When my husband and I had been married all of three months, we signed up to become a team couple with our local Engaged Encounter program. We had enjoyed the retreat that we took as a requirement of our pre-Cana preparation, surprised to find it fun and helpful, not the drudgery we’d expected.
We were bright-eyed, 25 years young and besotted with each other. How could we have known at the start what it would mean to stay together in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse?
Life doled out both sides, as life always does. We got heaps of joy and heaps of grief. We lost our way along the way. We needed peers and mentors, old and young, to help us keep going. We needed to remember we were never alone, even (and especially) in the hardest parts.
This is the gift of every sacrament. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse, God stays with us. Yes, in our marriage, I believe we chose the right partner. Yes, we worked hard to survive what could have broken us. But it was grace that held us. The wonder that when two became one, we were always three: the trinity of a marriage made in Love.
God is the glue that holds us together, that helps repair the broken parts. God is the grace that surprises us, the laughter through tears, the reconciliation after pain, the awe of discovering someone anew after decades spent by their side.
Always, God loves with us
Twenty years later, I still hesitate to write about marriage. I have walked with friends through separation and divorce. I know there is no simple formula for the life God calls each of us to live. But what marriage has taught me beyond a shadow of a doubt is one simple truth: God loves with us.
Not only as a spouse, but as a parent, sibling, child and friend, I have been able to love most deeply when I remember that God is part of every relationship.
Whenever the demands of love test our limits, our third partner is waiting to step in and shape whatever comes next. What relief to accept that we cannot make it on our own. Through marriage, I have come to know God in my love for my children, parents, siblings and friends. The mystery of love is wider than we know, for the Trinity gives the model. We need each other, and we need God most of all.
Laura Kelly Fanucci is an author, speaker and founder of Mothering Spirit.