My head plunged below the water unexpectedly and only after I managed to scramble back into my kayak did I realize my wedding ring was missing.
Within a matter of seconds, I had lost the symbol of my eternal love and commitment for my wife.
It was July 2009 when I went on that ill-fated trip down the Buffalo River with my brother and cousins during our annual family reunion. When I noticed my wedding ring was missing, I could feel a knot in my stomach. "What will Claudia think," went through my mind.
At first I didn't believe it was that big a deal. But as I floated down the river thinking about what I had lost, the significance of the loss slowly began to hit me. That gold band had traveled from Colombia via one of Claudia's best friends to the United States for our wedding. It was intended to be a constant reminder of our marriage. Often I had rubbed my fingers across the band while in conversation; reflecting on my wife while listening to the words of others wash over my ears.
It was gone somewhere underneath the Buffalo.
Thankfully, my wife didn't make a major deal out of the news. I didn't need to sleep in the proverbial dog house. She was surprisingly okay with the news.
It probably didn't hurt that I had a "back-up" ring I had purchased during a college trip to Venezuela. I wear that ring now. It's not white gold, but instead the traditional yellow gold. It's not my favorite ring and doesn't carry the abstract significance of the wedding ring. I'll never be able to recapture that significance again unfortunately. There was only one ring given to me on my wedding day.
Have you ever lost anything irreplaceable? It's wasn't a fun experience for me.
But saying good-bye to something that can never be returned seems to increase the significance of the item once it's lost.
Maybe that is how God sees us. Maybe, we're the most valuable thing in his eyes while we are lost. Maybe he wants us more because we are lost. The good news is unlike my ring sitting somewhere on the bottom of the Buffalo River, we don't have to be lost forever.
