The Circle of Love

Most of us know the saying about the wedding ring being a circle because it represents a love with no end.
It just keeps going and going.

My engagement ring was a princess cut, it was a size six.
Needless to say, it's not that size anymore.

Mark hid my ring in a can of Pringles, as he knew that's where I would most likely find it and he was right.

I was so excited, just like you were when you got yours.

You know how you go in the bathroom and look in the mirror and act like you are fixing your hair or moving your hand a certain way just so you can see how it sparkles or how you sort of lay your fingers out straight on the steering wheel just so the sun will catch it?

I don't have my first wedding rings any longer.

My hands sometimes swell and the night before the house burned I had taken them off and put them in the kitchen cabinet, right up in the corner where I always put them when I had to take them off.

When the house burned, the kitchen fell into the cellar and we never did find my rings.

Now I don't know why, but I'm not an overly sentimental person, I mean I didn't want to lose them, but it didn't tear me up, my marriage wasn't in those rings.

We didn't replace them right away, but I do have another set now.

Mark never takes his ring off, the time he did have it off they had to cut it off at the hospital.
A hydraulic hose busted and hurt his finger.

His ring had worn a groove in his finger, the new one he got has done the same thing.

Once when I was young I was in a classroom setting with two other young women, both of them,were married.

One of them had a  nice sized engagement ring, the stone was really pretty.
The other one had a very tiny one, it was almost more like diamond dust.

I noticed them looking at each others rings. Both ladies seemed to want to hide their rings, the one with the larger diamond, turned hers so the diamond was underneath, and the one with the smaller diamond seemed to keep turning her hand a certain way as we worked so that her ring wasn't as noticeable.

I've thought about that a lot over the years.

I thought how the one lady seemed to feel less than, or embarrassed that she didn't have a ring like the other lady, and the lady with the big ring, appeared to feel embarrassed that she had a big ring and wanted to hide it.

 I think about people who don't wear wedding rings at all, the Amish don't and I know there are others who don't as well.

Lots of men don't wear wedding rings because it's dangerous for them, depending on the kind of work they do there's a fear of getting the ring caught on something and losing a finger.

All of that stuff brings us back around to the meaning of the ring, it's a circle and it's a symbol of a love without end.

But you don't have to have the ring to live the symbol.

If you have a small ring, be content, if you have a big ring don't be proud, but don't be ashamed, just be normal and if you don't wear wedding rings, you just might be the luckiest one, no hiding your hands for any reason.

But, if you do wear rings,  take care of them make them sparkle, go in the bathroom and hold your hand up and pretend to fix your hair and really look at them again, think back to how excited you were when you got them.

Think about what they mean, think about the man who gave them to you.

Sometimes shining our rings up and holding our hands out to look at the sparkle is all we need to feel like a new bride again.

It's why a circle works so well, sometimes we are at different parts of the circle of marriage but we are always in the circle and we are always going to a new part of the circle but since it's a circle it's sort of like we've been there before, only each time we pass by it, it's sweeter than it was the time before.