Precious Jewels

This past weekend I celebrated my birthday.
Fifty-six times around the sun.
Of course, birthdays are a time to look ahead.
They are also a time to look back.

I remember when I turned thirteen years old.
I was biting my nails at the time and my mother desperately wanted me to stop.
She figured that a special ring would be just the incentive I needed.
It was the last gift to be opened after dinner.

We sat around the table and I knew that my birthday cake would soon be served.
Instead my mother handed me a small blue box.
It was fancier than any box I had ever seen.
Open it, she said as I looked at her confused.

I sat there with the box in my hands.
I opened the lid.
The interior had shiny blue satin on the lid.
The base was covered in velvet.

In the center of that blue velvet was a ring.
The most beautiful ring I had ever seen.
The ring looked like a flower.
A ruby, which was my birthstone, was in the center of the flower.

Around the ruby were what looked like petals.
On each petal was a diamond.
I just stared at the ring for the longest time.
I never had a piece of fine jewelry before.

Why don’t you put it on? My mother suggested.
I lifted the ring that looked like a flower from the box and put it on my hand.
It was so pretty.
And then I remembered my nails.

I closed my hands into a fist.
Let me see your pretty ring, my aunt requested.
I showed her the ring with my hands still in a fist.
She pried them open slightly and I put them right back.

I think you might want to grow you nails since you have such a beautiful ring, she said.
So that was the reason.
Not just because I was thirteen years old.
It was a ploy, a ruse to get me to stop biting my nails.

As much as I loved my new ring, it bothered me.
I wanted to wear it.
I didn’t want to show people unless I could make a fist.
I didn’t want to be coerced to stop biting my nails.

I would do that in my own time.
The time was fast approaching.
I was thirteen years old after all.
You are a lady, my mother said, and ladies don’t bite their nails.

This young lady did.
However, it was beginning to bother me.
I don’t remember how it happened; it just happened.
One day, I stopped biting my nails.

I was able to extend my hand without making a fist.
I was able to wear nail polish.
My mother smiled knowingly.
I was sure it was because I wanted to stop; the ring had nothing to do with it.

I thought about that ring when I went to the jewelers.
The same jewelers that sized my wedding band and my mother’s ring so expertly.
I thought about how I could get use out of this ring all these years later.
I had an idea.

I asked the jeweler if he could make my ring into a pendant.
I imagined the jeweled flower on a delicate white gold chain.
I decided that forty-three years later, it was time to do something different.
The jeweled flower around my neck would be a reminder of a simpler time.

Fast-forward to my early twenties and it was time to get my college ring.
My college ring was a gold rose.
I was able to choose which stone I would like to go into the center.
I chose a pearl.

I have not worn that ring since right after my college graduation.
I saw in my drawer in a box with the same satin and velvet.
I decided to take that ring to the jewelers as well.
Could you make a pendant out of both of these rings? I asked knowing that they could.

I don’t know much about the transformation process.
Something about opening up the ring and putting a bail on the back.
I know the chain that I will wear with my gold rose.
I am anxious to give new life to these rings that have been stored away far too long.

The jeweler can take an old piece of jewelry and make it new.
The jeweler can give new life to something forgotten.
I am excited to wear these rings, which are now pendants.
I am more delighted with the meaning behind it.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:16,17)

There is a Master Jeweler.
We are jewels in His crown.
He makes us new.
He is able to take our raw material and make something exquisitely beautiful.