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I find dimes all the time. No, really. "So what?" you may ask. Yeah, that's what I said until it got to be a little less like coincidence and more like there was some kind of message I was supposed to be picking up on. I started 'finding dimes' my junior year of college and the dime sightings just haven't stopped. From couch cushions to window ledges, bowling alleys to recording studios, from a sidewalk in a Chicago suburb to a dirt road in Guatemala, I'll wager I've found lone dimes on at least 200 different occasions. In fact, I just picked one up in the Chicago airport underneath a vacant chair in the row across from where I was sitting. It is as if someone is leaving a trail for me, but I don't know what it means or to where it leads. Anyone who is close to me knows all about my dime findings, and most people just laugh because they secretly think I'm crazy when I tell them about my growing collection. Nevertheless, stumbling upon this small silver coinage has become a regular occurrence in my life, and I can't help but wonder why.

Now don't get me wrong here, I am far from the superstitious type. But after something as random as finding dimes somehow becomes habitual (not because I'm looking for them but because they pretty much throw themselves at me), I have to at least try and figure out what in the world of dimes is going on. So, one day a few years back while I was driving from point A to point B with an hour in between, I started thinking about dimes. Maybe I'm a distant relative of Franklin Roosevelt? Nah. What would that matter anyway? So then I started pondering the number 10. Ten what? Ten kids? Whoa. I want a lot of children but I doubt we'll hit the double digits. Ten years until...what? This was getting me nowhere. So then I began to think about the actual word, 'dime.' Dime rhymes with time. But it couldn't bet THAT complicated, right? Is this some kind of riddle? After about 40 minutes of this, it hit me. Dime is spelled d-i-m-e. If you split that word in half you get di me. So for one reason or another, I came to the conclusion that the Lord was telling me, every time I discovered a dime, to 'die to me.' Now that might not be it at all, but it's Biblical, and I can't imagine anything but good coming out of remembering to die to myself every time I stumbled across Franklin Roosevelt's silver face. So until further notice, my dimes will serve to remind me of Matthew 16:24 when Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."