The Rings Around my Heart

It started with the mother's ring on my right hand. Three birthstones set in a row on a band, one for each of my sons, it was a piece of jewelry I treasured almost as much as the boys themselves. I looked down at it at work one day and suddenly noticed one of the stones was missing! Horrified, when I got home that evening I worked the ring off my finger (over these knuckles? No small feat!) and hid it carefully away before telling my family about my loss. I knew instinctively (and correctly!) that the moment my sons heard about it they would rally to find it and figure out which of the three of them was on the “outs” with his mother while the other two were still secure in their standing! For once the merciless teasing was forstalled by my advance planning!

My husband kindly had the ring repaired for me, and a couple of months passed without incident. Then again while at work one day I happened to look down at my hands, and this time it was the band on my engagement ring that had split completely through!

“Are you kidding me?” I muttered to myself. Worn thin after 35 years of life and love and laughter with my husband, it had simply given way. Because the engagement ring was welded to the wedding band, I had to remove the entire set (another miracle!) and took it in for repair at the first opportunity. I chuckled when the jewelry store said they would call with a price estimate on the repair. I knew I'd pay any amount to get it fixed; the rings were simply priceless to me.

Yet the empty feeling on my left hand bothered me, so I dug in my jewelry box for something to wear in my wedding bands' place. I found a ring with a tiger's eye in a simple setting, a piece of jewelry I'd had so long that I couldn't even remember where I got it but liked it enough to keep it all these years. Gladly I worked it onto my finger and was happy to have it till my wedding set was restored to me. It lasted a full week before I happened to notice while again scanning groceries one day that that stone had likewise disappeared, leaving an empty setting behind!

What was it about weighing bunches of kale on a scale and sliding boxes of cereal down a belt that was so hard on my rings, I wondered? It didn't make sense that after eleven years on the job I suddenly couldn't keep a ring on my finger to save my life! It was such a strange occurrence of events that surely there was some message attached to it, one that I clearly wasn't receiving. “I hope I figure it out soon,” I thought to myself. “I don't know how many rings I have left!”

Suddenly, there it was! I don't know how many rings I have left.

The former forester in me remembered that the age of a tree is measured in the growth rings that are visible in a crosscut of the trunk, a ring for every year of life. How many “rings” do each of us have left? We simply don't know.

It's possible to determine a tree's age without cutting it down; foresters carry a tool called an increment borer which removes a core sample from the trees on which the rings are clearly visible and easily counted. But the sample reveals more than just the tree's age. It shows growth patterns in the life of the tree, years in which the tree grew well as well as those in which growth was stunted for some reason by environmental conditions or disease.

We Christians carry a similar tool in our pockets in the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the mercy of God that before our lives are cut down He gives us the means to examine our past, evaluate our growth and consider problem areas in our relationships with Him and the people around us...while there is still time to correct them! Sometimes He just needs to get our attention.

My ring situation did that for me. The mother's ring reminded me of my joy in my boys, prompting me to keep them close in heart in specific ways and deliberately clear my schedule when the opportunity presents itself for us to get together. Similarly, a marriage can't survive if the joy of the engagement and early years is lost in life's busyness; scheduled fun times with a spouse is a marital must. And who among us doesn't have treasured friends whose faithful love should be remembered, renewed and rekindled with a deliberate effort to stay in touch?

It's interesting that the losses all became apparent to me while I was at work. It's easy to slip into the habit of letting our work situations run our lives and control our time. We can be still mentally clocked in even when completely off the job site, our minds still thinking about problems we encountered and working out solutions when they should be focused on thoughts and people closer to home. It can lead to an undiagnosed type of “attention deficit disorder” which, if left untreated, can prove to be fatal to the relationshps we value the most.

So what can we do about it? There's no oral medication we can take to instantly fix relationshps that have lost their luster. I had to send my rings in to be repaired, a good reminder that we can't fix all of our problems ourselves; we simply need to ask for help from the One who has all the answers. Maybe the Good Doctor will first prescribe a new set of eyeglasses through which we view our life and the people in it. Then He'll work on our heart to get the love flowing freely in all the right directions once more. He'll renew our mind and readjust our priorities so that the most important things...and people...in our lives get our attention first. Perhaps the best treatment is simply to give us a glimpse of the brevity of life, to remind us that we simply don't know how much time we have left. If change is to occur, it has to begin now...today.

Whether or not my jewelry will be repaired in time for Valentine's Day, this year I'll be thanking God for the gift of three broken rings that redirected my love and attention to those in my inner circle...while there is yet time to hold them close.

“whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

(James 4:14 NKJV)