On Friday morning, as Otis and I were rushing around to get ready and meet the realtor on time, I realized I could not find my engagement/wedding ring. Not wanting to jump straight into panic mode, I did a quick scan of all the places I normally put it, but to no avail. At that point I was tempted to commence freak out, but knowing we had to be somewhere soon, I squashed it down and grabbed the cheap James Avery ring we bought for me to wear when I'm doing outdoorsy things. That way at least my finger wouldn't feel empty.

When I got home that night I resumed the search, this time enlisting God for help to find my irreplaceable ring, as in "God, please please please please please help me find my ring". This method has actually proven to be quite successful in the past. However, by the time Otis got home 15 minutes later the situation had severely deteriorated. I was crying, frantically turning the house upside down to find my ring, and slowly coming to the realization that I was not going to find it. Although I could tell Otis was equally panicked that his wife had, for all intents and purposes, lost the ring he spent months to design and $$$ to create, he did his best to reassure me we would find it and not to worry.

He was right, because about 1 minute later he did find it. At that precise moment in time, when he held the ring up to show me that he had in fact found it and then reached down to put it back on my finger, he was my hero. And I don't know if I've ever loved him more. I know it's just a ring, an object I won't be able to take with me after this life, but to me it means more than that. It symbolizes how much he loves me; that he would spend 4 months finding the perfect design and the perfect canary diamond, just so he could see the smile on my face when I wear it.

It was kind of like getting engaged all over again, only better, because this time we don't have to plan a wedding, and afterwards we got to 'celebrate'.