Lost and Found

About three or four weeks ago I lost my wedding ring! For an entire week it was completely missing. I had been making and canning 60+ jars of salsa the day it went missing. After cutting and seeding many many jalapeños without gloves on (stupid! stupid!), my hands started to feel like they were quite on fire! So in panic, I pulled my wedding ring off. Underneath my ring, my ring finger was especially hot. What happened after that is completely blank in my mind. All I remember is trying aloe vera, lotion, cold water, baking soda (which worked the best!), even bleach (internet advice! oi!) to make my hands stop burning. My hands are especially dry, so the pepper juices had seeped into the cracks even more than normal.

A day or so later, though my hands still felt flaming hot, I went to the place I figured I’d set down my ring. I knew I took it off. But that was all I could remember. Well, my ring wasn’t there. Then I went to look in the other 10 places I might place something safely, like a wedding ring. No show in those places either. So I spent the next 7 days looking in all the unlikely places my ring might be. Most of this time I was physically ill to my stomach at the thought of losing my very precious ring! It, of course, was not about how much or little my ring had cost. It was the fact that this was the ring my husband gave me the day he asked me to be his wife. It was the ring that he placed on my finger the day we both said “I do”. It was the symbol of our love and promise to one another. This ring is beyond value to me. As I’m sure yours is to you.

I looked on top of the fridge, under the fridge, behind the fridge. Behind and under the oven. I looked through every cabinet in my home. Every dresser drawer. Every pocket in my closet. Under beds, under radiators, in sink drains, under stove burners, under rugs and pillows. I turned my house COMPLETELY upside down!! I finally combed through our most disgusting bag of garbage of the year!! The bag of pepper, onion, tomato, apple, and pear peelings and remnants that had been sitting in the 80 to 90 degree heat for an entire week, waiting for the garbage truck to come. It was full of bugs and flies and smelled something putrid.

I came inside from sifting through that garbage bag and said, “Well, the good news is that I didn’t throw it away. But the bad news is that I went through THAT garbage bag!” ICK!!

I looked high and low and in and out as anyone would have. As many of you probably have done. The whole while I was thinking of the parable Jesus told about the woman with the missing coin. I kept thinking, This is how she felt!

“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:8-10)

Do you know, if you haven’t put your faith in Jesus as the only One who can save you for all eternity, He is looking and looking and looking for you. Not in the sense that He doesn’t know where you are. He surely does! But in the sense that He’s looking for you to believe in Him! He loves you so much that He looks for you high and low and through all the smelliest garbage of your life, waiting and longing for you to turn to Him in faith! And then if or when you do choose Him alone to be your Savior, He and the angels REJOICE!!!

I eventually found my ring. An entire week later. For some reason I can’t really explain, I never lost hope. Something in me always knew I’d find it. I kept praying, “Lord, You know where it is! Please help me find it!”

Well, that Saturday, as I was preparing to pick the rest of my tomatoes that weren’t fully red the week before, and then clean out the garden for the fall and winter, a sense of deja vu came over me. I was doing exactly what I did exactly a week prior. The deja vu feeling made me wonder if I was going to find my ring that day. (I had wondered this every day, though… even waking at night thinking about it!) Well, I went outside and started to pick tomatoes. The number of tomatoes was so overwhelming I decided to go get my snippers and cut down and pick one branch at a time.

As I clipped away  literally the second branch, the ground beneath laid exposed… and SO DID MY RING! It wasn’t shiny. No sun had hit it to bring it to my attention. It was FULL of mud! I had watered profusely the entire past week. By all means, it SHOULD have made its way under the soil due to the watering. I even watered over night one night on accident! I still have NO CLUE how it got outside. NO. CLUE. I don’t remember going back outside after making salsa. I don’t remember looking at the plants during the week… or getting close enough to them where my ring might land under one. It still makes no sense! It was GOD who lead me to my ring! There is no other reason I should have found it! It wasn’t even INSIDE where I expected it to be!

Where are you at today? Is your heart and life not looking very pretty? Is there no sparkle in it at all. Do you feel like you may just drown in this life? Not because of over-busyness but because you sense a deep void in your spirit? Do you have no idea how you even got to where you are? Does a dark shadow cover your heart? Yet you don’t really understand why?

Listen. It’s beautifully simple. Uncomplicated. So wonderful! All any of us needs to do is snip that branch of unbelief away. Your heart and your life don’t have to be clean and perfect before you do! The important thing is that you let Jesus “find” you! Just as you are. Then let Him do the ‘sparkle and shine’. Here’s how: that if you confess with your mouth Jesus {as} Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; (Romans 10:9).

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them
Leave them alone and they’ll come home
Bringing their tails behind them.

Au contraire! God is nothing like Little Bo Peep whatsoever! He doesn’t sit around waiting for you to finally change your mind. He pursues you. He uses things in your life to give you a glimpse of Him. He longs for you to turn to Him! He is actively waiting (is that an oxymoron?) and working out your life details (even those that are consequences of poor decisions) to point you to Him!

And if you will turn… when you do…. the angels in heaven will rejoice with a great rejoicing!

When I found my ring, I started to bawl! I just bawled and bawled! I hugged and kissed it. I leaned over, clutching my sides and offered up prayers of thanksgiving to God for showing me where it was! That night we celebrated and went out for dinner! I called my mom and my sister and my best friend. The relief! The joy! I have a sneaking suspicion my ring was just as happy to be found! Oh the pure JOY Jesus must feel when we finally place our faith in Him!

Because you, dear friend, are FAR more precious than a wedding ring!!

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see