The Broken Chain

The Broken Chain

We little knew the day that

God was going to call your name, 

In life we loved you dearly, 

in death we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you, 

but in God we put our trust, 

In times as difficult as this, 

faith is such a must.

You left us peaceful memories, 

your love is still our guide, 

And though we cannot see you, 

you are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken, 

and nothing seems the same, 

But as God calls us one by one, 

the chain will link again. 

Ron Tranmer

My chain is broken, my link, my circle, my safety, my protection, my lifesaver, my forever.......on Earth...that is....

Today I woke up to find a little string stuck to a prong on my engagement ring..no biggie..but I know it was something from God so that I would notice that a top of one of the other prongs of the ring had broken off...probably in one of the many moves with the girls and thankfully by seeing that string, it let me see the broken one before the diamond was lost.

So I wept...and wept....not because the ring was broken...I knew it could be fixed...but because I would now have to take the ring off to be mended. In 22 1/2 years of marriage, I can't remember many times that this ring has left my finger. It was taken off during 2 c-sections, and maybe for squishing up some meatballs. It was a part of me, and it just never left my hand. Once when my girls were little the same thing happened and we had it fixed, but then my sweetie was here to put it back on my finger. So I wept again. So then comes the question, "when is the right time to take your wedding rings off?" No one can give you the appropriate answer...there is no right or wrong time. But I wanted it to be my decision, not the decision of the metal device that was cutting my forever from my hand. 

I had to get to my classroom, so I put a band-aid over the ring to protect the diamond until I could get to the jeweler. I stopped to get a diet coke (surprise) at the Chevron and I hear a song playing...dang it...don't cry, don't cry, don't cry in the middle of the Chevron....Too late...So before I tell you the song, I will tell you a small side story. The wonderful parents that Dave and I were, one of the movies we loved to watch was "The Bodyguard". Okay, don't judge. We love the music, and aside from the inappropriate scenes & language, hey, we liked the story. So as strange as it may seem to you, it is one movie that is "special" to us because of the memories watching it together. So ready for the song? "I have nothing" by Whitney Houston. But the line that was playing when I noticed it was this...

"Don't make me close one more door...I don't want to hurt anymore..."

I just thought...don't make me do this...don't make me take this ring off before I was ready to...I don't want to face the door that is already closed, I don't want to hurt today over this. It has already been hard enough the past few days having the girls leave...I was already "mourning" the loss of them leaving, I didn't want to revisit something today that I had the rest of my life to deal with. 

So as I watched the jeweler cut my circle, my link, my forever, off my hand it just made me feel like a part of me was being taken away....again.....and I felt incomplete and unconnected to the source of what held our family together.

But of course in another moment I knew very well my forever is in Christ and although a link of our life is missing, that HE will fill it, grasp it,  to hold us in place until that time that we can join HIM in Heaven and link us together once more. 

And that little thread on my ring?...a reminder from God that there is strength in numbers. My precious friends that came to my rescue today in posts, texts, calls, and cupcakes  :) to lift me up and love on me so that I had the strength to keep going....showing me God's love through them...So I link to HIM....

"Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."  Ecclesiastes 4:12