Lost.

I wanted to sleep in this morning, I really did.

It’s been an exhausting yet fulfilling conference, and I wanted to sleep. But at 7:30, a colleague texted me to warn of the long lines at the resort airline check-in. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t.

So I got up, got ready, and started packing so I could try and catch the closing general session of the conference.

I emptied the purse I took to The Magic Kingdom last night and realized my wallet was not there. I looked in my airplane purse (yes, different purses have different purposes. Deal.) and it wasn’t there. I looked in my backpack, and it wasn’t there. I looked everywhere and panicked as I tossed aside programs and fliers and bedsheets, hoping my wallet was buried somewhere. It wasn’t.

So I did what any good Christian girl would do, and I prayed. My ride to the airport was leaving in three hours, and I needed my wallet. Plus, if someone had stolen it, I wanted to cancel my debit card.

A flurry of phone calls to my mom, the front desk, and lost and found revealed my wallet was at the Magic Kingdom, safe and waiting for me. Everything was there. My license, my cards, my cash–none of it was gone.

The concierge warns guests to allow for 45 minutes to get to The Magic Kingdom. It was 9:40 when I hopped on the bus. I asked the bus driver how to get to the Lost and Found building. Rather than make me walk and take a monorail, he drove me right there. I took a cab back to the resort–the best $20 I spent this entire trip–and was back in my room at 10:30.

One hour and 45 minutes after I realized my wallet was gone, I was sitting at the hotel lobby, sipping a diet Coke and waiting for my ride to the airport.

Now, some people might attribute my good fortune in finding and reclaiming my lost wallet to luck, or the fact that it’s easy to get around Disney at 9:40 on Sunday mornings. And that might all be true.

But I gotta say, I know this one was God. There is just no way I should have been able to make it there and back AND check out of my room on time AND make my ride to the airport. It really does defy human explanation.

So today I’m grateful for prayer–even the desperate, sobbing, angry kind of prayer, and I’m grateful for all the pieces that were in place: the colleague who woke me up, the inability to go back to sleep, the kind bus driver, the understanding front desk, the lack of traffic, the cab driver that pulled up right as I arrived at the spot to wait for a cab. I know for some of my readers, that’s all luck.

But for me, it was all God.