Sometimes, at a bridal shower, a lovely small notebook is passed around for guests to write marital advice for the bride-to-be. I remember the occasion of my niece’s shower, and I wrote something short but what I believed to be helpful and true: “Keep God at the center.”
Fifty-three years into my own marriage, I find myself quite often saying to my husband, “I am so thankful we have kept our faith!” As in any decades-long marriage, our promises of “good times and bad, sickness and health” have been lived into and tested. There were so many times that our only recourse was to turn to the Lord and trust that he was working in whatever challenge confronted us.
Truly, it is the Lord who has held this messy, very human endeavor together and has slowly, and painstakingly, built us into his dwelling place.
Perhaps St. Paul is telling the Ephesians and us: Trust the process!