“We create our fate. Scrap the past instantly.
Everything we’ve been taught is false. Change your life.”
- Henry Miller, novelist (Tropic of Cancer)

 

Sometimes I can’t even believe it, but it happened. And I have to write about it.

Things like this have happened to me before. And they have happened to friends of mine. I even remember reading about them in “Behaving as if the God in All Things Mattered” where the author manifested manure out of thin air. (I never could figure out why one would want to manifest manure, but to each their own.)

It happened last Wednesday. And like every Wednesday when I am living at my house in Boulder, I drove to my 8 am manicure & pedicure appointment. As always, my sweet nail tech, Nancy had the hot water all ready to dip my feet into. As I slid into the massage chair and submersed my feet into the tad-too-hot water, I thought about how fortunate I am.

I slid my rings off my fingers and held them for Nancy to put on the manicure table as she usually does.  But instead of taking the rings she picks up my bag and hands places it on my lap, the little side pocket facing towards me. She has seen me place my rings in here once before, and I suspect she thinks they will be safer here and she won’t have to worry about me leaving them behind.

But a funny thing happens.

I hear a little voice, “Don’t do it. They won’t be safe.”

But I am thinking about the too-hot-water and Nancy’s comfort level and although I hesitate, I drop all three of my rings into the side pocket of the bag.

As I was driving to my next appointment, I remembered the rings. A bit of panic comes over me that I didn’t remember them while still in the salon. The side pocket of my bag is where I keep my keys (a set of keys to both of my homes in each of the two side pockets) and there is a chance I threw my rings onto the keys I pulled out to start the car.

I pull up to a stoplight and I reach into the side pocket and breathe a sign of relief as my fingers come upon the Tiffany diamond that was my engagement ring. By far the most valuable, I am filled with joy as I place it on my finger.

Reaching back in to retrieve my wedding band and the ruby and diamond ring I wear on my right hand, I can’t immediately find them. Reaching deeper and digging into the corners of the pocket, I hope and begin to pray, yet find nothing.

It is clear to me what happened. I threw the rings in top of the keys in the narrow pocket of my bag, and when I pulled my keys out the rings came out with them, falling to the ground somewhere in the salon or the parking lot.

I pull the car over and phone the salon, pleading with them not to sweep up the floors until they’ve looked for the rings. I turn the car around and head back to the salon, hoping against hope I will find my rings.

Married just last June, the wedding band is of course near and dear to my heart, but because of the obstacles my husband and I had overcome to wed, it also symbolizes a sense of triumph. The ruby my husband had designed for me when I expressed a love for the stone, and it was given to me as a Christmas gift. I loved these rings. I didn’t want to let them go. However, I would be willing to.

A paradox, for sure. But I fully know the universe doesn’t make mistakes. And not that this was for ‘my higher good’ and I was being punished in some way, but I know that to get hung up on form serves no one, not even oneself.

And if the rings were gone, then they were gone, and I would find rings I loved even more, and the whole experience would make the connection between my husband and I even stronger. And yet, I would like them not to be gone. (I told you it was a paradox.)

When I arrive back at the salon, I park in exactly the same spot, and scan every square inch of the parking lot as I retrace my footsteps back to the salon. Although the salon staff had been looking for them since my call, no one had come up with anything.

By now I was late for my next appointment and feeling fairly discouraged. As I drove away, I was thinking about why I might have created this. (We do, of course, create it all, consciously or not. And there are no accidents. )

I thought about what these rings symbolized and wondered if they could be representing something going on in my marriage. No, not likely. Things were amazing beautiful in that arena. So what was it?

Ahhh… I remembered. I hadn’t followed my ‘inner knowing’. I had received a message that the rings wouldn’t be safe and I had ignored it.

Meanwhile, the more logical side of me was thinking about exactly how this could have happened. I remembered unlocking my car from the curb, so I must have pulled the keys out when I exited the salon.

I get on the phone with the salon again, and beg them to check the front door and the adjacent businesses, speculating that maybe the rings hit the sidewalk and rolled to one side or another. She stays on the phone with me as she inspects the sidewalks, to no avail. Promising to call if they found anything she hangs up.

I guess I need to resign myself to living without these rings. I imagine telling my husband. I imagine ordering another wedding band. It just seems so needless. And yet, this is the way it is.

I check that same side pocket for the thirteenth time. I’m not sure what I am planning to find, but I check it all the same.

I check the floor of the car, thinking maybe the rings stuck to the keys and then dropped to the floor?

I check the seat the bag was sitting on… over and over and over again.

Nothing. “They are gone, Boni. Get used to it.”

“But what if,” I thought, “I could will them back to me?”

“What if, I could reach into another section of the bag, one that hadn’t been checked, and found them there?”

“Impossible,” my logical side replied. “It simply would be impossible to find them there.”

But before I could talk myself out of it, I reached my hand into the main compartment of the bag, and hesitated, imagining my fingers around my small, antique looking wedding band, feeling the rough edges between my fingers. And then I reach in to my messy, crowded, fairly large bag, and circle my fingers around my ruby ring.

And reaching down once more, directly beneath my fingers – my wedding band.

Part of me is stupefied. Part of me is not surprised at all. “Wow. If I am this powerful… why is it I don’t use this more?”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

And then the self-doubting me takes over. “Silly woman. You simply pulled the keys out and they fell into this section of the bag. God you are a dreamer.”

Feeling stupid, my excitement drains. I continue driving to my appointment and am glad I haven’t told anyone about this.

I pull into the parking space at my next appointment. I pick up my bag and take a good look at it. It is as plain as day.

For the rings to have ‘fallen’ into the other compartment they would have needed to defy gravity, risen into the air, made a semi-circle mid-air, then jumped into the compartment I found them in.

Silly woman indeed.

In joyous creation,

 

 

 
PS We all can be powerful folks – really, truly, limitlessly powerful. It’s time we discover and own that power. It is time we stopped pretending we don’t have access to more of who we really are.