This story begins with my mother’s story about her necklace. Sixteen years ago when we were still working at the Osan Air Base in South Korea, my father bought her a topaz ring, earrings and necklace. She lost the earrings almost right away.
Some time later, while she drove the car in Germany, the necklace broke and the pendant fell into her lap. When she got out of the car, we couldn’t find it. Had it fallen to the pavement? Was it snagged on her sweater? Buried under a seat? Mom immediately tucked the ring away. Why risk losing that too?
The move from Germany to Colorado was, I’m certain, one of the most confusing and difficult things we’ve gone through—for my mother, especially. We wondered why God had brought us home, why we had moved to Aurora (of all places), and why now—when there were so many people for us to serve in the military chapel. Mom missed our bigger house where she could fit many people in for dinner or Bible studies. She missed the friendships she’d cultivated with the lonely, beauty-seeking military wives reaching out their arms to be loved and encouraged. Why here? Why now?
When everyone had left from that move, when the container had been unloaded, when there was nothing left to carry in, Mom and Dad turned to go back in the house. There was still much to be done. Mom glanced down at the driveway sloping up before her. And there it was—glinting in the sun, just waiting to be picked up—the topaz pendant! Through two moves (one between hospitality houses), through several exchanges of furniture, across the Atlantic Ocean, it somehow had landed on the driveway of our unsought-for new house.
Mom says she thinks God was holding it in His hand, as if to say, “I know where you are. And I put you here.” When I first heard the story, it made my heart light up with a kind of hope I wasn’t even looking for. However it got there, it was a reassurance of God’s reign over our crazy world.
Thank you God for so many years, a few sorrows and so many driveways of joy!
©2005 Thrive
View the original print magazine where this article was 1st published.
