The Ring
Our front door has been sticking recently, so Micah took some time this weekend to repair it. As he was working, he asked me to come and hold the deadbolt in place for him while he screwed it back together. I stood holding the door, watching him work, and noticed suddenly how shiny his wedding ring looked. In fact, it looked like a new, polished white gold ring, and barely looked at all like the ring we bought him years ago.
The ring we bought a few months before our wedding, we felt, was perfect. It was simple, classic, elegant. It was white gold with a wonderful "brushed," matte finish. We loved it the moment we saw it.
In the first years after we got married, as he would work on projects or play sports, we would notice nicks and scratches in the finish. Small lines that appeared shiny compared to the rest of the matte finish. From time to time in those first years, he would take it back to the jeweler to have it re-polished, to restore it to the original brushed look. We did our best to minimize the scratches in its surface.
As the years went on and we added kids and moved away, we noticed those nicks less and less. We weren't preoccupied with keeping the ring in its original condition; to be honest, we didn't pay much attention to the way it looked at all. Often as I held his hand, I would run my fingers over his ring and smile. The kids would ask to try it on, and laugh as they watched it hang loosely from their thumbs. He would take it off, hold it up for me, and place it on his other hand--our unspoken cue that he needed to remember to tell me something later. But as far as the finish on the ring, it didn't occupy much of my thought space at all.
Until today. As I looked down at it while he worked, I realized that the ring on his finger today bears very little resemblance to the ring I placed on that finger almost thirteen years ago. No part of it is matte now. The carefully-made brushed finish has worn off. One by one, scratches have revealed the metal beneath the finish. As I've run my fingers over it, as the kids have touched it, as he's switched it to other fingers in anticipation of conversations, that original surface has been polished off. Bit by bit, over the many years, life has buffed his ring and made it into something new, something different, something beautiful in a way that only happens over time, through use and experience and some scratches.
It made me think. How have we changed in these intervening years? How much have the years scratched and buffed and polished us? How much resemblance do we bear to the people who stood at the front of the church, placing store-perfect rings on each other's fingers?
By the grace of God, I can honestly say, "Not much." The love we shared back then was beautiful in its own way--simple, elegant, and surface-deep. Much like the original finish on Micah's ring. But the years have scratched and bumped and worn us deeper into that surface. We've been buffed and polished by each other and because of each other. It hasn't always been easy. Scratches and bumps never come without some pain. But as the layers have been rubbed off, year by year, what they've revealed in us, in our marriage, is a love that looks like something far more beautiful and precious, and far less tenuous than that brushed, matte love we professed on our wedding day. This love is a love that has stood the test of time and trials, that's been shaped and changed by life--that's been polished by it all. It's a love that's refined, year by year, and made not only more shiny, but more reflective.
I loved his ring back then. But I wouldn't trade it for the shiny, brilliant ring on his finger today--or the love it represents--for anything in the world.
