Borrowed Favor

Someone once asked me why I still wear my engagement ring with the one diamond missing—why not just get it fixed and wait to wear it until it’s fixed. Well, for starters, my youngest daughter, Grace, wanted to wear mommy’s jewelry once, (innocently enough) and didn’t think I would take something like that off, and it was missing a diamond so she didn’t think I would mind. Poor baby. I wish I wouldn’t have panicked and freaked out the way I did. I’m still a work in progress. But aside from all that, I actually choose to wear it with all its… vestige. After all, isn’t it a more accurate resemblance of what marriage truly is? It’s big and bold, it’s brave and beautiful in every single way. It’s unique and shiny and irresistible. But over time, it becomes fragile…some diamonds may fall out…you may find that it has gotten some scuff marks from being a hard-working mom and it lacks the familiar luster you used to ogle over with every flick of your hand after he put it on your finger and asked you to make him the happiest man alive. And you said, “yes.” And then you both wrote personal vows to one another with tears in your eyes in front of a few loved ones and God. You had the honeymoon of a lifetime in paradise. And then as you headed back to your lives as one…things happened…here and there…diamonds fell out…more scuff marks. But when I look at this precious, semi-tattered ring—that serves as an amulet for our matrimony—it is actually more beautiful than when it was first placed with such ginger care on my hand back then. Because I chose it. And I (shall) keep choosing it…