If you were my neighbor, you might have seen my butt, clad in my favorite snowflake leggings, disappear into our kitchen window on a Tuesday morning in early December. It was the end of one act in a drama that began Monday evening.

My husband left Monday morning for a work trip to New York, and since my friend Tiffaney’s husband was also out of town for work, we planned a Monday night moms-and-kids sleepover. It was a snowy day, school was canceled, but we stayed busy putting up our Christmas tree, doing a few snippets of homework, baking pies, running errands, and getting props ready for the school Christmas program.

Late that afternoon I backed our Highlander out of the garage and pulled up to the sidewalk by the back door. I pushed the button to close the garage door but it didn’t respond. I’ll back up several feet and try again before I pull out, I thought. We loaded up our snow clothes, sleepover bags, and a pie, and by the time we pulled out I had forgotten about the open garage door.

Five minutes later we arrived at Tiffaney’s house, parked at the end of her driveway, and tromped through the snow to her warm kitchen, carrying our bags of clothes. We stowed our things away in the downstairs guest room and the kids went out to play in the snow, while I settled down to a puzzle in the living room and Tiffaney made dinner. The kids came in after dark, their icy clothes leaving melting puddles here and there in the entryway. After dinner they played, then put their PJs on and had a bedtime story by the fire. It was a cozy and delightful evening.

In the morning we had pumpkin pie and muffins, veggie sausage and fruit for breakfast, then scurried to gather our things and get out the door for school. Tiffaney left with her kids while my girls and I gathered the last of our things by the kitchen door and prepared to take armloads of snow clothes to the Highlander. My keys weren’t in my purse, but I’m notorious for misplacing things, so I wasn’t alarmed. I checked my coat pockets next. “I don’t know where my keys are.”

“I had them last night,” my older daughter said with concern. “I don’t know what I did with them.”

I had forgotten she took the keys to get a sled from the Highlander. While I felt slightly relieved that I hadn’t unknowingly misplaced the keys, I now also felt a much higher level of concern at the possibility of not being able to find them at all. We began searching, starting in my daughter’s coat pocket, where she remembered putting the keys. But they weren’t in the coat pocket, or the pants pockets, or anywhere we looked in the house. We continued the search outside where there were still several inches of snow on the ground. We walked slowly to the Highlander, heads down. Tiffaney’s neighbor, Ben, noticed us searching the ground and asked if we had lost keys. “Yes,” I said, “we used them last night and now we can’t find them.” He promptly offered to take my girls to school, and I gladly accepted.

Tiffaney came home and together we continued searching for the keys, but found nothing. I texted my parents that I was coming over to get a spare house key. My parents live across the street from my house and they keep a spare key, so it would be easy to go home from there and grab the extra Highlander keys to use until I found the lost key ring. Tiffaney dropped me off at my parents’ house, where I was greeted with the unwelcome news, “We can’t find the key to your house.” Mommy and Daddy were searching kitchen drawers and coat pockets, but to no avail. I decided to walk over to my house and look for a way to break in. I tried all the doors and a couple of windows, but everything was locked. As I stood at the back of the house, looking at the windows, I noticed the latch was pointing a different direction on the kitchen window than it was on the other windows. Maybe it’s not locked.

I carried our orange step-ladder from the still-open garage to the kitchen window. Propping it open, I climbed up and tried the window. It opened! Sliding it all the way up, I angled my head and shoulders through the narrow opening, held onto the counter as I balanced awkwardly over the piles of dishes in and around the sink, and finally lowered myself to the kitchen floor. From there it was a dozen steps to the back door, which I unlocked as I headed out to put the ladder away. I tromped back through the snow to my parents’ house with the news of my lucky break-in, and retrieved my purse.

As I was walked home again it dawned on me that I couldn’t have opened the kitchen window if the garage door was closed and I didn’t have access to the ladder. Sometimes my mistakes or forgetfulness can be in my favor! Glad to finally be home, I settled down to write until Tiffaney could take me back to her house to retrieve the Highlander. Then life resumed as usual.

Monday’s sleepover was such a hit that we showed up again Wednesday evening to spend the night. There was still snow on the ground, and we searched for the keys to no avail. Tiffaney took all the kids to her son’s school Christmas program, and I got better acquainted with Alice, who got stuck at the bottom of Tiffaney’s driveway. Using door mats, car mats, blankets, and—finally—a neighbor, we got her little car to the end of the driveway. Tiffaney’s house was beginning to feel like one adventure after another.

Snow melted over the weekend, and we offered the neighborhood kids—fourteen of them—a $2 reward for finding my keys. Sunday it rained and I stayed inside. Monday I increased the reward to $3, and Tiffaney chimed in on our group text, “I’ll double that!” Three of us adults also combed the sledding hill on Monday but found nothing shiny or key-like.

Another week passed, it snowed again, and Christmas vacation began. I was at my writing desk on a Wednesday morning, two weeks after I had climbed through our kitchen window, when my daughter appeared in the doorway wearing her snow pants and coat. “I hear metal,” she said, shaking up and down. She reached down, opened the side pocket of her snow pants, and pulled out the missing keys! She had put them safely in her pocket … just not her coat pocket. I joyfully texted my friends.

The drama had finally reached its conclusion after fifteen days of waiting. That’s plenty of time to fret about the astronomical price of a new key fob, my—or my daughter’s—lack of responsibility, and the outlaws who might be running around with keys to my house. It’s plenty of time to scold and moan and budget. Enough time to compare all the “shoulda’s” with reality. It’s enough time to buy a new fob, schedule an appointment to have the house re-keyed, and write a chore list long enough so my daughter can pay me back for said fob.

But I didn’t do any of those things. I blame God for this. I also blame Tiffaney, who is queen of going with the flow, and who spent more time praying than fretting—in fact she prayed about finding the keys just a couple of hours before my daughter found them.

I am still getting acquainted with the me who doesn’t freak out about everything, shame and blame, and frantically try to fix things in record time. This new me appreciates my friends and gives grace to my children. She allows for changes in plans and inconveniences. She waits, with a slow pulse.

Don’t get me wrong, I can still throw a first-class tantrum. When things go sideways I still panic and reach for my two favorites—anger and control. But I love this whole story because it’s a case in point that I am freer than I used to be. I am free to love, to make mistakes, and to allow others to make mistakes. I am free to receive life open-handed, to laugh, to pray, to wait, to be in community. No matter the outcome, all the energy I might have spent steaming out my ears for two weeks was put to better use. Thank you, Papa God, for seeing fit to replace my heart of stone with a heart of flesh.