Mom, Someone Stole My Flip Flops!

On Saturday my daughter’s and I went shopping.  My oldest had wanted some boots and she was ready to find a pair.  We went to Ross.  I love Ross Stores.  My oldest daughter was quick to find a pair she liked.  It was at that moment I realized our mistake.  She was going boot shopping and was wearing flip flops…i.e. no socks.  So I took off my shoes, and gave her my socks. Quickly my oldest finds two pairs she likes.  We agree to put them both in the cart for the time being and decide later on which ones she’d get.

While all this is going on, I realize we should have gotten a cart.  So I put my shoes on sockless and leave my youngest daughter with my oldest daughter and walk across the store to get a cart. 

When I came back to the shoe aisle my oldest daughter is standing in the middle of the aisle looking as if she’s ready to cry. 

“Mom!  Someone stole my flip flops?”

“What?” 

“Their gone, mom!  I put them here to go try on the boots and now they’re gone!”  She was standing in my socks now frantically looking through the aisles for her shoes.  They did appear gone.  Really I didn’t search diligently for them. 

My oldest was mortified as we started to look around.  She wanted to walk through the Jr section, so she put on one of the boots that she’d already decided to get anyway. 

“Shouldn’t we say something?”  I asked her.  I figured the flip flops were long gone at this point.  My girls and I were in the aisle way now laughing hysterically at the awkwardness of this scene.

So I walked up to an employee who in turn got the Loss Prevention guy.  We explained the situation to him.  He went on to give us all a lecture about watching where you put your shoes when trying them on, and how we live in a high tourist area, yada yada yada.  I heard him.  He was right. 

As he checked through the aisles we went back to the Jr section and within five minutes he came right back to us.

“Can you describe to me again what the flip flops look like?” 

We did.

“Are these it?”  Behind his back the man held her shoes.  Evidently she’d left them on a shelf.  No one stole them.  She just forgot where she put them which left us the laughing stock of several of the Ross employees that day.  Seriously I had to wave to one as they started to laugh at us. 

It is so easy in life to jump to conclusions.  I am laughing at my daughter as I write this.  She didn’t do what any of the rest of us hasn’t done. 

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but we have to learn in life not to jump to conclusions, and to try to think the best out of situations.  Perhaps someone had stolen my daughters’ shoes, but they didn’t.  She misplaced them. 

Philippians 4:8 (ESV)

⁸ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things

 

We all have found ourselves in similar shoes (Pun intended), but may we ever aspire to think about the positive first.  Instead of letting our minds jump to the ‘worst case scenarios’ let them jump to the ‘best case’.   May we focus on the positive and not the negative.  

So my family will now laugh at one of the stories that will go down in family lore.  But may this story remind us all, that most the time things aren’t always as bad as they seem.

Remember God has awesome plans for your life.  Get excited!