Searching for the Key

"I am in crisis" were the first words out of my mouth on my last morning in New Mexico.  I could not find the key to my rental car anywhere. I was two hours away from Albuquerque, where my flight home was scheduled to depart at 10:50 am. I had precious little time to look.

I was staying at Ojo Caliente, home of the oldest natural hot springs in the country. Thousands of people have soaked in these waters over the centuries, searching for healing and rejuvenation. As I sat in the warmest pool under a canopy of stars, I could see why. A deep sense of peace and gratitude filled me to the brimming point, and I went to bed thanking God for all the gifts I'd been given on my trip.

All of that evaporated at 6:15 am, when I was about to take my things out to the car. The key was not in my purse. It was not in my suitcase. It was not in any of my pockets.

My mind raced from the past to the future as I tried to piece together where I might have left the key and imagined what the weekend would look like if I missed my flight. All the time and energy I had spent throughout my sabbatical on being fully present in the moment was put to the test--and I didn't do so well.

I was aware of the current moment just enough to realize that I had no choice but to pick up the red security phone and call for help.  Since it was so early, the lobby was closed. But the phone on the wall outside was available for an emergency. Which I was in.

"Can you pick a lock?," I asked the calm, young Hispanic man who answered the phone and came to my assistance. I figured I had locked my key in the car. Where else could it be? I had only been at Ojo for twelve hours, and the place wasn't that big. I was running out of ideas.

It took a few tries, but my savior managed  to get a coat hanger through the window on the driver's side and down around the door handle. I praised him for his brilliance. But the key wasn't there. 


I retraced my steps, back to the restaurant where I ate supper. Surely my key did not just spontaneously fall out of my purse, but again, I was out of ideas. The restaurant was deserted except for a handful of guests gathered around the early morning coffee service the hotel provided.  Frantic energy must have radiated from me in large waves as I looked; it didn't take long before one of the other hotel guests asked me what I was looking for.

"We found a key to a rental car yesterday in one of the chairs in the lobby, and turned it into the front desk," he said, to my joy and relief.  I never would have guessed it, but my key had slipped out of my pocket when I sat down to retrieve my boarding pass from my laptop.  The guard opened up the lobby for me and handed me my way home.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers and sheer Providence I made it to Albuquerque with time to spare--and with a sweet security guard scratching his head at the half-crazed anglo woman who pulled out of the parking lot.

As I've reflected on my anxious search for the car key, I've thought about all the other searches I've been on.  For integration of mind, body and spirit. For deeper relationship with God and neighbors. For meaning and understanding. I've thought about all the books on spiritual growth I've collected that involve the words "journey," "quest," and "seek."  I've thought about my longing to spend time in "Nature Out There," as Lyanda Lynn Haupt calls it, instead of in my own back yard.  And it's dawned on me that I've been looking for all kinds of keys.

The truth is that while they may be hidden from view, the keys aren't that far away.  I just have to give up the notion that I can find them on my own, and learn to receive them. Even from people and places I will never see again.  "Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed," writes Mary Oliver in her poem, "It Was Early."  I'm still looking for a lot of keys, but Oliver has handed me one of them.

When the first leg of my flight back to Raleigh stopped in Orlando, the flight attendants announced that there was a special boy and his family on board: Marcos,  a Make A Wish Foundation recipient.  The passengers burst into applause as we pulled up to the gate, all of us suddenly more acutely aware of the fragility of life. And the gift. And the relative insignificance of whatever we had been through to get to the airport that morning.

I thanked God for a safe trip.  For the moment, that was enough.