In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Yellow.”

It is not lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

As fate would have it, the course of my love life suddenly went off on a tangent and collided with your journey’s curve at a precise time. That very moment, when my path unexpectedly touches with yours, was meant to be our point of tangency – our inflection point.

It was no coincidence. We were destined to meet.

“Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

That was our vow of consent, the act of will by which we give ourselves to each other, during our solemn wedding ceremony in December.

It seemed like yesterday. But, no! It has been twenty-six momentous years of highs and lows, a seemingly roller coaster moment of joy-disappointment-happiness-sorrow, that we shared with our four children.

Coupled with prayers, it is friendship, I believe, that has kept our love alive all these years.

It was friendship that kept us stronger when the honeymoon stage dimly faded and when our hearts seemed to have forgotten the fiery embers of romance. When our personal spaces seemed overwhelming, due to money or lack thereof, friendship helped us overcome our shortcomings and seemingly unending flaws. When parenting woes kept us awake until the early morning dawn, it was our friendship that made us held on to each other until both of our sobs died down.

And this gold ring explicitly portrays what words can’t.

Unadorned but timeless, this gold ring reminds us of a hope and a prayer that our love will be without end. It is an aide-mémoire of the vow that we made to each other and of the promise that God has made to the both of us.

Happy 26th anniversary of love and friendship, my dear Maxim! I thank God for the gift of inflection points.

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