Your heart has been wrenched.
You have a grieving in your spirit.
Somebody has done or said something to wound you deeply.
You have a sense of loss.


Something of great value has been lost.
And with it the sentiment that goes with it seems stolen.
While the story that follows may not exactly fit the words above
you can see the same sense of broken heartedness,
the same stolen sentiment,
the same sense of loss.


I looked through the display case at the gold cross and necklace.
In my heart I wanted it.
I asked the woman behind the counter to show it to me.
It was beautiful,
and somehow it seemed to speak to me of my new found faith in Christ.
Then I looked at the price tag.
I could not buy such an expensive gift for myself.
I handed the necklace back to the woman,
feeling as if I had just given up something I love.


A few weeks later at Christmas my wife handed me a small box.
When I opened it was the same necklace I had wanted in the store.
How did she know?
I had not said anything to her about it,
and furthermore, how had she come to find this particular necklace?
I could only believe that somehow God had led her to it.


A year later some friends and I were playing basketball.
I had taken off my shirt to play and
had laid my necklace upon it to keep from breaking it.
When we left it was dusk.
I picked up my shirt, not thinking about the necklace.
The next night I realized what had happened.
I went back looking for the necklace, but it was gone.
I was heart broken.


I prayed, asking God to forgive me for being such a poor steward.
I told Him it wasn't the monetary value of the necklace that grieved me,
but the sentimental value.
I had considered it a gift from both Him and my wife,
the two people I love most.
I asked if somehow He could return it to me.
What I heard back was "let your loss be known
to whomever has your necklace".
I thought about that and the only way I knew to do that
was place an ad in the paper and trust
who ever had the necklace would read it.


Nearly a week went by and I had heard nothing.
I went to a Bible study I frequented,
but my mind was not very much on the study.
At the end of the evening one of the ladies there asked me
what was troubling me.
So I shared the story of the lost necklace.
She listened intently and when I was finished
she looked me in the eye and said,
"sounds like somebody needs to fell your loss".
Suddenly I realized what the Lord had been saying to me.
So we prayed together right then and there!


The morning after next I was coming home from picking up breakfast.
I was thinking about my necklace, wondering when I would see it again.
A thought came before my mind, "you'll never see that necklace again".
I started to resign myself to that, but then I thought,
"no, I'm not giving up on God".
As I got out of the car my wife met me in front of the house.
She informed me some woman was on the phone about my necklace.


The lady asked me to describe it, which I did.
She told me how here daughter's boyfriend had found it
and given it to her daughter.
I gave her directions to my house.
When she brought it she handed it to me
telling me, "I just knew somebody was really missing this necklace".


God had made my loss known to her!


I have had other circumstances where I have felt a loss,
a deep wound, or some other broken hearted sense.
And when I have been wise enough to carry that hurt to God,
He has always taken care of it in some way.


If that first paragraph about being wounded is you,
take your wounds to God,
He'll help you deal with it and with whoever hurt you.
You know you really love someone when they can wound you deeply
and you still want what's best for them.