7
Diamond in the Rough
After a motorcycle crash nearly claimed her, could Deborah King find a precious object the wreck had taken?
On a beautiful day like this, I’d rather be wearing sandals than these heavy ol’ boots,” Deborah complained even as she tugged on one of the boots. “And my new helmet is so tight. It’ll mess up my hair.”
Her reticence wasn’t really about sandals or hair. Deborah’s husband, Jim, had suggested riding his motorcycle from their home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to Boothbay Harbor for lunch. Being on the cycle made Deborah nervous, and, indeed, twenty minutes later as Jim accelerated his Kawasaki Vulcan onto the construction-riddled Highway 295, she leaned forward and said into his ear, “I’m scared. Drive carefully.”
The highway was in the process of being repaved, and they found themselves traveling in a lane that had been stripped down to the gravel in preparation for new asphalt. At that moment, they passed a sign that read Motorcyclists Use Caution. Almost immediately, the bike began shimmying on loose gravel.
Jim eased toward an adjacent lane that had already been paved, thinking they’d be safer there. The front wheel went smoothly up and over the edge of the newly paved lane. The back tire, however, caught on the ridge. In one horrifying instant, the bike jerked and tipped onto its side.
Deborah was ejected from the bike at fifty miles an hour. As she flew through the air, she saw Jim scrambling on top of the sliding motorcycle as it careened on its side toward an oncoming car.
At that moment, Deborah hit the pavement. She felt her head bounce, twice, before she began to roll. She slid her hands between her legs to protect them as she tumbled across a lane of traffic, then onto a grassy median.
She thought she would never stop rolling. When she finally came to a stop, she heard someone scream, “Don’t move!” then felt her head cradled in strong hands. The young man kneeling beside her was an EMT who’d been driving by. He retrieved a neck brace from the backseat of his truck. The next person beside Deborah was Jim. He was alive!
When paramedics arrived, they secured Deborah onto a body board and began to carry her to the ambulance. She raised one bloody, road-rash-damaged hand to her face. That’s when she saw her engagement ring. The prongs were splayed and empty, the two-carat diamond missing.
“My diamond! It’s gone!”
Jim nodded, but the only thing that mattered at that moment was getting Deb to the hospital.
“Please look for my ring,” she said. “You know what it means to me. Please look for it! We’ll never find this spot again. It’s gotta be close by!”
When Deborah was eighteen, she ran away from home and ended up in Europe. One night, on a dark street in Paris, she found herself in a threatening encounter with a dangerous man and fled, seeking refuge on a train. She didn’t care where it was heading as long it was somewhere safe. She ended up in Amsterdam, at a youth hostel run by a Christian ministry. A handsome young man working the front desk assigned her a room for the night.
His name was Jim.
Deborah applied for a job at the hostel and was hired to change bed linens. She attended a Bible study with Jim and, hearing for the first time about a heavenly Father who loved her and had been in tireless pursuit of her heart, she made the decision to become a Christian.
Before long, she and Jim had fallen in love. One day, as they stood on a bridge overlooking the Amstel River, he told her a story about a trio of diamonds that had been in his family for many years.
The three diamonds had been set in a ring purchased by Jim’s great-aunt Monie during the Roaring Twenties. She’d lived the good life, frequenting the opera in New York City and spending summers at a second home in Nantucket. She wore an ermine stole, long strands of pearls, and massive diamond brooches. And then there was that ring, with its three huge diamonds weighing in at more than six carats in all.
In 1946, Aunt Monie gave the ring to her nephew, Charles. When he met the woman of his dreams, he took the best of the three diamonds and had it set into an engagement ring for his bride-to-be. They had two sons, John and Jim, each of whom upon their engagement would be given a diamond for their own future brides.
A few weeks later, Jim proposed.
Jim asked his parents to have the diamond set in a ring and mailed to Amsterdam. And when he slipped it onto Deborah’s finger, it came to represent hope and heritage, connection and family, and the promise of a new life and enduring love.
After the motorcycle accident, as Deborah’s body began to heal, she couldn’t stop thinking about the diamond. It had been in Jim’s family for nearly 100 years and on her own finger every single day for thirty-two years. Now it seemed hopelessly lost.
She told her husband, “I can’t stand the thought of that diamond getting sealed in blacktop, shattered by a steamroller, or embedded in someone’s tire.”
Jim just held her.
