Learn this Lesson, Before You Lose Something Precious

Too often we women discount our knowing because we don't value or have confidence in our truth, but you can learn to treat yourself like the precious gem you are.

My husband and I recently traveled to Wisconsin and back in a rented mini van to visit my parents and bring home a loveseat and treadmill they were giving us. Not intending to stop along the way, I’d packed enough food to feed an army for a week. The few stops we did make to fill up with gas and use the restroom were quick. Even Bart and Hollie, our dogs, had to “take care of business” in a hurried-up fashion.

As is usual, I wore all my rings but while traveling took them off and put them in the holder in the door armrest. Each time we stopped I put them all on before I got out of the vehicle.

Somewhere in Ohio, heading east along route 80, we had to make our umpteenth pitstop to stretch our legs and fill up the car with gas. I grabbed the rings. One dropped. It’ll be on the floor when we stop, I thought as I put the rest on my hands.

When we stopped I opened the door slowly. I didn’t see it in the gap between the step up and the door and didn’t hear it fall on the ground.

I stepped out and searched the floor. I didn’t see it there either. Joe came around and looked inside as well as outside. I stepped out, shook myself a bit, still didn’t hear it fall and decided it was safe to walk to the bathroom along with all the other 4th of July holiday travelers.  

When I returned Joe said he’d looked through everything on the passenger-side floor again, but still didn’t see it. I took everything out of my junky purse thinking it must have fallen inside. It didn’t.

By this time, we were done at the gas pump and Joe wanted to move the van. Less than a hundred yards away while Joe walked the dogs, I looked again through the plastic bag that I’d been using for trash, carefully feeling the old banana peel and discarded yogurt cup. I felt along my computer carrying case. Perhaps it’d gotten stuck on a zipper pull. I gently shook out the crumpled green shirt that had fallen to my feet and been stepped on. I looked even closer at the floor mat. I felt and looked under the seat, moving it back and forth a couple times along it's mechanical rails. Nothing.  

While doing this I realized the floor was a vinyl mat with slots where the seat legs inserted to be bolted to the van floor. I couldn’t imagine the ring falling into one of those slots, they were nowhere near where the ring had dropped, nonetheless, I wiggled my fingers between the mat and floor. I came away with nothing but two bloody gouges on my hand.

“It has to be in here,” I said to Joe after he returned from searching the area where’d we’d first opened the car door and gotten gas.

I was reluctant to leave, but Joe wanted to get back on the road. As the miles away from the rest area grew, I asked, “Do we even know where that rest area was?” “No,” Joe replied. I reassured myself with nervous talk and anxiety-filled chatter.  Joe said, “Maybe I should have waited for the other vehicle to move” as he rethought his quick check back where we’d filled the gas tank and first opened the door. “It’s gotta be in here still,” I hopefully reiterated.

“We’ll take the van to the body shop and have them take the seats out,” I seriously joked, “if we don’t find it.” I doubted my reality, my knowing that it really was there. I was very afraid that my engagement/wedding ring set I’d had for over ten years was gone forever.

Seventeen hours after we’d left our home in Delaware, arriving in the dark, I said, “We’re leaving everything in here. Nothing comes out.” 

The next morning Joe went out and looked in the van again. He shook his head at my still-sleep brain. 

Blurry eyed, wearing a scowl, chastising myself with recrimination and self-doubt, yet hoping with all my heart, I walked outside in my pajamas, went to the van, and crammed my fingers into those tiny openings again where the seats bolted to the frame. In every crack and crevice I tried to see and feel. “I need a flashlight,” I yelled and went in for one. Moving the seats again I shined that light into the openings I’d just forced my fingers into. When I moved the seat forward on it's rails, I saw a new opening and wiggled my fingers into that one too. I pulled the floor mat up as far as I could, contorted my body, shone the light inside, and peered into the tiniest opening yet.

Something sparkled. 

“I found it,” I yelled to no one. Joe was in the house. “I found it,” I yelled again as I reached into that tiny opening and stretched to dislodge it enough to pull it out with one finger. “I found it,” I said again while standing up. I turned to the house, Joe walked out. “I found it,” I said again—then burst into tears.

In my husband’s arms I cried tears of relief for finding this symbolic treasured item. I cried tears of relief for validation of my own reality. I knew it was in there, but time and fear had overtaken my knowing.

We, YOU, know what you know. Yet, too often, you second guess your decisions, let someone else talk you out of it, talk yourself out of it, or sadder still, are so disconnected from your body that you don’t know what your truth is.

Your knowing lives in the still quiet place inside your body but you have to slow down enough to be connected to it and hear it. Once you hear it, you have to accept it and this is far easier to do once your body (physical, emotional, psychological) is accepted as it is. After all this, you then have to trust what you know before you can begin to speak up about it in a way that others will hear.

Losing my precious diamond ring filled with history, hope, promise and love, taught me more about self-trust. But you don't have to lose something to learn this lesson. Knowing, trusting, then living your reality is born of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. 

• Stop for five minutes today and just listen to what your body and mind are saying. 
• Accept whatever it is. 
• Do it again tomorrow. 
• Set a timer on your phone to go off at the same time every day to do this. 
• Do this until it becomes a habit and your brain just remembers. 
• Increase the time. 
• Be on the lookout for miracles. 

Your body and mind will thank you. YOU will thank you. And then not only any diamonds or precious stones you wear will sparkle, but you will sparkle as well. Because, after all, you and your internal knowing are precious too.