Cleaning my Wedding Ring

Oh, sure, I've cleaned it hundreds of times. But as I stood in my bathroom this morning, something felt different as I scrubbed my wedding ring.

I've looked at my ring often and thought how beautiful it was. I thought about how much time Josh spent picking it out; How much thought he must have put in it. I remember back to the night when I first saw it, there in that little white box that still sits on my dresser. I've noticed the one, tiny flaw in one of the diamonds, that to most people would be an issue, but as I stood there looking at that flaw today, I realized this was much more than an imperfect diamond ring. This truly symbolized my marriage.

 "Well, that's what a wedding ring is for, right?"

Of course, but it never struck me that way until today. I had always seen the band as a symbol to show everyone that this person was committed, off the market.

This last year has been one of the most draining, heartbreaking years of our marriage. There have been a lot of family changes, and it's been rough. We were never at a breaking point, but recently, we sat down and decided to re-evaluate priorities. It's so easy to slip into worries, both individually and as a family, and we hadn't checked in with each other in months. It's a slippery slope, folks, and we refuse to slide.

With this being a fresh observation, I was thinking about this last week's event while scrubbing away. As I looked at that flawed diamond, I realized that it was a reminder that all marriages are flawed. But that doesn't detract from this beautiful ring and what it represents. A ring is a circle. The circle can represent so many dynamics of a family- life, children, cycles. It's so small, but it takes a lot of pressure to bend it. But even then, it's only bent, not broken.

This time, I wasn't just polishing my ring, I was polishing the year's worth of guilt, resentment, anger, and loss from my marriage. As I looked at my fresh clean ring, I could see where the white gold was flaking off to show the gold underneath, and of course that one diamond.  I knew it was vulnerable to the same things that tarnished it before.

It showed me that there is some damage that can never be undone, but that's all part of what makes my ring, MY ring. It shows the bumps in the road that has made it what it is. I'm grateful to be able to see those vulnerable places so I can remember to take better care of it, just as I should have been doing with my marriage.

From now on I will be cleaning my ring more often and remembering what makes it my ring- the road it's traveled, the damage it's been through, and how solid it still is.

-Heather