Stories with a ring to them

Some stories have a certain ring to them; some ring true, some don’t. During the past week, I’ve viewed or read three stories with rings in them—two wedding rings and an engagement ring.

The wedding ring stories can be filed under lost and found with a happy ending, but the engagement ring story unfortunately falls under lost but not found and no happy ending—yet.

You don’t have to live in Oklahoma to have heard of the deadly tornado that struck the town of Woodward right after midnight Sunday morning. As is usually the case, some unusual stories have come out of the tornado. One is Emilee Neagle’s story of losing and finding her wedding ring.

Roused from sleep, Emilee and her husband, Trent, heard on TV that the tornado was only minutes away. “We didn’t take the diaper bag, we didn’t take my purse,” she said. “I mean, we just ran.” They reached a shelter, but the house was virtually leveled. She knew they had left almost everything behind in the house, but it wasn’t until the next day that she realized her wedding ring was among the items left.

She had left it on the bathroom counter that night in their mad dash to safety. Despite the odds against finding it, neighbors, parents of some of her third-grade students, and friends joined in a search for the ring. Armed with a metal detector, they dug through the debris for almost eight hours and surprisingly found the ring.

Farther west in the City of Kuna, Idaho, a news report flushed out a story of a wedding ring lost down a toilet and found by a sewer system worker.

Recently, Travis Fleming, an employee with the Kuna city sewer system, discovered a wedding ring, which he turned in to city officials. Through the pipeline of publicity, news of the discovery reached the owner of the ring, Michelle Rieger.

Michelle, who now lives in another town, heard from friends that the ring had been found. She had lost it 1 1/2 years ago while living in Kuna. She had removed her ring and was placing it on the privacy wall in the bathroom when it bounced off and fell into the toilet, which she had just flushed. She said her husband took the toilet apart in a futile search for the ring.

Until a few days ago when her friends contacted her, she thought the ring was gone forever. Now, she has it back. Michelle and her husband will celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary in June, and she said “having the ring back is the best feeling ever.”

In Atlanta, GA, Josh Miller and Cara Epstein are hoping to know the joy of finding a lost ring.

Josh, a landscaper, and Cara, a teacher, are engaged and Josh had planned for Cara to be wearing the $3,500 engagement he had purchased for her. But the ring is lost and no one has given him much hope of its being found.

When Josh bought the ring, he thought he had the perfect place to hide it until time to give it to Cara. He put in the inside pocket of a black ski jacket in his closet. She wouldn’t find it there.

Recently, he decided to donate some clothes to Goodwill. He gathered up the clothes, including the ski jacket, and took them to the Goodwill store. Two days later he remembered about the ring. When he contacted the store, he was told his items had been placed on the sale rack the next day. He went to the store and checked all the displays, but his jacket apparently had sold.

Somewhere, there is a black ski jacket with a nice, new, $3,500 diamond engagement ring still in the box in the inside pocket—unless someone has discovered the ring and perhaps pawned it.

Some stories have both a nice ring and a nice ring to them; some, unfortunately, only have a nice ring.

Our lives can be like these rings. Sometimes, we leave our God-given talents behind and have to go back and find them, or we lose them temporarily only to regain them with the help of friends. Other times, we hide them and, without planning to do so, lose them with little or no hope of getting them back. It’s when we don’t put those talents aside that they don’t get lost.