With This Ring

Driving down the country road, I look down at my hand gripping the wheel, and it's still there.  The ring.  The diamond glints in the early morning sun.  Did I think it wouldn't be there?  Nearly seven months later, I'm still surprised to see it at times, still amazed by what encircles my finger.  I waited so long for it to be there.  As much as I can't wait to be married---and as much as I'm certain I'll be married for years and years, into the long, tired days of old age---I still hope that the sight of that ring will never be commonplace.  That I will always look at it in awe.

It isn't the diamond or the white gold.  Nor the etchwork.  Not even the 1920's style I love so much.  All I care about is the meaning it holds.  The promise it keeps.

My eyes dart back to the road, to the vast stretch of green fields beside it, themselves full of promise.  The swamp rises ahead; the cypress trees loom large.  A flock of dark winged birds press themselves between me and the sun.

What great vistas does the future hold for my love and I?  What twists and turns, what bends in the road?  I know that great promise can also be tested by great challenges.  Before the ring---before this man and his love---I might have begun to gasp right there in the middle of nowhere, just me, the fields, and the swamp, birds and gators and highway signs.  But now it is different.

God walks beside us.  In countless ways, He shows us that every day.  No matter what we face, God will be there.  His love, the love we share that came from Him.  I believe in both those things.  They are greater than I am.

I curl my fingers around the steering wheel and feel that ring, without beginning or end, press into my flesh.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
Revelations 22:13