I had the Hebrew for "God is not late" inscribed onto a ring I had made during what felt like an extended singleness and widow-ness (shut up, it's a word, and it's how I felt... or maybe I felt "widowful"). I do not remember where the phrase came from - if God placed it in my head like a pearl that appeared after I mentally tongued around an abrasive piece of sand (widow-ness) for a while, or if it was from one of the books I read to help me cope with all my tortured emotions about God and missing my husband and feeling so alone and yet not quite wanting to date or remarry because he and it would be different.
Psalm 27:13-14Maybe it was from that verse, which I had been memorizing when big Blake died. Who knows? God gave it to me, one way or another: Yahweh is not late.
Yet I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be still, take heart, and wait for the Lord.
A friend of mine is a custom jeweler, and we designed a ring that looked like water, with irregular edges and a brushed finish, made of Montana-mined paladium (I couldn't melt down big B's wedding band because it's made of titanium and is therefore rather immutable). Because I cannot actually read Hebrew, he set two Yogo sapphires from rings dear to my heart at the beginning of the phrase so I could see where it started. One ring was from my parents, a symbol and reminder of my purity as a bride, both of Christ and of an as-yet-unknown husband (I had given it to big Blake, but it had found its way back to me, of course). The other ring was from an aunt who also loves Yogos - she thought her ring would go beautifully alongside my promise ring and so gave it to me.
The ring would only fit on my left middle finger and rubbed annoyingly on my engagement band from big Blake, so I moved the engagement ring to my right hand. It was all very symbolic and meaningful for me. I was looking ahead, in the land of the living. God is not late. I fiddled with the new, wide ring often, touching it with my thumb, spinning it round and feeling the tip of the bigger sapphire tickle my finger. It was almost like a worry stone.
When Rob proposed, we went back to my friend and asked him to incorporate the paladium from my reminder ring into his wedding band. The Yogos are with some other stones in a baggie - somewhere. I really should find them and design some other beautiful piece of jewelry I can't afford...
So now Rob wears my reminder. Yahweh is not late.
2 comments:
That is very cool. You told me that phrase and I say it to myself often. It's helpful. Love.
This narrative is sweet. I have also heard that when we are anxious about something and have waited a long time for God to answer...the words "and this too shall come to pass" or "and it came to pass" are something I have been saying for a while now... it always gives me hope to keep plugging along...
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