On this fun evening of playing football, Joel lost his wedding band. This was over 2 weeks ago. As soon, as he felt the ring gone, he looked up and said, "Oh no! my ring fell off." We all immediately parted ways and began our search. Well, almost all of us... I looked up and saw Mikey on his knees. At first, I wasn't sure if he was praying or looking at bugs. :o) He stayed there for a few seconds, and then got up. He ran off to join the others in the search. When I caught up to him, I asked him what he was doing. He smiled and said, "I was praying that we would find Daddy's ring." It's amazing to me that God gave us these precious children to teach, and bring up for His glory, and yet so many times I find that they are teaching me.
We searched and we searched for the ring until the sun went down, but never found it. I was slightly disappointed thinking, "Lord, my sweet boy just prayed to you. Surely, that's gotta be an immediate 'yes,' right?" Little did I know that this journey was not about finding a ring, but about teaching me that sometimes God doesn't answer our prayer in the exact way that we were thinking...nor in our time frame.
We looked all that first week, but never found his ring.
The conversations that opened up with the kids with these past few days have been far more precious than the gold in that ring. One day, while we were out searching, I said, "Matt, do you think that God doesn't answer prayer because we haven't found the ring, yet?" He said, "No, Mommy. I think God is teaching us patience." I said, "I think you're right. And I hope I learn it quick because I'm not patient enough to learn about patience. We've got a ring to find." :o) We talked about when he was a toddler, and how he didn't like "no" very much. In particular when I took him grocery shopping and he wanted candy when we got to the checkout lane. A lot of times, my answer would be "no," simply because it was too close to dinner. I said, "Why do you think I said 'no'?" He said, "Because it wouldn't have been best for me." I said, "And that's just it. Obviously, our Creator knows what's best for us. I can't understand why we can't find this ring right now, just like you couldn't understand why mommy said no to your candy. But what I do know is that I just have to trust that God knows best."
Proverbs 3: 5,6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and He shall direct your paths."
Our prayer has been, "Lord, direct our path." I really like the part in that verse that says, "lean not unto your own understanding." It's not fully trusting God, if we're still trying to figure things out.
During the second week, the search actually got fun when someone let us borrow a metal detector. We went all over the field with that thing. One day, Joel came home from work and found Matt and I way out in the field. He yelled over, "Hey, I know the ring isn't out there. I wasn't even over there that night." I looked up and said, "What ring?" :o)
We sure found some interesting things with the metal detector.
We found an old pipe, a scraper, lots of bullets and scrap pieces of metal...no ring, though. The funniest thing was when the metal detector went nutty making noises and I said, "Oh Matt! Matt!!!! we've got something big and cool here!!!!" We dug deep into the earth, only to find an empty, old Capri Sun juice container.
This was our coolest treasure. Anybody know what this is? There were two of these.
I got some treasures too, this past week. :o)
After each day of searching, I would go inside feeling disappointed that we didn't find the ring, however we still continued praying. Last night, Joel came home from work, and I told him how I didn't think the ring was out there. He teased me about buying it from a bubble gum machine, and that's why the metal detector wasn't picking it up. We looked again at the football pictures that I had taken that night. We zoomed in very closely on his left hand. Sure enough, you could see the ring there in one picture, and gone the next. Joel decided to take the metal detector out "for a spin" while I cooked dinner.
2 1/2 weeks of searching on an average of 3 hours a day, my husband walks outside and within in five minutes, he came back in with the biggest grin on his face.
There, somewhere in the middle of "obvious plain view" and "duh" was his ring! My mouth literally fell open. I couldn't believe that he found it just like that. Of course, we were all overjoyed! (ok, and maybe I was a little jealous that I wasn't the one to find it.)
Now, his wedding band is back on his left hand where I placed it on December 16, 1995.
And it's a good thing, too because this would have been awfully annoying to lug around!
We decided to play a little trick on Matt. We taped the wedding band to the bottom of the metal detector, and asked him to come outside and help look. Of course, the metal detector was beeping like crazy. Finally, he said, "What's the matter with this thing?" He picked it up and flipped it over.
We got him good. :o)
