Mayday, mayday

Today’s our first wedding anniversary. Looking back on the year, I’m honestly a bit astonished – where did the time go? Life carries on, and it’s only on milestone days you stop to think about where it’s taking you.

We got married on May first. And we privately joked that it seemed appropriate to get married on Mayday – help, help, I’m getting married!

I read through our wedding service again this morning – although I/we wrote it, I also got the vicar to send us a copy of the ceremony after he rewrote it to his own words, so I had a record of the final product – and had a browse through the photo album. And gave Tobermory his present – a book and some UK chocolate I found in the import section at the supermarket yesterday. He’s curled up in bed reading it and eating Cadbury Fingers, which is a sensible decision – the weather today is utterly foul.

We both bought wedding rings, but Tobes wasn’t sure he’d want to wear one. That was fair enough – I wanted him to own one, but I don’t think I have any right to insist someone else wears a piece of jewellery they’re not comfortable in. And yet, they’re a powerful symbol.

Here we often think about the wedding rings being perfect circles, going on and on with no end. But the rings also have a beginning. Ore is melted in a furnace at a over a thousand degrees. Metal is alloyed, poured into a mold, cooled and painstakingly polished. Something beautiful is made from raw elements.

Love can follow a similar process. It may be hard work. It comes from humble beginnings, made by imperfect beings. It’s the process of making something beautiful where there was once unrefined separation.

So as you wear these rings, don’t think of them simply as a material tie, a lock that binds you together, but as symbols of the work you have put in and will continue to put into your marriage, being worn as a sign of love and faithfulness.

Tobermory wears his ring, just about all the time. He takes it off for things like dishes, or if he’s working on a computer. Things like that. He’s gone out without it a few times, and complained that his hands feel naked. I think that might just be my happiest discovery this year.

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