Two days after our wedding, we arrived at our honeymoon spot – cottages on the northern California coastline with their own private beach. We went down the cliff path to the beach and tossed a frisbee back and forth for a while, but since it was late in the day, my wife asked if we could go back and make ourselves some dinner. Towards the end of dinner my wife took a look at my left hand and asked “Where’s your wedding ring?” It was gone and I felt that wave of emotion go up and down my body. “It must have come off when we were throwing the frisbee.” We hurried down to the beach.

As soon as we got to the beach we had our little prayer meeting: “GOD, please help us to find the ring.” We knew exactly where we had been and got to work. We divided the whole area into squares and began our systematic search. Soon it was too dark to continue, so we went back to our cottage deflated. Next morning we rose early and continued our search, but didn’t find the ring. Needless to say, my wife was very unhappy, and I encouraged her to forget about it and try to enjoy our trip.

We spent the next three days on various activities, and on the fourth day I suggested we go back down to the beach. As we climbed down the stairs I could tell my wife was intending to start searching again. I told her to let go of it, she said no way. As soon as we got to the beach she started searching again, but something happened to the beach since we were last there. A high tide had completely washed over the whole beach and, right where we had been throwing the frisbee, someone had been spinning circles in the sand with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. I told my wife it was hopeless. She ignored me and went down by the waters edge to search. I sat down cross-legged on the beach and cried out to GOD several times: “Please help her to face reality.” As I said that the last time, I bowed my head and there, up on top of a mound of sand, right between my legs, was my ring. I remember crying out loud “LORD, forgive me” as I flung myself down on the sand. My wife came running over, having no idea what was wrong, and when she found out, we both praised our GOD. We wrote the whole story in the sand so everyone going there that day would see that GOD really does answer prayer.

Chris Geary cgeary@mail.arc.nasa.gov

© 2001. Permission is granted to reprint this story.