It’s Anniversary Week on Hope in the Healing! Sharing a few of the top posts from the past year. Enjoy!

Forty was a year of transition for me.

They say it brings out a mid-life crisis in a man. I was way too busy to have one of those. We were leaving the only home we ever truly loved. Seven wooded acres of beauty, a pond, two-story house with four bedrooms for three growing boys. This was the house my father-in-law built, The Sweetheart grew up in and we had come back to refurbish and call a “home” for the last six years. But change was inevitable in the ministry. We had a calling and it trumped even nostalgia.

So we are moving three hours away to carve out a new life for ourselves. I have entrusted the final move to The Sweetheart and the two older sons, Kyle, the Soon-to-be-Engaged-One, and Kristopher, our Teenage McGyver. The youngest, Korey, is with me on-site at the new place making sure everything is ready for the moving vans to arrive.

That was my first mistake. I left everything that was of any value to me at all in the hands of MEN. Everything was packed; all they had to do was make sure the movers loaded them on to the trucks. It really was very simple. Then drive three hours and I would be there to supervise the unloading process. How could it go wrong?

It’s always hot and humid in southern Indiana in August and moving day was no different. The Sweetheart is a very organized guy. Remember, he was an air traffic controller by trade. Hey, Jack! He was an air traffic control supervisor no less! But, he was overly stressed with the move, so much was going on and to make matters worse, his dear mother, who lived just around the corner, had fallen that very same day outside her home. She was 75 at the time, had broken both her wrists and one elbow, and been laying on her side in the sun for over an hour and a half before she was discovered! So he was called to help get her in the car and to the hospital in the middle of all of this move! Needless to say, the day was not going as he had planned.

So back to the house he runs where he finds Kyle, the Soon-to-be-Engaged-One, in sheer Panic-Mode.

He has discovered that the beautiful Engagement Ring that he is about to give to his Beloved Rachel is missing!! (Mind you, this is also the Little-Girl-I-Never-Had-Rachel, but that is another story for another blog post.)  All of the boys rooms had custom bureaus and armoires built right in to the walls so Kyle still had odds and ends inside his dresser and the ring was in a box there. These were all personal items and since this dresser was BUILT INTO THE WALL there was no reason for the movers to open these doors!

What we didn’t realize is that while Kyle was out of the room, two of the movers found the engagement ring and took it out of the box! What is amazing is that later when Kyle was gathering up the rest of the things inside of that closet and grabs the ring box, he opens it, I guess just to gaze upon it one more time, lovingly of course, and to his horror it is gone! Of course he knows it was just there earlier that morning because he had lovingly gazed upon it only a few hours earlier! That is what a Soon-to-be-Engaged-One does! Or so he was told.

He rushes to find his Dad and they make the surprised Barney Fife assumption that “We’ve been robbed!” Since the perpetrators are still in the house, the situation must be handled with the utmost care. What to do, what to do! While Barney is fumbling for his bullet, Andy is calm, cool and collected. He walks outside and calls me. Well, who would you call?

Now I know you all realize I am a wonderfully sweet, encouraging and uplifting person. But even a wonderfully, sweet and uplifting person doesn’t have to let herself be taken advantage of!

“Call the police!”

The Sweetheart thinks maybe that is a little extreme considering they are still in the house.

He wants to just ask them to return the ring. Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. What if they are violent? What if they have a gun? People are crazy these days; you never know what they might do!

So he comes up with a plan. He calls the owner of the moving company; it’s local so the owner comes down to the house in about ten minutes. The owner confronts the two guys and they deny that they have taken the ring. Interrogation is a wonderful thing. If it works. It wasn’t working so he gets serious. This guy has watched every season of “Law and Order”.

He decides to do his own strip search!

Right there in my kitchen!

And they do it, right down to their boxers!

Unfortunately, he finds no diamond and decides to hold them there until the police arrive and calls in another crew to finish the loading.

While they are waiting on the police, Kyle is pacing up and down the front sidewalk and the sun happens to catch something shiny in the bushes! What does he see off to the side? Sure enough they had placed the ring underneath a hosta in front of the porch! They are elated until they discover that the actual diamond itself has been pried out of the band! Unbelievable!

Joy one minute, disappointment the next, this day couldn’t get much worse!

The police are ready to haul them in when the sun just happens to glisten off of something shiny and The Sweetheart sees the diamond laying in the grass. Miracles do happen and it seemed that the Soon-to-be-Engaged-One surely deserved one at that moment.

His Rock had been found and reunited with its Band and the living happily forever after was soon to be told.

When law enforcement show up they said we could not charge them with theft because the ring was still on our property. There were minor charges they could have come up with but we decided not to pursue it since the ring was recovered. They are fired on the spot by the owner; he admits he has had a few minor instances with them but nothing like this before. He doesn’t even give them a ride back to town, he makes them walk at least three or four miles!

So the ring is safe back in its little black velvet box. The Soon-to-be-Engaged-One is once again cool, calm, and collected.

Does he tell the Bride-to-Be? Do we want her to know that the symbol of her undying love has been man-handled by strangers?

Should she be made aware that it was thrown in the dirt and possibly stepped on, maybe even little chipmunks ran over it or other miniature creatures tried it on for size before we ever found it?

Or are there some things that just stay “on the island”?

Momma always said, “If you want to start a marriage out right, you don’t keep secrets…”

 

 

Sharing with Titus 2sdays,  Tell Me a True Story, Modest Mondays, Walking Redeemed, Winsome Wednesday, Homemaking Linkup, Wholehearted Wednesdays, Messy Marriage, Encourage one another, Whimsical Wednesday