Where dreams go to die

I got engaged on December 23, 1994. We were poor college students, working our ways through school on our own.  There wasn't much money to buy a ring, which wasn't a huge deal to me. My future husband said, "Get something you can live with for a while, and we'll get you want you really want later." 

His step mom worked at an antique shop that carried jewelry. He refused not only to choose the ring himself, he refused to even go with me to choose it. He was afraid, he said, of influencing my monumental decision. He wanted me to get what I wanted. So my mom and I went, meeting his step mom there. 

Did I mention we were poor college students? We decided our price range beforehand, and his step mom had a selection for me to choose from laid out on blue velvet trays. I was like a kid in a candy store. I wanted a solitaire, I thought, but when my eyes landed on a what they called a dinner ring from the 1940's that all changed. It was sparkly and unique, and I fell in love with it. 

A saleslady brought out a telephone on a silver tray with my soon-to-be finance on the line where I cried into the phone that I had found my ring while my mom and future mother-in-law beamed in the background.

It was all very sweet and romantic.

They gave us the ring at cost less 10% since we had a connection. The ring was $800, and they allowed us to make  interest free monthly payments until we paid it off. That was really kind.

I still really love my ring. I love that it's old and that someone else wore it and loved it too. I love that it's not a real engagement ring, and I've only seen one other one like it these 16 years. 

I thought about the ring I wanted, the ring that I would get later, and I came across this picture in a magazine. It was an add for Tiffany, and along with dreaming about going to Tiffany in New York City one day, I decided this was the ring I wanted. I cut out this picture and it stayed on my refrigerator for about 12 years. 

Really. 

My grandmother got a solitaire for her 23rd wedding anniversary. I think it was 23 years. She loved that ring. She had wed with a simple wedding band and wore it all the years until she got her new ring, although she continued to wear her original band on her right hand. She loved that ring. She wasn't a jewelry person, really. In fact, she is the most frugal person I've ever met. She wasn't a spender. She was a saver. This ring seemed out of character for her, but maybe that's why she treasured it so.

It was to go to my aunt, my dad's older sister. When she was killed in a car accident several years ago, my grandmother looked at me, covered my hand with hers and said, "You'll get my ring now."

Oh boy. 

Well, that got my husband off the hook for having to buy me one. I figured he could get the sapphires to put alongside her diamond and then I'd have my dream ring.
  
Well. 

As I grew in my faith I started to see everything from a different perspective. Things that used to be important fell away. Some slowly at first, painfully. My temporal love of things that sparkled was a strong one. 

I noticed the small clipping of "my" ring buried under family pictures, notes made for myself and drawings from the kids still stuck to the refrigerator this week. I took the clipping down and sat it on the counter. I looked at it for a long time. 

I didn't want that ring anymore. 

Now I feel the burden of my grandmother's ring too. I can't wear it. It's too big. Too beautiful. She's still here, but not really here. When I have that ring, it will mean that she's really gone. 

I don't think I can sell it. How do you sell something so sentimental. I have no idea of its worth, but even $3,000 could put a well in an impoverished community in India to provide drinking water to people who don't have that luxury.

How can I wear a ring that represents so much relief for so many people?

My own ring appraised for much more than what we paid for it. It too could provide a well. 

I can't get past that. 

And this is where I get stuck. I'm not really sure how to live in this world and yet please the God who wrote the Bible. It seems really easy and yet horrifically difficult. I rely on the Spirit to lead and guide and yet then I wonder if He already did. In the Bible. Already. 


And here we are in the Christmas season, where buying and giving are so important. And again I struggle. Do my kids need more? Of course not. They can't keep clean and straight what they already have. I insisted to my husband who loves to give gifts that I don't need or want anything this Christmas either. That made him sad. So again, I feel like I'm swimming upstream.


My dream Christmas would be to spend a couple of weeks cozied up in a cabin in the mountains, with a Charlie Brown tree strung with a string of colorful lights and strings of popcorn. No gifts allowed. Just blazing fires, warm comforting food, board and card games, playing in the snow and lots of reading aloud from the Bible.


No stuff.


I'm tired of stuff.


So. I took this picture off of the kitchen counter where it had laid as I studied it, feeling these thoughts whirling around in my head. I felt sadness. I felt hope. I'm thankful for the promise that God will complete what He started. 


I watched at this small pictured floated into the garbage can. It came to rest among the morning's coffee grinds, old coloring pictures, crumpled up pieces of paper. It gleamed up at me as beautiful and as sparking as it had from the side of my refrigerator all those years. I stood there for just a moment, feeling a bit like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. Then I closed the lid and went off to address Christmas cards.


I guess it could be said that this dream went to the garbage can to die. And I'm okay with that.