small miracles...

five years ago i lost my wedding ring. it was such a sad thing to happen. i can't even express how sad and regretful i was, but if you are married (or even if not) i'm sure you can imagine. not only did i love my beautiful ring... one that i picked out myself and was based on a design from the 1920's... but it is just something you can never replace. my husband and i have talked over the years about buying another so i would have a wedding ring at all, and wouldn't feel sad every time i saw my empty finger. really though, it wouldn't be the same as the ring he placed on my finger that special day. i know a marriage is much more than a ring but of course it becomes a beautiful symbol of the love you share.

i lost my ring, i believed, while on vacation in vermont. i couldn't find it after leaving the house we rented. i was horrified! i searched through everything i had, contacted the house owners, even searched my own house from top to bottom... just hoping it would turn up. years went by, i moved several times, and gave up hope.

until!... about a month ago I got a rather frantic message from my mother asking me to call her because she had something to tell me about my wedding ring. my mother had recently decided to move in with my grandmother to help her out as she is getting older. my grandmother just turned 85. i went to her birthday in august to celebrate, staying in her guest room. i also did this 5 years ago, about a month after i lost my ring. except it wasn't the same guest room. my grandmother had since moved from that place. her guest room, now in a different home, has become recently occupied by my mother who one day decided to clean out a dresser to make some room for her things. she told me she opened the top drawer of the dresser, and sitting right there in plan sight was my wedding ring. my wedding ring! MY WEDDING RING!!! this was the frantic message she had for me.

my grandmother had never seen it and had no idea how it got there. i have no idea how it got there. i guess i must not have lost the ring in vermont. it must have been in my suitcase and actually fell out at my grandmothers old house. i did not use that dresser while i was there. so someone else put it there. it was moved to a new house. my grandmother and aunt have both looked in the same drawer and never saw a ring there before my mother opened it up and found it.

i really do not understand how it was lost, or how it was found, or where it is been all these years. i do know i am so grateful for the moment i saw it again, and was able to slip it back on my finger, a place where it will stay for good i hope. i hope it is done with it's journey now. i will take it as a good sign... a sort of new beginning in a time of many new beginnings lately. when my husband came home that evening i ran out to show him, and proudly joked that i was married again! i know that the love this ring symbolized did not journey away, it only grew while it was gone. i also know, though, that i am grateful for small miracles and for my beautiful ring.