life. Wow! I wonder what other treasures I'll find by finally plunging into the not so pretty places? When I'm willing to go there, I usually even find a few treasures in this stinkin' disease called MS. How about you? What treasures might you find in your not so pretty places?
(OR maybe the point is I would rather do anything, even go dumpster diving, than go to the Department of Motor Vehicles!)
