Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Rejoice with me!!!

Luke 15 Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she callers her husband on the phone at work and exclaims: Rejoice with me, I have found my lost wedding ring!!! In the same way, I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

It is just a plain gold band.
When my fingers swell up, I transfer it to a little finger to give my ring finger a rest.
My hands got cold taking out the garbage last night, and that is when I noticed it was missing.
So we searched the garbage.
I went through each piece in the recycling bin that I had just taken to the street.
With flashlight in hand, Bob meticulously searched the drive, the street, the sidewalk, the curb, under the cars, and the gutters.
I went through the trash, the laundry, the sink---everything I had touched. We both checked the Scrabble bag.
We looked high and low.

I had lost them once before in the dryer. My hands were cold, then, too, and I had not even felt them slip off. I have a larger one I bought at Walmart for when I cannot comfortably fit this one on my ring finger.

But, somehow, when either putting towels in the washer, or checking them, the ring slipped off my little finger, and made it through a few washings and high speed spinnings that rattle the whole house with jet-like humming.

There it sat. Sitting on the lip of the rubber sides of the washer by the drain. Waiting for me.

The whole time we were looking last night, a load was washing and sloshing and spinning.

It is not the ring I was married with.
Bob reminded me of that this morning when we gave the drive one more look with his headlights.

When Bob and I got married, I had forgotten to give the ring to the best man. So, in the middle of the ceremony, "with this ring" was my Dad's wedding ring, a huge, bevelled, platinum washer-looking bracelet. My Dad had noted the best man's face, and handed his forward as a substitute for the ceremony. "With this ring?" became our poise undoing. We all laughed, and to the chagrin of our first-time preacher (Bob's oldest brother)performing his first ever wedding, and who was so intent on his notes (as he had typed out every word lest he become flumuxed) that he had missed the ring exchange...he even asked us after if we had taken our vows seriously???

I found it. Thank you, Lord!! And the mix of tears and laughter had me doubled over. And I went straight to the phone. And told him who had helped me look. That is an hour we can never get back. Instead, it is an hour that said with his actions that he loved me, and he helped me look, and he did not berrate me for being a silly woman. Only encouragement, and assurance that it would be found...came from his lips.

Bad thoughts crowded my mind last night. My carelessness, the price of gold, my sloppiness, and of all days---when Bob's uncle had died. I wondered if I never found it, would the two be mixed forever in my mind. Because yesterday, we lost a jewel of a man, a silver shield; a golden baton has been passed to the next generation.

5 comments:

Mrs. JP said...

Oh, I love your story and I am SO happy that you found it. Way to go Bob for being there and helping. I've had the same thing happen to me and I cried and cried. I had lost it while planting tulips and it stayed lost for a year until the spring rains came and then one day I was at the garden and saw just about 1/4 inch of the band and I dove on that thing like a duck on a June bug. Oh happy day.

joyce said...

Dear Mrs. JP---wow---to have to wait a whole year! And I love your duck on a June bug picture! My mom says she lost an onyx ring hanging up clothes on a clothesline as a young wife, and her story came to mind, too. Thank you for sharing.

Bob said...

We knew it had to be somewhere in the house. It sure wasn't in the garbage.

AJW said...

I'm SO glad you found it! We sure do have some patient men in our lives. I can't count how may times I lost my phone and James patiently looked with me and never made me feel bad for losing it. He has had a great dad to follow. Thank for calling me today! It was nice to hear your voice.Love you.

JP said...

Glad you found it. We can rejoice with you!

For the record, it was more than one year between the time my Mrs lost that ring in the flower bed and the time she found it. It was more like five years. That stuck in my mind because it was so amazing since we had no earthly idea where the ring had been lost. Like you, she didn't remember when the last time she actually had it, so we didn't know where it was and took apart the water bed, tore through dresser drawers, etc, trying to find it. Then we had it turn up in the garden several years later. As I recall, we had taken to pouring the dirty water from our fish tank onto the rose bushes because it was supposed to be good for them, and one day when she was cleaning out the fish tank and pouring the water on the flower bed, she noticed something shiny and it turned out to be the ring she had lost years earlier. Of course, I had already replaced the ring with an even better one, which was not hard to do since the first one was purchased when we were so very po'. It was barely the width of a spaghetti noodle.