Soft Christmas instrumental music plays from my Spotify playlist, a fragrant candle glows on the coffee table and the fire blazes in the hearth. I sit on the couch, covered in a warm fleece, and let my eyes take in the simplicity and beauty of my home decorated for Christmas. My throat swells with gratitude and a grin. “Thank You, Lord, for the Angel of Lost Things,” I whisper as I remember …

In 2017, after having spent thirty years as missionaries in France, my husband and I bought a home in Georgia in the southeast of the United States to be nearer to our aging parents, our sons, daughter-in-law and three young grandchildren. Thanks to the internet and airports, our role as pastoral caregivers to our missionaries around the world permitted us to work from just about anywhere. We decided that from then on, as the Lord allowed, we would spend the spring and summer in France and the fall and winter, and especially Christmas, in America.

So, year after year, I began bringing cherished Christmas items from France to America in our carry-on luggage so that nothing would be lost even if a checked bag went astray.

That first Christmas in America, I began decorating this new-to-me house with our beloved Christmas treasures. What a joy to unpack our French nativity set, complete with over forty santons, explaining to our grandkids that the word ‘santon’ means ‘little saint’ in French. These small hand-painted clay figures represented villagers each bringing their gifts to lay at Baby Jesus’s feet.

Then I brought out our eclectic collection of ornaments, some handmade and others that we’d purchased, usually from a place we had traveled during each year. Every ornament held a special memory.

Finally, I was ready to hang up seven beautiful needlepoint stockings, the ones that my mother had sent to us in France when our two sons were born, and others we had added as new members joined our family.

But there were no stockings to be found!

I spent hours each day searching our new home for the stockings amid the boxes and bins to no avail. Perhaps I had left them at my parents’ home, two hours away, when we spent our first night there after having flown from France. But my father and my sister-in-law searched through that spacious house, and specifically in Daddy’s attic, three or four different times in the weeks before Christmas.

The stockings were not there.

How could I have misplaced seven needlepoint stockings? I had photos of them in the to-be-packed piles at our home in France along with every other item we were bringing back to the States. Everything else had made it just fine, and we hadn’t lost any luggage. Certainly not my carry-on bag where I was sure I had carried the stockings.

I even called the young couple who was staying at our home in France, and the wife searched through our shelves.

The stockings were not there.

As I searched and worried and wondered, I prayed over and over, “Lord, You know where the stockings are. If You want me to have them, remind me, too.”

Then, it was time to let them go.

But how I grieved.

This little loss felt big to me. Our life overseas had been filled with losses—saying goodbye to family and friends and places time and time again. Missing out on family celebrations in the States. This Christmas, we were grieving more than ever. My mother had passed away the year before from a massive stroke. Did I have to lose the stockings she had lovingly sent us in France?

I kept giving this grief back to the Lord, but it was hard. Then to help me move on, I purchased seven red stockings, bought for $1 each from the Family Dollar store, to adorn our fireplace. That would have to be enough.

The week before Christmas, Paul and I left for a ski vacation with my father, our older son, his wife, our three grandchildren, our younger son, and his girlfriend. This was a special getaway to honor Mom. After a wonderful week with family in the mountains, we drove my father back to his home in Atlanta before heading two hours down the road to our home.

I climbed the stairs to Daddy’s attic to put away all our ski paraphernalia. As I stepped inside, I noticed a plastic bag on the floor—a bag filled with seven needlepoint stockings!

Honestly, I stood with my mouth hanging open, not believing the sight.

How did they appear? We had searched this space several times!

Upon hearing the joyful news, my daughter-in-law said, “The Angel of Lost Things brought them back!”

I wept with thankfulness as I held them in the attic, and I wept again later when I placed them on our mantel, wept because I knew the Lord had seen and understood my little loss and cared.

Two years later, as we continued to bring our Christmas items back to the States with us, the Angel of Lost Things showed up again.

Back in September, I had packed seven cross-stitched ornaments in my carry-on, tucked safely in between the green Christmas hand towels. Ornaments I had hand-stitched when our sons were babies. Ornaments dear friends had made for us. Ornaments, like those stockings, that held great sentimental value to me.

But in early December, as I brought all the Christmas décor upstairs to begin decorating, I could not find the ornaments. How could they have escaped from my carry-on? As I’d asked two years earlier about the needlepoint stockings, now I asked, “Lord, how could I lose seven cross-stitched ornaments?”

Once again I searched everywhere for them for several days. Once again I prayed, “Lord, You know where the cross-stitched ornaments are. If You want me to have them, remind me, too.”

Once again I grieved and finally gave up looking for what was lost.

I think that’s the theme with lost things. Choosing at some point to give up looking for what is lost and trusting the Lord to bring it back if and when He desires.

After all, He is the One who promises that He will search for the lost and bring back the strays. He is the One who found me all those years ago.

But letting go and trusting are so hard for me!

My husband Paul went down to our garage and moved around boxes and bins again for what seemed like the hundredth time. Suddenly he called out, “I found something!” He carried out a plastic bin that had been sitting out of sight underneath two other empty bins. When he took off the cover, laying on the top of the pile were seven cross-stitched ornaments.

I burst into tears. The Angel of Lost Things came again, and again I wept and rejoiced.

Whether the needlepoint stockings and cross-stitched ornaments were simply misplaced or retrieved by a heavenly angel, the lesson was still the same to me. I heard in my soul a sweet voice—not the Angel of Lost Things—but the Lord of that angel, whispering again, “I love you, Elizabeth, and I care. All is well.”

Lost things aren’t always found, but I always have the choice to do my best to search and then to let go and trust.

“Thank You that I can trust You, Lord, for all the other things in my life that feel lost—lost opportunities, lost relationships, lost hopes and dreams. May I trust in peace, Lord, even if I have to turn my worries over to You a hundred times a day. For I know that out of this obedience will spring ‘the peaceful fruit of righteousness.’”

Going to the mission field taught me to trust that, in as much as I depended on the Lord to provide for my every need, He would do so. That lesson, learned 30+ years ago, still applies to me every day. Our Lord wants us to live in awe and wonder of His provision and tender care of us. Advent isn’t just God coming to us, but us coming to Him in expectation and awe and deep gratitude for His provision of a Savior. Of Jesus.

At Christmas, every time I bring out those needlepoint stockings and cross-stitched ornaments, I feel the Lord’s hug. He didn’t send the Angel of Lost Things to find me. He sent His Son to redeem me. Me. The Lost Thing. The Straying Daughter.

I am safe within His arms.

Found.

BIO

ELIZABETH MUSSER writes ‘entertainment with a soul’ from her writing chalet—tool shed—outside Lyon, France.  Elizabeth’s award winning, best-selling novel, The Swan House, was named one of Amazon’s Top Christian Books of the Year and one of Georgia’s Top Ten Novels of the Past 100 Years. All of Elizabeth’s novels have been translated into multiple languages and have been international bestsellers. Elizabeth’s most recent novel, By Way of the Moonlight, was a Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Pick in Religion and Spirituality for Fall Releases in 2022 and a Christy Award Finalist in General Fiction for 2023.

Elizabeth and her husband, Paul, work with the non-profit One Collective. The Mussers have two sons, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren.  Find more about Elizabeth and her novels at www.elizabethmusser.com and on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and her blog.