A few nights ago, I lost my phone under some pretty foolish circumstances. So foolish, I don’t actually remember losing my phone because I was so drunk. It was the next morning that my sister-in-law broke the news to me about what happened and that she suspected I dropped it in an Uber… but due to the night’s wild chain of events, there could be at least three possible locations where the phone could’ve gone missing.
The optimist in me was hoping that we would hear from the Uber driver and that the phone would be safe and sound with him. We never heard from the Uber driver. So I tried to get in touch with Uber support, but they weren’t being helpful due to the fact that I wasn’t the one who called the Uber. There was also another Uber the phone could’ve been dropped in. No word from that driver either. And then there was also a bar where I may have dropped it, so I left a message with their Lost & Found. Again, no word.
Now, it’s just a phone. No big deal, right? I mean, I could borrow a phone from someone, buy a new phone, or just go without a phone (haha, I wish!).
A few days after my phone went missing, Find My iPhone located my phone over in Canoga Park. I looked up the address and the location looked like an apartment complex. What am I going to do? Go over there and try to hunt it down? Probably not smart.
So I waited and continued to be patient because I thought just MAYBE this Uber driver would get back to us about finding the phone in his car. And so I decided to give it a full 5 days. Because 5 is the # for grace.
And after a full 5 days passed, this morning, I got another alert from Find My iPhone. Another address not too far from the first address in Canoga Park. And so I looked it up and found that this was the address for a business that unlocks cellphones- AHA!
So one of my best friends and I went over there to do a little detective work. We asked the guy if someone had come in to try to unlock a phone this morning. He confirmed this and said that a guy came in, they charged the phone up, saw that Lost Mode was on, and so the guy took off with the phone. We asked if they had any security cameras and tried to get as much information about the suspect just to see if it would be worth filing a police report, so we even went over to McDonald’s next door to see if there was any video surveillance. But there was not. So at this point, with a dead end hit, we called it a day and went to eat Thai food.
As petty as this situation might be, I guess I was just hoping for the best outcome… and well, I think the best outcome is exactly this. A clean slate.
Yes, maybe I lost a bunch of personal data that wasn’t backed up, like all my photos from my trips to NorCal, New Zealand, and Australia, or voice notes of creative ideas or prophetic words, or notes to self that really belong in a diary… but it’s ok. Everything is sooooo fleeting anyway. Nothing in my phone really even matters! And I just feel like this is all part of a bigger lesson that God’s been teaching me. To let go.
That and to stop getting so stupidly drunk.
-G