The Leopard Pouch

I keep my flash drives (USB drives) for my computer, the small units that hold all sorts of important data, in a small leopard pouch with a zipper. The pouch also holds my aspirin container, peach iced tea mix, my lip stick and a $10 bill for an emergence. I store this in my hand bag so I have it when I need it. Today I was working at the computer and I needed to check some information on one of the flash drives. I opened my purse where the little bag is stored and it wasn’t there. I carefully looked through the bag, pulling out everything in every pocket and placing the items on the work table in my new study. The pouch was not there. I searched the backpack which I use to transport my computer, thinking it might have been put in there when I used the computer on Monday at the library to download some files from a colleague. That was the last time I remembered using the little pouch. It was not there. I began praying. I went to my bedroom and looked in a bag I had used to return books to the library, hoping I had mistakenly put it in there. I hadn’t. I returned to my study and looked again. My study is not elaborate. It consists of a small work table, a chair and a straw rug under the table. There was no little leopard pouch anywhere. I decided the only thing to do was to go to the library and see if I had left it there and someone had turned it in. I could not think of where else to look.

I walked to the library, just on the other side of our small campus from my house. The library was empty. There was no one in it, even though it was 11:15 a.m. While most students were in class, the library staff should have been around. They were not. I waited for a short while and finally decided that I would have to return later in the day when someone should be there. As I walked home, I reflected on the contents of the leopard pouch. The only thing I really cared about that I could not replace was the flash drive that had all my Malawi pictures on it. I had just transferred them to the drive from my computer for safe keeping. I was afraid that my computer could crash again and I would lose all my photos as I had 2 years ago. Now the pouch was gone and with it my photos. All my visual memories of Malawi were gone – the children and grandchildren and friends, the churches I had visited, the seminars I had led, the scenery that I love –  all gone. As I walked to the library I fervently prayed that God would reveal the pouch and enable me to have back those things I treasured and believed I needed. Returning from the library, I began to pray that God would give me peace to let them all go. Maybe this was the final way to let go of Malawi. Hard as it was to accept, this seems a real possibility. And then I had a peace that I carried the images of the important things and people in my heart and that would be enough. As I opened the gate to my house, I was content.

Leopard poouch against the right leg

I walked into my study and stopped, staring in disbelief. There on the floor, against the table leg, in plain sight, was the missing pouch, as if it has been placed there. I had told no one but God about it. My house helper does not speak English so it would have been worthless to try to tell her, given my very limited Kinyarwanda.  Surely I would have heard it if I had dropped it as I searched my hand bag. I should have seen it when I returned from searching my bedroom as easily as I saw it when I returned from the library. Where had it come from? How had it gotten there? The only answer I have is God. I can’t explain it otherwise. God heard and answered. God allowed me to release it and its contents and the emotions that went with them and then He returned it. I have no other answer. I just praise Him.