This is my 100th post! I’m excited! Thanks to all my readers!

Also, thanks to all of you who participated in my survey to name our kitten. Unfortunately, at the end of the survey we had a three-way tie. To be honest, I’d been secretly pulling for Atticus all along. But yesterday this little kitten showed his wild side. Turns out he’s more like Mowgli than the stately Atticus Finch or the eccentric Sherlock Holmes. So DH and I consulted and have officially settled on Kipling.

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“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12

On the inside of a thin band of white gold, if you look closely, you can see “Ecc. 4:12.” It’s what we chose to remind us about who was part of this marriage. A marriage, done right, seems to bring many people together. Not just husband and wife, but also his family and hers. And tying together the man and woman into that cord of three strands is God. Without that, the two together may be stronger than one, but more easily torn apart or unraveled than three.

It’s funny how God teaches us things in stages. Like if he told us the whole story all at once we couldn’t handle it or couldn’t absorb everything. And so on that day in December nearly six years ago when we said “I Do,” we knew we were pledging to be together for the long haul. And we knew we needed God to hold these two rebellious souls in tandem in this fallen world.

And we married. With the ignorance of what life would bring or where we would be led. But we did it. And we vowed that whatever it was, wherever we were, we’d be there together. Living, loving, lifting up, and laughing together.

As it turns out, this means a lot of crying together. A lot of time on our knees together. A lot of pleading with God and calling out for answers together.

It’s meant going from our homes to DC and then here to Houston. It’s meant traveling and seeing what we could of the world. And it’s meant wishing and wanting and dreaming of a future together that may or may not be the future we’re called to.

And it’s meant learning, together, the importance of that third strand. The all-encompassing and absolutely vital need we both have for God to be included in our together. For a cord of three strands? It’s not easily broken.

TIME

Every Friday, Lisa-Jo Baker provides a prompt for “Five-Minute Friday“: Write for five minutes only–no editing, no rewriting. This week’s prompt is “Together.”