i prayed i'd lose my passport

Two years ago I traveled to Macedonia with Northwest Arkansas Young Life on a Young Life College trip. It was an incredible week. We learned about Young Life in Eastern Europe and did our small part to help develop it there. I loved every exhausting minute of it.

We also got to spend some time in London. That’s when I lost my passport… We were just minutes away from boarding the plane to fly back to Chicago when I realized it was missing.

You know that sense of panic when your teacher asks you to turn in homework and you completely forgot to do it? Or when you can’t find your keys and you were supposed to be somewhere important 10 minutes ago? Your eyes get really wide, you don’t realize you’re holding your breath, every other word that comes out of your mouth is a cuss word, and everyone around you is thinking how glad they are that that isn’t them? This was me for about three minutes. Except it felt like three hours.

I finally gave up looking through my carry-on and concluded that my passport was somewhere in this giant airport. Or it was in our hotel. Or it was in front of Buckingham Palace. Wherever it was, it was not with me and instead it was somewhere, anywhere, in London. I prayed desperately that God would let me find it in the next 20 minutes. 

Literally seconds after I prayed this, a woman I had never seen before tapped me on the shoulder.

“Amy.” It wasn’t a question. “I recognize you from your picture. I found your passport and just turned it in to security.” And then she was gone. I didn’t even see her leave.  

Within minutes, I was waiting at our gate as two airport security officers delivered my ticket home. I’ve never experienced a bigger wave of relief.

The best/worst part? I had prayed about an hour before all of this that I would get to see and experience God on this long, mundane travel day. Losing my passport wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind when I prayed that... 

I wish I could say that I was super spiritual and that I experienced God’s peace the whole time. But that’s not the case. I was freaking out and panicking the whole time. It's in moments like those that God wants to share His peace with me. I just needed to ask for it. But I was too busy focusing on my circumstances instead of Him to remember that. Even so, God allowed me to experience Him as He practically hand-delivered that stupid little booklet to me. I’m so glad I lost it. 

Someone brought up that story just a few days ago. And I had no idea what they were talking about until they reminded me of what happened. I have this incredible story of how God miraculously provided for me. And I just forgot about it.

The more time I spend in the Old Testament the more I notice a particular pattern. So many times God introduces Himself as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” or “The Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.” He reminds Israel of who He is and what He has done for them in the past. He’s reminding them of how He has come through for them before, so that they will remember they can trust Him now. He knows that His people are prone to forget Him. And forgetting is a dangerous thing.