Hitting Redial

The fingers of panic were tightening their hold on my chest as I desperately hit the redial on my cell, listening impatiently to the three rings which culminated in an overly cheery voice saying "the mailbox you have reached is full." My daughter, who was spending the night in Paris on the way home from her vacation in Corsica, was not answering her phone.  Alternating between texting and calling, I had been trying to reach her for the past 8 hours.  The thing that had put me over the edge was when her friend from Corsica messaged me, saying he had been conversing with her via Blackberry Messenger, when she quit responding.  He was worried, because she was alone in Paris and had told him she was having a drink with a girl she had just met. 

It's in situations like this when I wish I had never heard of a girl named Natalie Holloway or watched the movie Taken.  I should have just listened to my husband, who calmly assured me she was fine, then promptly rolled over and fell asleep.  But no, I had to pace the floor until 1:00 AM, when I knew she was scheduled to depart her flat with a taxi for the airport.  If she did not call me by then....my panicked brain could think of all kinds of scenarios. 

My phone lit up and buzzed with an incoming text, just when I felt I was going to suffocate with fear.  Relief washed over me as I realized my daughter was fine and she was enroute to the airport. And why had I not been able to reach her?  She had forgotten to charge her phone the night before and the battery had gone dead.  Post nighttime drama, I can think rationally and accept this plausible reason why I couldn't communicate with my daughter, but in the inky darkness with the Atlantic Ocean and thousands of miles separating us, it didn't seem so realistic. 

I guess that's how it is with God and me sometimes.  When I am crawling through the dregs of a hopeless situation or wallowing in the torment of self-doubt or misplaced destiny, He can seem far away and unreachable. I go into redial mode, sending up the same rote of prayers with desperate angst. He hears me, that's the good news, but I think it would be more refreshing for both of us if I kept my communication with Him original, fresh, and constant.  Besides, He's as close as my charged-up (or lack of) spiritual awareness allows Him to be.