Now And Then Everyone Needs A Small Miracle
Published: October 9, 2005
More than three years ago I lost my wedding ring at Disney World. It was a hot and humid June, exacerbated by a pelting rain that occurred every afternoon for two hours. The humidity caused my fingers to swell slightly, and the ring, which had fit perfectly 22 years and 30 pounds ago, began to bother me.
So I got in the bad habit of taking the ring off during the day, putting it in a small, zippered pocket at the front of my backpack. The backpack held wallets, kids’ snacks, cameras and all the flotsam and jetsam necessary for a family visiting Orlando for the first time. But the front pocket was empty, so I wouldn’t lose the ring.
But I did. One day, distracted, I forgot to close the zipper. At night when I went to put the ring back on my finger, it was gone.
I called Disney’s lost-and-found office, searched the car, the hotel room, and every article of clothing we had. No ring. I retraced our steps and found nothing.
My beautiful, hammered gold wedding ring was nowhere to be found. I was sick at heart.
I kept the number for the lost-and-found department at Disney World for a year, and after we returned, I called once a month.
No ring. And no prospects for getting it back.
But, despite this rational world in which we live and work, I believe in miracles. To me, having faith is as necessary as oxygen.
So, as bad as I felt, I knew in my heart that I would get my ring back. Sometimes, just before I went to sleep at night, I would wonder whether I would find my ring the next day. I didn’t bother much with figuring out how that would happen. In my mind, the ring would just appear.
But the years passed and every now and then, I wondered if I should just buy a new ring.
I didn’t. I kept telling myself not to worry about the details, but to have the simple faith that someday, the ring would come back.
One afternoon three weeks ago, my house was quiet. My husband, Pete, and our son, Tim, were outside, engaged in their Sunday tradition of throwing around a football. Our daughter, Anna, was at a friend’s house.
I was looking for socks in my top dresser drawer.
And there it was. My ring. As if it had never gone away.
Now, people have two reactions to this story.
The majority, being rational, react exactly the way a colleague did: “You mean, you bothered those nice people at Disney World every month for a year when the ring was in your drawer all along?”
Others tell me that the ring must have worked its way into a sock and somehow, sat there waiting for me to notice it. Admittedly, the drawer is pretty cluttered.
But this was my wedding ring. I searched for it as I would look for no other inanimate object. I shook out every article of clothing that I had. All to no avail.
The second reaction is best expressed by the statement of a friend’s mother who said nonchalantly, “Of course the ring came back. Small miracles occur every day.”
I’m with her.
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Everyday Miracles: True Stories to Change Your LifeMiracles do occur every day. Most are entirely undramatic. Nearly all in this scientific age are explained away by those who use words such as luck and coincidence and even, “You just never noticed it.”
It is unfashionable and, indeed, considered irrational at best outside the walls of a church to believe in inspiration rather than empiricism.
But Garrison Keillor once wrote, “Faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through.”
Grace, indeed.
I’ve been happily irrational for years. I believe faith lives, and rings return, and, against all odds, hearts that wait are rewarded.
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