This month marks 18 years since I received my engagement ring and just today I found myself fangirling at it like I did when it was first slipped on my finger. The light hits it just right as I go about my daily tasks, and it catches my eye.

I do not believe those glimpses are just because it is beautiful.

I believe it is something much more than that.

I think they are a reminder.

This lump of coal and melted band of minerals has been through so much with me. I have been refined in that 18 years every bit as much as it was prior to being placed in the jeweler’s case. I am thankful for that refining time because, while painful, it has made me into something of so much more value with each trial. Oh, and the one who gave me this ring… he has been there through it all. He has stood with me in the storm, broad shoulders carrying the load and being leaned upon. He has gone to bat. He has knelt by the bed. He has sat (and slept) in more hard plastic chairs in more doctor’s offices and hospitals than I care to mention specifically.

All that life and trial and this old gal and this old ring are just getting started.

How do you even realize in your twenties what you are signing up for when you accept that ring, or when you give it? How do you fathom creating lives- watering and feeding those souls for the rest of yours? How do you even comprehend that a life that was once 100% yours, now becomes 100% someone else’s, and their’s, yours?

I do not know. I sure could not explain it.

Somehow, with effort in the drawing near each day, it happens.

The bowing of heads, the soaking in the Son, and the crying of tears... somehow, that all makes your heart grow limbs and wrap right around the one you choose to carve out a life with.

Do not ever let someone tell you love comes easily. It does not. It is full of easy and full of wonderful, friends. But make no mistake that in loving someone you also share their pain and their sorrow. You share their hard and their trial. You share their pressure and you share their disease- even if from a different body, you are still neck deep in it because your heart and those limbs are wrapped right around it.

There are highs and lows. There are the easy times and the hard times. There are good and bad days.

But through it all there is that diamond as a symbol of what beauty can come, if we can stand the pressure, and if we can just hold on while the refining fires burn out the bad and leave behind the pure.

And isn’t that what true love looks like? For ourselves, for others, and most importantly from God? You hold hard and fast. You cling to each other and the cross. True love is not always pretty. It can be hard, so hard. It can be messy. It can be a downright battle, but it is worth the effort because it is so very beautiful. And friend, when you find the one that God made for you and you build that life together, your diamond only shines half as bright as the two of you.