Bless our hearts, 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.
In the years before babies started coming and our lives got so full that volunteering for a whole weekend away became impossible, we loved the chance to serve by speaking with other engaged couples.
Later I would come to know the need for both peers and mentors on any vocational journey. We need the companionship of peers walking a few paces ahead on the path and the wisdom of those who know this trail well, having traveled it for years. For this reason, the Engaged Encounter retreats always included a younger couple and an older couple, to offer a variety of experiences and perspectives on marriage.
We were bright-eyed and 25 years young, God bless us, besotted with each other. We must have studied our vows before we spoke them to each other, at least I want to hope we did. But 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 particular marriage, I believe we chose the right partner. Yes, we worked hard to survive what could have broken us. But all along 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.
From the beginning, God has been the third partner in our union, the sacred silent presence moving between us. In hard seasons that threatened to pull us apart, I knew that God was the only thing keeping us going. This is the power of sacraments as a vessel of God’s grace. 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.
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. The trinity of marriage taught me that every love — in families and between friends — has God as its creator and sustainer.
Whenever the demands of love test our limits, the third partner of any relationship is already 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, my parents, my siblings and my 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. Her latest book is “Living Easter: 50 Days to Practice Resurrection.”
