- Jan 11, 2012
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This my first post in the forum, though I have been a member for a few years now. I enjoy reading the stories of the joy these silly creatures bring and the trials and heartbreaks. I finally have a story worth sharing. I posted this on my Facebook page a few days ago. It seems unbelievable, but I promise it is true...
One weekend, in the summer of 2006, I lost something.
My wife and son went away for a few days to visit family and friends. I stayed home to work around the barn and yard and also to work my second job as a home health nurse. Some work around yard machines present certain dangers when wearing rings on fingers. I can’t remember what I caught my wedding ring on, but I hurt that finger and so moved the ring to a finger on my right hand.
Fast forward about 24 hours:
At some point during the day, I realized, with panic/terror, that there was no ring on any of my fingers. I retraced my path through my home health route and even recruited my patients to search with me. When I got home, I searched everywhere, and everywhere, and everywhere…the house, the barn, the yard. For the next several months I searched… and finally came to realize my wedding ring had gone to that place where unfindable things go.
Fast forward about 6 months:
My sweet wife, Kim, presented me with a new ring, made with some of her own gold jewelry, made to resemble my lost one. It is beautiful and special for many reasons.
Fast forward 7 years to June 2nd, 2013:
Part of walking to the barn these days, is having to navigate around chicken poop. I now have over 100 hens that range over about an acre and a half of my yard. Yesterday, walking to the barn, I saw something different about a particular pile of pooh. Sounds gross, but I often look at their droppings to check for health problems in the flock. Chickens scratch the ground and eat the things they find all day long. So there, smack dab in the middle of a fresh pile, was something shiny. At first I thought it was some nasty parasite or a piece of hardware that one of the girls ate. But then I picked it up and saw what it was! One of the girls had scratched my wedding ring up out of the ground, ate it, and at some point, deposited it right exactly where I found it. There is no telling how many hundreds of times that cycle replayed through the years until it landed where it did yesterday.
I’m thankful for the many things that this lost-then-found (thanks to my chickens!) wedding ring means to me now. I’m nobody’s poet or preacher, but I’ll give it a shot: Maybe… no matter how lost I think things are (myself, relationships, dreams), even in the midst of the very worst of things (like chicken poop)… there can be, entirely separate and holy; the Cross, and beauty, and eternal things, waiting to be found. There is hope and promise… just waiting.
One weekend, in the summer of 2006, I lost something.
My wife and son went away for a few days to visit family and friends. I stayed home to work around the barn and yard and also to work my second job as a home health nurse. Some work around yard machines present certain dangers when wearing rings on fingers. I can’t remember what I caught my wedding ring on, but I hurt that finger and so moved the ring to a finger on my right hand.
Fast forward about 24 hours:
At some point during the day, I realized, with panic/terror, that there was no ring on any of my fingers. I retraced my path through my home health route and even recruited my patients to search with me. When I got home, I searched everywhere, and everywhere, and everywhere…the house, the barn, the yard. For the next several months I searched… and finally came to realize my wedding ring had gone to that place where unfindable things go.
Fast forward about 6 months:
My sweet wife, Kim, presented me with a new ring, made with some of her own gold jewelry, made to resemble my lost one. It is beautiful and special for many reasons.
Fast forward 7 years to June 2nd, 2013:
Part of walking to the barn these days, is having to navigate around chicken poop. I now have over 100 hens that range over about an acre and a half of my yard. Yesterday, walking to the barn, I saw something different about a particular pile of pooh. Sounds gross, but I often look at their droppings to check for health problems in the flock. Chickens scratch the ground and eat the things they find all day long. So there, smack dab in the middle of a fresh pile, was something shiny. At first I thought it was some nasty parasite or a piece of hardware that one of the girls ate. But then I picked it up and saw what it was! One of the girls had scratched my wedding ring up out of the ground, ate it, and at some point, deposited it right exactly where I found it. There is no telling how many hundreds of times that cycle replayed through the years until it landed where it did yesterday.
I’m thankful for the many things that this lost-then-found (thanks to my chickens!) wedding ring means to me now. I’m nobody’s poet or preacher, but I’ll give it a shot: Maybe… no matter how lost I think things are (myself, relationships, dreams), even in the midst of the very worst of things (like chicken poop)… there can be, entirely separate and holy; the Cross, and beauty, and eternal things, waiting to be found. There is hope and promise… just waiting.
