Promise Ring

A Promise Ring

I was a bright white gold ring, a promise. With the word ‘promise’ proudly proclaimed, I was an example of God’s love in your life, before he was able to bring about a man who could love you and be your husband. I fit nicely on your ring finger. I was a reminder that you are a pure soul, that you would save yourself for your husband. I was a promise that the future would be positive and fulfilling.

For years, you wore me proudly. Until the day that he came. You were seventeen, still a child, but you felt like you loved him more than life itself. He showered you with love in return and for a while you were happy. When the timing was right, he replaced me with an engagement white gold ring, another promise. I had been your shield for five years. I had been the promise that God would watch over you until you were able to lean on him.

You placed me in a simple black ring box, with a note to your beloved on how special he was to you and to your life. How he would protect your heart and keep it safe. You gave the relationship all you had. I watched from afar, tucked safely away in your keep’s sake box.

Another five years passed. You purchased a white gold ring for him. You reached out to ask for his hand in marriage, and he asked you to keep it safe for him. He wasn’t ready to commit the way you had thought he was. Heartbroken and a little hurt, you took me out of the keep sake box, looking over the little love letter and the promise that suddenly felt broken. You wrapped the note around me, tucked me neatly beneath the little cushion, until I was hiding beneath his ring.

Life went on. You lived, you loved, you kept a promise. But the time was coming that you felt empty. Things began to shape you, define you, as if you were a trophy on the shelf. Carefully lifted off, dusted off, polished, and placed back on the shelf to be admired. He loved you, but he didn’t love you enough.

It was a total of eighteen years, before you decided that you could no longer keep your loving promises. It was eighteen years of seclusion, isolation, and feeling lifeless. Yes, you loved him. Yes, you cared about him. And fatefully, he loved you, but he would never be able to fulfill his promise. He would never change, and you would be left wanting. Your anniversary came to pass. You were so sad. The years were piling up on your soul.

And then the day came to pass. You reached out. You’d told him how you were feeling. You explained that you couldn’t take it, the way that things were declining. I sat quietly in your pocket. I was a reminder that he had promised you, and sitting in the box with me was the reminder that he had turned you down. You cried…A LOT. You hurt more than you’d ever hurt before. You gave him time to think, to process, and the more he didn’t speak or argue, then the more you were ready to call it quits.

For a while, I thought you had forgotten about me. When the words had spilled past you, and you told him goodbye, you removed his ring from your finger with tears in your eyes. You removed the promise that had been broken. With advice from your dad, you wrapped the two rings in tissue. Realizing that both rings wouldn’t fit in the top of the ring box, you pulled loose the cushion to find me. I was dingy, discolored, but the word remained “promise.” With tears in your eyes, you pulled me from the shadow of the little jewelry box and read the letter you had written to your beloved.

Heart hurt, you placed the ring he had given you in the bottom of the ring box where I had been. Returned the little cushion, put his ring on top, closed the lid and returned the black box to the jeweler’s box and then tapped it shut. Nothing would be the same anymore. Carefully you picked me up. Your thumb rubbing over the promise word on the face of my band. And then feeling broken, you threw me away.

I don’t blame you. I don’t hold ill will towards you. I’m sad for you that there was love lost. I don’t know where I’ll end up. I don’t know what the future has in store for you, but I would like to leave you with the promise that there will be love again. That you will heal, that you will be strong and whole again. God did not make you to live in agony. He made you to live. This I can promise you.