Parable of the Diamond Ring

Parable of the Diamond ring is a delightful story from my own life about discovering your true worth and value!  An engagement, a diamond ring and April Fool’s Day combine into a silly yet powerful narrative of knowing we are enough.  Do you hold your own certificate of authenticity?

I love to share a funny experience that has so many implications toward in teaching how we can love ourselves more wholly. Over 20 years ago, my sweet husband proposed to me. We had talked about getting married, we went to the jeweler, we chose the perfect diamond ring. It was a beautiful princess cut diamond. It was a really high quality diamond. And we put a lot of thought and effort in our design efforts and chose the perfect ring.

The Parable of the Diamond Ring

My husband proposed and we got engaged the evening of March 31st. Now this is over 20 years ago. it was way before Instagram or Facebook. Because we couldn’t just declare to the whole world that evening that you were engaged, we had to wait until the next day, which was April 1st to tell people that we were engaged.

You guessed it! We announced our engagement on none other than April fool’s day. Given the circumstances, not very many people believed us that we were engaged! This one experience sticks out in my mind so quickly. And I think it teaches us so much about knowing our worth and how important it is that we truly love ourselves and know who we are.

So we were sitting at my husband’s apartment and right next door, there was an apartment of girls. The whole group of girls came over and we got to share with them our good news that we were engaged, and it was so fun to be able to tell people that we were engaged and we had decided to get money. I was showing off my beautiful ring that had a gorgeous diamond, and we were able to celebrate with brain’s roommates and, and announce our engagement to this group of girls.

So they all owed an awed over my ring. Then as they were leaving the apartment. Something crazy happened, you know, when you’re in a group and the first person leaves the room, but the door’s not quite shut. Then the first person thinks they’re well out of earshot and yet the last person hasn’t left the apartment yet.

And you get to hear what the first person’s observations are. Oh yes. You guessed it. We heard overheard this girl. “Oh, you can totally tell that that ring is fake.” Oh yes. She totally thought that my brand new carefully designed high quality diamond ring was fake. And of course my first reaction was I can’t believe she thinks my ring is fake.

And then I thought, you know, I have a certificate of authenticity. I know that my diamond is a high quality diamond, I know exactly what it’s worth. We have an appraisal, I spent all this time designing the beautiful engagement ring of my dreams, and I didn’t necessarily need her to know that my diamond was.

What do we learn?

So a couple of things that I take away from this parable of the diamond ring is that people don’t always realize the value of things here. I had a beautiful diamond and it was worth a lot of money and it had a certificate of authenticity attached to it. And yet. This girl, given the circumstances that it was April fool’s day and other things that, and maybe my diamond was just extra shiny. For whatever reason, she didn’t believe in the value of my diamond and I didn’t necessarily need her to.

We all know that diamonds are one of the most valuable stones on the earth, but they can be mistaken for glass or a cubic zirconium. And some people just don’t even prefer diamonds. What if this girl was just totally wrong about my diamond, which in this case she was, I just love how this all played out because given the circumstances, this girl made an assumption about the worth of my ring with the knowledge that she had.

Was it wrong? Yeah, it was. But do I necessarily need her to know the worth of my ring? Absolutely not. Our worth is inherent, you brought it with you – it is fixed and unchangeable. We are worthy and we came with that and it doesn’t change whether she recognized the worth of my ring or not. It didn’t change the value of my.

Do you Know Your Worth?

So I want you to just take a minute to ponder about that. People don’t always know the value of us. We need to know our inherent value. And some people will say, “oh, she’s totally fake or worthless”. And they just won’t understand the value that we hold. We have a certificate of authenticity. We know that we are lovable and valuable and that our worth is incredible.

And some people just simply won’t like diamonds, they’ll prefer Ruby’s instead. Not everyone will like us and that’s okay. We don’t need anyone else’s approval or for them to like us in order to truly love ourselves. What it does say. It says something about that person’s preference, whether they like diamonds or rubies or whether they just misunderstand the circumstances.

It was April fools. Maybe there’s other circumstances in our lives where other people just misunderstand that our worth is great. And what if they are just totally wrong? That is kind of a silly story that I’ve taken from my life and turned it into the parable of the diamond ring. But it has so many parallels with discovering that we are enough, that we are worthy, that we are whole, we are complete that we are perfectly imperfect and that we have value.

Understanding Your Own Value and Worth

Just because we’re here that innately, we hold that value. And we are the ones that have to know that we are the ones that have our certificate of authenticity, that we are a divine soul. So I want you to really work on that belief, let that desire to believe that you are enough work within you and let it flourish, give it a place to grow because really it’s your job to love.

So you need to do that and we don’t need anyone else to do that for us. That’s a gift. A beautiful, unimaginable gift that we can give to ourselves is to know our worth and our value and that it never changes. And that we can love ourselves despite our imperfections and because of our imperfections. So I want you to think about that today as you go throughout your day:

That is the parable of the diamond ring! Do you truly know your value and your worth? It’s not based on what anyone else says or believes about you. It’s all based in what, you know, deep down to be true that you are exactly who you should be. You’re perfect, whole, complete! You truly are!