Ring of Power

When Brennan was 5 years old, I once found him on my bed, bouncing around. We had a few laundry baskets and other miscellaneous items stacked along the walls, as we had just cleaned the carpets the night before. I went into the bathroom to put my wedding and engagement rings on and my heart skipped a beat - the engagement ring was there, but not my wedding ring.

In a moment of pure panic, I searched the recesses of my mind, trying to think of where else I could of put it. But only for a moment. It dawned on me rather quickly that both rings should be together. Which meant, a small boy probably took hold of my beloved ring.

I asked Brennan if he had seen my wedding ring. He immediately gave me a bit of a perplexed look, so I specified, "you know, the one that goes with this one" holding up my engagement ring. A lightbulb clicked in his eyes.

"Oh, you mean your ring of power." I knew exactly what he meant. Ring of power, as in the "Lord of the Rings" (Yes, we won't go into here how my 5 year old knows all about this. Let's just say that he may have seen this movie with Dad, and because it obviously didn't scare him in the slightest, he has watched it a handful of times while Mom and Dad had it on).

"What happened to it, honey?" I queried. "Oh, I threw it in the lava pit." Brennan happily responded. Lava pit? I immediately began to use my creative thinking skills in order to decipher what in our house a 5 year old boy could have possibly perceived as a lava pit. Not coming up with anything, I started to fish for clues.

"Where were you when you threw it?" I asked. "Right here" my little jumping joy proclaimed, still on my bed. I began to search our room. I pulled everything from the walls, and pieced through each laundry basket. Finally, at the bottom of the third basket, I found my ring (How did it get to the bottom?). Joy! A quick instruction was given to my dear child about never playing with Mom's "ring of power".

I was reminded of this incident yesterday when Brennan, now 6 and a half came to me in the playroom. "Look Mom. I found your ring of power." I began to think about how it is through the sacrament of marriage that we are gifted with the grace which we need to carry out the never ending tasks of family and even more specifically motherhood. The grace we need in order to constantly sacrifice our own desires for the needs of others. This ring is my own living symbol of the graces given to me by this sacrament on my wedding day 9 years ago.

"Oh yes!" I responded to my dear son. "My ring of power, indeed!".