That evening Jim sent an email to members of the Church of the Holy Spirit, where he had served as pastor for twenty years. The next morning a search party of several dozen people—with the help of the Highway Patrol redirecting traffic—combed the highway with rakes. Deborah, at home in bed, prayed fervently that the diamond would be found. It wasn’t.
The next week, Deborah’s brother suggested looking for the diamond using leaf blowers. Excited, another friend added, “I’ve got a generator and four Shop-Vacs!” Soon their innovative plan took shape, and a half dozen men convinced the Highway Patrol to again redirect traffic on the busy thoroughfare while they vacuumed the highway, roadside, and median, collecting six heavy trash bags filled with grass, dirt, and debris.
Friends joined Deborah to search through it all. To make the tedious job more fun—and to lift Deborah’s spirits—they all wore mining hats. But the diamond was nowhere to be found.
One morning in October a woman who attended their church dropped in to see Deborah. Every winter Chris traveled south to avoid the harsh Maine winters, and she had come to say good-bye until the spring. Before she left, she held Deborah’s hand, looked into her eyes, and said, “Deborah, God told me you’re going to find that diamond.”
Deborah smiled politely. Chris, she thought, I’m trying to let it go. Don’t give me false hope.
On the twenty-ninth day after the accident, Jim talked Deborah into going for a drive. After a month in bed, she was starting to feel depressed, and he knew she needed to get out of the house. She made it to the car with the help of her husband and a cane. In the car, she returned a long-overdue call to her sister. They were chatting when Deborah realized they were about to pass the accident site.
“I’ve got to go,” Deborah told her sister excitedly. “We’re about to pass the place where we had the accident, and I want to take a quick look for my diamond.”
Jim groaned. How could he have been so insensitive? How could he have forgotten they would pass here? The last thing Deborah needed was the emotional and physical strain of hobbling up and down the busy roadside looking in vain for her precious stone.
But Deborah was already getting off the phone.
“Look for something sparkling!” Deborah’s sister said cheerfully before hanging up.
Jim pulled to the side of the highway and stopped the car. The car shook as an 18-wheeler rumbled by, too close for comfort. Deborah was beginning to regret her decision.
Jim scanned the roadside. “This isn’t the place,” he said, pulling back into traffic. He drove another mile or so then pulled over again. Deborah opened her door. Using her cane to stand, she looked around at the endless sea of grass and felt a wave of discouragement. It seemed so hopeless. She was embarrassed that she had asked friends and family—and even total strangers—to come here and search. What a futile mission! She walked slowly twenty feet behind the car, barely looking. What was the point? Was this even the right spot? She didn’t know, and Jim wasn’t sure either.
She turned back toward the car. Suddenly she saw the numbers “332” spray-painted on the highway. She had seen those numbers on the police report. They must be near the right spot after all.
“Jim, this is the place. I have to look just a few more feet. . . .” Deborah was trying hard not to cry. A cornea infection in one eye made it difficult to see anyway; tears would simply make her vision worse.
Jim said firmly, “Deborah, this is going to upset you. Get back in the car.”
Deborah let the tears roll. Her hand on the door handle, she sank to her knees to try to compose herself. She let out a prayer, “Please, God . . .”
Looking down, she saw some trash, a dirty piece of paper, on the grass in front of her. Reaching over, she looked under the paper. Beneath it was a smashed soda can with the word SPARKLING legible on its flattened surface. Look for something sparkling! Beneath the can was some loose dirt and what appeared to be a pin-sized flake of mica. Deborah picked at the mica, but it didn’t move. Brushing more dirt away, she realized whatever it was had some bulk to it.
Picking it up, she held it toward Jim. Deborah couldn’t see through her healing eye and tears. “Is this . . . is this my diamond?” she finally managed to ask.
Jim began to laugh and laugh, clapping his hands with delight. “It’s your diamond!”
There’s a parable in the Bible about a woman who loses a gold coin from her dowry. In those days, without a dowry a woman could not marry. It was their culture’s version of an engagement ring, a symbol of promise. The woman in the parable swept the corners of her house looking for that coin. She would not stop looking until she found it.
Deborah had always felt that she was like that lost coin and that God had searched tenaciously for her, just as he does for all of us. He never gives up on us. The parable paints a picture of God’s relentless pursuit of us, even when we feel lost.
Today Deborah says her story isn’t about a precious gem but about the precious relationship God wants to have with his children. It’s about a good God who gives good things to those he loves. And most of all, it’s about a God who cares about precious things lost, and longs to show each and every one of us the way back home.