Serendipity

I have moved an awful lot in my life and if there's one thing I know, it's that there is always a point during the process when one gets frantic and starts shoving stuff into boxes without regard for order or necessity or reason. As our friends showed up to help us move early last week, I reached that point. Our belongings were being trundled out of our home and there was still so much LOOSE stuff that I panicked and began wildly throwing things into boxes. Late that night, as we were about to settle in for our last night in the house, I realized that I had no idea where my wedding ring was.

Suffice it to say, screaming, horrific terror reigned for most of the night. I climbed in the moving truck, flashlight in my teeth, crawling over our packed furniture to try to peer into a dresser that I thought MIGHT house my errant wedding ring. I couldn't open the drawers to find out if it was there, so I sat down in my empty apartment and sobbed. I believe I even flung myself dramatically across a suitcase, keening. My husband offhandedly mentioned that I might have accidentally thrown it out. There was a loaded silence before I ran out to the garbage cans behind the building, leaving a trail of my own tears. 

Here's where the weirdness happens: I tore open a garbage bag that I had dumped a couple of hours earlier. I sorted through the trash, gulping back my own sobs. Eventually, I saw something gleam in the lone streetlight that illuminated our alley and felt my heart rise with hope. I brushed away the dust and effluvia, thinking that my misery was ended. What I found, though, was not my wedding ring, but a ring that I had given up for lost two full years ago. A ring nearly identical in style to my wedding ring that I had purchased from the same store that sold my husband my wedding ring.

Fast forward to last Thursday, when I finally unearthed the dresser from the moving truck... As soon as it was cleared, I tore the drawer open, dug through it and found my wedding ring. 

Had I not misplaced my wedding ring, I would never have dug through the trash to find that missing ring. It would have been sent to a landfill, never to be found. I don't know if there's a lesson here or not, but I am kind of, sort of awed by the serendipity of it all...