I suppose I saw the ring when we were shopping for Christmas, we didn't usually go to the department store very often. It was made out of gold, set with two lustrous pearls, and I thought it was lovely! I always liked beautiful, feminine things, and I really wanted that ring, but it cost $17.50, and there was no way I was going to get it.
That was the year I was in 5th grade. My teacher was Mrs. McKay, a good teacher even though she was strict and lots of the kids were scared of her. She made us work, and think, and I learned in her classroom. In the spring she gave us an English assignment that no one wanted to do. We had to write an essay describing how we could make a difference in Arizona, I think it had something to do with Statehood day, probably. Mrs. McKay graded our papers, then she entered them into a state wide contest. I don't remember working particularly hard on my essay, it was just another assignment, so I was really surprised when I received a letter and an award a month later, saying my essay had won first place. Wow! I couldn't hardly even remember what I wrote. The best part was the prize. With the letter was a check for $25.00! I was rich!
I knew immediately what I wanted to do with my money. As soon as she could, Mom drove me down to the department store on the other side of town, and I bought the pearl ring. I thought it made my hand look so beautiful! I wore the ring to church the next Sunday, and it made me feel very sophisticated and grown up.
I put the rest of the money, after paying my tithing, in my savings jar, and little by little I frittered it away. That was easy to do.
Around the corner from our house was a Circle K store. On Saturday afternoons Mom would let us walk down the street to Circle K to spend our allowance. We got $ .50 a week, if we did our chores and helped mom do the Saturday cleaning. Back in those days candy bars only cost a quarter, so even after paying .5 cents tithing, we still always had enough money to buy a Big Hunk, or Three Musketeers, or my favorite, a Chunky candy bar. Once in awhile, if we had enough money, we would even stop in at Circle K on our way home from school to buy some candy. It didn't take long for me to use up the rest of my prize money buying candy for myself and my brothers and sisters and friends. But after it was gone, I still wanted more.
Dad liked certs breath mints, and he always kept a roll of them in his coat pocket. When he came home from meetings we kids would beg for a certs, and he was happy to share with us. We figured out that if he wasn't home, and he wasn't wearing his suit, we could go into his bedroom, look in his pockets, and usually find a couple of left over certs. This satisfied us for awhile, but what about those days when we wanted candy and he was out wearing his suit? It didn't take us long to discover where he kept the unopened rolls. In the drawer of Mom and Dad's vanity, in their bedroom was a drawer. Mom called it Dad's junk drawer, and that's pretty much what was in it. Old keys, pens and pencils, paper clips and safety pins, rulers and erasers and thumb tacks and loose change and all kinds of other small items that got dropped into the drawer because it was easier to put them there than back where they really belonged.
It didn't seem like stealing to help myself to a certs from dad's pocket. He always gave them to us when we asked him for some. It didn't really feel like stealing when I went through the junk drawer, although I had a little funny feeling and always made sure the bedroom drawer was shut before I helped myself. It did feel like stealing when I picked up the first nickles and dimes from that drawer and slid them into my own pocket because I was out of money and wanted to go to Circle K to get a candy bar. I knew better, but I really didn't care. After all, it was just Dad's left over change. He had plenty more and he would never miss it.
And so my career as a thief began. Slowly to begin with. Just once a week, two dimes and a nickle, not enough for Dad to miss and certainly not enough to make me into a criminal. But candy bars taste good, and stealing becomes a habit, and it wasn't long before I was sneaking into the junk drawer a couple of times a week, and stopping by Circle K on my way home from school nearly every day. I knew it was wrong, but somehow I just couldn't stop.
Eventually, even a small amount of money will be missed. Dad began to wonder where his change was going, and Mom wasn't taking it, although she had a pretty good idea who was. I'll never forget the Saturday afternoon they called me into their bedroom to "have a talk." I came unsuspectingly, but when Mom shut the door behind us I suddenly got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was IN TROUBLE!
Dad started calmly, asking if I had any idea where the money from his drawer was going. "No," I answered innocently. All through my life my biggest fault has been avoiding contention. I hate having people unhappy, especially with me, and I would say just about anything to keep from getting in trouble. Even if it meant lying. But adding lying to stealing was just upping my level of sin that day, and it sure didn't help me much.
Dad and Mom both knew I was the thief, and Dad wasn't going to stand by and let me lie about it, too, so he launched into a half hour long lecture about honesty, stealing, lying, setting a bad example for my brothers and sisters, knowing better, doing what I knew I should do, and everything else he could think of to get me to own up to my sins and repent. I was a pretty hardened criminal by that time, though, and the first twenty or twenty-five minutes of lecture didn't do much to break me down. I just battened down the hatches and let the words come at me, knowing I'd have to endure the lecture until Dad ran out of steam, and then maybe I'd be off the hook.
It wasn't until Dad was all done lecturing and Mom took over that my armor got a chink in it and I began to feel sorry. She talked about repentance, and how it wasn't good enough to just feel sorry for doing something, (I had been saying I was sorry for about twenty minutes, hoping that would make the lecture shorter). She said I also had to make it better. Then she asked me how I thought I could make up for the money I had taken from dad. I didn't know. I didn't have any money to pay him back, that's why I had been taking the money in the first place. Then it hit me, I guess. I had stolen money from my father, I had broken a commandment, and I really did want to be forgiven. But I had to do something for that to happen. I had to make restitution. It wouldn't work if mom gave me the money, it wouldn't work if I saved up my allowance a little bit at a time, I needed to do something, myself, to make it better.
"I could give you my ring," I suggested finally. It was the only thing I owned that was really worth anything.
"Yes," Mom answered. There was a look of surprise in Dad's eyes, I think. The whole time he had been lecturing I hadn't really seemed to be listening. Now, I guess, I looked different. Like I understood.
And so I went to my bedroom, got my ring out of my jewelry box, and gave it to Mom and Dad. Maybe they intended to give it back to me some day, after I had learned my lesson, I don't know. Perhaps they did and I just don't remember it. Somehow the ring didn't mean that much to me anymore, it was just a thing. But the feeling of cleanliness, the feeling of peace, the sense that things were all right again, did mean something to me, something I have never forgotten. It's awfully good to be allowed to repent, and be forgiven.
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