Guardian Angels

When I was engaged to wed Doc, my darling future mother-in-law offered to see if her mother, Beth, would be willing to let me wear a special heirloom necklace as my “something old, something borrowed” item.

I loved Grandma Beth. I had felt a kinship with her from the start. From the moment we met, three years earlier, she had been my ally. She seemed to me to be the person who most closely matched my conviction that against all odds, Doc and I would end up marrying one day. When he left for two years on a mission, she regularly sent me cards and sweet letters, encouraging me to hang in there and making me feel like I was part of the family already.

But her health had deteriorated significantly in recent times, and was so poor by the time of our wedding, she wasn’t going to be able to attend the ceremony herself. Wearing her special necklace would be a way of having her near me during that day of days, and I was grateful for the kind offer from Doc’s mom to bring it for me to wear.

After the wedding, I had every intention of getting the necklace right back to her, but none of us wanted to trust it to the postal system. So it sat in a small manila envelope on my nightstand for a few weeks, awaiting a visit from my new mother in law, at which point we would give it to her to return to her mother.

The day she arrived at our house, she hadn't mentioned the necklace yet, but while she and Doc were talking, I went into our room to get it for her only to discover that it wasn’t there. It had been there since the day we moved in, but now, it wasn't!

I searched everywhere I could think to look, frantic about it’s absence, while she visited with Doc in the other room, but without any luck. Not wanting to be gone too long and draw attention to myself, I returned to the living room. I was praying the entire time she was with us that she wouldn’t ask me for the necklace, and to my astonishment, she never brought it up.

As soon as she had flown back home she phoned us, lamenting not getting the necklace for her mother. “But I’ll be coming out in a few months again” she said, planning to get it for sure during that visit.

I searched in earnest. I turned the room upside down looking for it. Doc was mystified by it’s disappearance as well. I emptied the nightstand drawer, took the drawer out of it's stand, looked behind, under and above the drawer…in case it had gotten wedged in there somehow. But it was simply gone.

We concluded that the necklace, in it’s small manila envelope, must have recently been knocked off the nightstand at some point without my notice, into the trash can that sat on the floor next to it, and was taken out with the rest of the garbage. That was the only explanation that made sense, but it made my heart sick. I ached with dread over breaking the news to my mother in law. As her mother’s life continued it’s slow wrap up, getting the necklace back to her before it ended seemed increasingly important.

I was wrought with stress over this. This was NOT how I wanted my relationship with my new in-laws to begin. I felt terrible guilt; it seemed like the worst possible first impression, and I was in misery over my carelessness with her treasured heirloom. Every time we spoke on the phone, it seemed to come up. The stress of avoiding the truth of the situation was eating me, but I couldn’t bring myself to concede it’s disappearance.

A few months later, my mother in law told us she was coming out for another visit. I both longed to see her and dreaded the thought…knowing that this time she would expect that little manila envelope to be placed in her hand as soon as she arrived.

I had prayed for help about what to do, but no answer had come. In the face of her mother slowly dying, I dearly wanted to avoid adding to her distress by admitting that the necklace was gone, but the day was finally upon me.

The night before her arrival, I was getting ready for bed, and like I had done a hundred times in the past few months, I opened my nightstand drawer to retrieve my lip balm, which I used every night before bed. Sitting there, right on top of my lip balm perfect as you please, was a small, familiar manila envelope. I looked over at Doc and said, “where did you find it?!”

“Find what?”, he asked.

I pointed at the envelope, almost afraid to touch it. “That.”

“What is it?” he said.

I carefully picked it up and opened the flap, then tipped the contents of it into my palm. The heirloom necklace spilled out, in exactly the same condition as it had been in those many months before when I had worn it on our wedding day.

“I didn’t put it there”, Doc told me.

After a searching look at him to make sure he wasn't teasing me, I knew this was a miracle. One of the first miracles I’d ever personally witnessed. I knew that necklace had been long gone, but now, amazingly, some guardian angel had retrieved it from the bottom of a heap at the dump and returned it in my hour of need. I did offer a most heartfelt prayer of gratitude for this tender mercy.

The next morning my mother in law arrived, and I handed her the envelope as soon as she came in the door. She gratefully received it and I was able to completely enjoy that visit. After leaving us, she traveled to visit her dear mother, where she at last returned her beloved heirloom necklace to her.

When Grandma Beth died not too long after that, my mother in law and her sister were sorting through their mother’s things. They searched high and low for that necklace. She knew it was there, somewhere, but neither of them ever found it. It was a mystery to them both, but I always felt like it’s return was only a loan. A gift, given solely to avoid incurring yet another loss during a time of grieving, and once it had served it’s purpose, it was returned to the place it had gone because of my carelessness. I've always felt like Grandma Beth knows, and she's okay with it.



Grateful for
1) The reality of miracles
2) This day
3) Audio books