Once lost, now found

The saga continues...
The strange lost and found saga beginning with Zac's animals, that is.
This story began several years ago in Monterey, CA where we were stationed for a couple of years.  Glorious reptile hunting years for Zac.  One of his great finds/captures was a lovely little black ring neck snake which took up residence in his room in a small terrarium.  This was our first experience in the escape-art-ism  of reptiles.
It should have served as a warning.
It soon disappeared, never to be seen again. Well, at least not for a few weeks.  It made it's grand re-entrance mere minutes before the baby shower I was hosting began.  In fact, I stepped over it once on my way to bathe the baby, thinking that it was a leftover lace from the military gear my husband had been going through a few minutes earlier.  (After it's long sojourn in our house, it was about the diameter of a shoelace.) That instance was easily dismissed with a figurative wipe of the brow and a sigh of relief that it hadn't crawled out of it's hiding place any later in the day.

Again in Monterey, we brought home a little crab from the shoreline and added it to our home salt water aquarium.
 A practice that is frowned upon, I'm sure.
A few days later, a very distraught 8-year old Zac came tearing into the living room with the news that "Frank" had died.  Upon investigation, we discovered a very inert, non-responsive crab in the tank which we then removed and ceremonially buried under the holly bush by the front door.  A day or two later, a very wide-eyed Zac came into the room to announce that Frank was back...
We subsequently learned that after molting, crabs will hide themselves while their new shell hardens to its naturally protective state, and we in fact, had buried an empty crab shell.  With great respect and a few tears, I assure you.
Which brings us to the latest in the continuing story.

One of the various creatures who currently resides in Zac's room is a monitor lizard, called Joanna the Goanna.

 She was left in the care of a younger sibling (names omitted to protect the guilty) while Zac was at a conference for 10 days.  During his absence, I was informed of the apparent disappearance of said lizard which we very hopefully attributed to her hiding herself.  When she failed to reappear, we quietly worried about what to do.  Zac returned, exhausted from the conference, to an empty tank.  No lizard to be found, even when the tank was emptied, the hollow log shaken, and the sand combed through.  Sadness and disappointment on Zac's part, much guilt on nameless siblings part followed for the next few days.  

This afternoon, a slight movement in the heater of the room was noticed, and upon further investigation, there was Johanna--discovered at last, thinner, but still alive after two weeks of unintentional dieting and lower than previously thought to be tolerated temperatures.

Another happy ending in a series of lost and then found stories.  And the reptiles/crustaceans are the least of the story really.  Our family has been most gloriously found by God's grace.  We experienced a  culmination of that ongoing saga today in worship where our two younger daughters, Lydia and Moriah, were received as communicant members of our church here in Portland, and received their first communion.
 

What a blessing to realize the ultimate "lost and then found" story in our (human) family.  Thanks be to God for his unspeakable riches!