We walk into our marriages as two young people enamored with love and barely comfortable with who we are as individuals. We are called not to walk as two but as one. Like two random pieces of a puzzle we try to fit together, turning different edges to one another trying to find or make a fit.

Sometimes we manage to find a partial fit that seems to work for a while. Then the table shakes or the mysterious hands of chaos rip the pieces apart. The one has become two again and time is either their friend or enemy.

The two pieces try again, though perhaps one is more determined than the other. Again the dance to find a fit becomes either the struggle of egos or the adventure of discovery. Days grow into months, which grow into years. The two pieces find that as they become more yielding in their shape, the two stay as one better and longer. As one yields the other follows suit.

Comfort is found in the simple knowledge that they are a part of the other. Until one day the two pieces suddenly find they are the perfect fit. They've grown so close that their individual shapes are still discernible but no longer paramount.

And because they no longer see only themselves but the other first, they notice the third piece of the puzzle—a stronger, bigger piece—has been there all along, helping the two pieces to fit as much as they would allow him and holding them together when they desired it least.

In his presence the two pieces find their best fit because they are connected through him, the one designed to hold all of us together in a perfect picture of his greater love.

Praying, believing and puzzling,
Dineen