Where's Your Wedding Ring?
Two days after our wedding, we arrived at our honeymoon
spot - cottages on the northern California coastline with
their own private beach. We went down the cliff path to the
beach and tossed a frisbee back and forth for a while, but
since it was late in the day, my wife asked if we could go
back and make ourselves some dinner. Towards the end of
dinner my wife took a look at my left hand and asked
"Where's your wedding ring?" It was gone and I felt that
wave of emotion go up and down my body. "It must have come
off when we were throwing the frisbee." We hurried down to
the beach.
As soon as we got to the beach we had our little prayer
meeting: "GOD, please help us to find the ring." We knew
exactly where we had been and got to work. We divided the
whole area into squares and began our systematic search.
Soon it was too dark to continue, so we went back to our
cottage deflated. Next morning we rose early and continued
our search, but didn't find the ring. Needless to say, my
wife was very unhappy, and I encouraged her to forget about
it and try to enjoy our trip.
We spent the next three days on various activities, and on
the fourth day I suggested we go back down to the beach. As
we climbed down the stairs I could tell my wife was
intending to start searching again. I told her to let go of
it, she said no way. As soon as we got to the beach she
started searching again, but something happened to the beach
since we were last there. A high tide had completely washed
over the whole beach and, right where we had been throwing
the frisbee, someone had been spinning circles in the sand
with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. I told my wife it was
hopeless. She ignored me and went down by the waters edge to
search. I sat down cross-legged on the beach and cried out
to GOD several times: "Please help her to face reality." As
I said that the last time, I bowed my head and there, up on
top of a mound of sand, right between my legs, was my ring.
I remember crying out loud "LORD, forgive me" as I flung
myself down on the sand. My wife came running over, having
no idea what was wrong, and when she found out, we both
praised our GOD. We wrote the whole story in the sand so
everyone going there that day would see that GOD really does
answer prayer.
Chris Geary
cgeary@mail.arc.nasa.gov
© 2001. Permission is granted to reprint this story.