Two years ago, when I was a new widow, Sundays were the most difficult day of every week. Apparently this isn’t uncommon for a woman who’s lost her husband, since he was the one she’d spent every Sunday with, from sharing a hymnal, to a brunch after church, through an afternoon nap.

In the beginning I couldn’t sit in a service without tears and usually had to make use of the two tissues in my pocket. Just seeing a couple seated side-by-side in the congregation was enough to produce a wave of distress. If the husband put his arm around his wife or took her hand, it was over for me. These simple gestures were poignant reminders of what I’d lost, and it took over a year to become sorrow-free in church again.

During this second year, however, attending church hasn’t been nearly as difficult. To the contrary, it’s been a blessing. This morning, though, without warning, something popped me back to that first year. All it took was seeing a man’s wedding band.

He was sitting in front of me and had his arm over the back of his daughter’s chair. His ring was identical to Nate’s with milgrain-style edging. I focused on that ring and thought of Nate’s wedding band hanging on a gold chain in my bedroom at home. It was on a necklace only because it had been taken off his hand before we buried him, but it was never meant to be jewelry for me.

Many young grooms opt out of wedding bands these days, but Nate was delighted to wear his. The day in 1969 when I put it on his finger was, he told me, one of his lifetime highlights. He was glad to display his ring as a sign that he was married and never tired of talking about his family.

No marriage is without its difficult places, though. Often couples are taken by surprise with the tough stuff that comes along: career disappointments, accidents, bone-deep fatigue, physical handicaps, parenting challenges, unexpected deaths, money shortages, severe illness. Any one of these can swamp a couple.

God explained his purpose for marriage when he said it wasn’t good for people to spend too much time alone, but marriage isn’t always easy. His idea was that there be two people bonded in a show of togetherness that could defend their union against any common enemy, no matter what it was. In other words, “Whatever has threatened you has threatened me, too, and we’ll fight it together.” As Mom used to say, shared burdens are cut in half.

This morning, my glimpse of a stranger’s wedding band brought a jumble of thoughts as I sat in church missing Nate. But tears didn’t factor in. While staring at that familiar-looking wedding ring, I felt God prompting me toward gratitude, because Nate had been the one who saw to it that we made it through even the hard times.

“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12a)