Promise of Three.

Are you thinking of getting married or renewing your wedding vows? If you are to be married soon, did you ever stop and ask yourself why you want to be married?

I cannot sugarcoat this message:  Marriage is not an institution you should enter into lightly.

Think about your job (employment) in comparison to your marriage. You take your job seriously, because hopefully you enjoy the work you do. Not only does your job help you and others around you, but it also provides a paycheck, so it’s easy to understand why you go to work every day, and why it is important to take your job seriously. Yet a marriage is so much more valuable than any paid job; in fact, your relationship with your spouse is the most important and valuable “job” you will ever do. So let’s take a look at why this is true.

What is Most Valuable to You?

Do you value your word? Do you value the life of the one to whom you are committing? Do you value your relationship with God? I encourage you to think about all these questions and then ask yourself, “What do I value?”

These questions will lead us to the ultimate question:  Do we value the promises we make in our wedding vows? These are promises we make not only to ourselves, but to our spouse, in front of people we love, and most importantly, to the very creator of the marriage covenant:  Our Maker!

This ring is designed to be a constant reminder of the Biblical "promise of three." First, marriage is a promise we willingly make to ourselves without anyone forcing us to do so. Second, it’s a promise we make to someone we love. And finally, and most importantly, it is a promise that we make in the presence of the highest witness of any promise:  our omnipresent Creator, who is with us always.

God himself inspired me to create the design of this ring. He inspired me to think of what He values in His heart for my own marriage along with my knowledge of His deep desire for your marriage as well.

But the One who can best help you in your marriage is the one who sees your personal situation and knows your heart. We do not go through this life alone and left to our own devices. God can first create a clean heart in us, and can then lead us to make the best choices about our own promises. In His Word, we can find the answer to every single thing we could ever need to know about marriage, from how to always choose to love each other and put each other first, to advice about our how we should view our sex lives in the intimacy of a marriage relationship. Best of all, He has given us the Holy Spirit to be the best guide and teacher for our lives — even for what we think we cannot ask for.

What I Value

On my own wedding day, I was really thinking more about my future than about my present. I know this probably seems different than most brides on their wedding day, but it is because I was so sure of what I wanted:  I wanted nothing more than to be with my best friend and to be his partner in life FOREVER — "until death do us part.” On that day, when the service came to the very moment when I said, “I do,” it was a vow not just on Earth but in heaven as well. It was at this point that I realized what I really valued.

• I valued the day I came to God and asked Him if I could marry the man that I was madly in love with and who I deeply desired to be with forever.

• I valued the promise I was making with my own words to be at my husband’s side during the good and bad, in health and in sickness, in abundance and poverty. Even though on that day I was just repeating the words, I still value those promises today.

• I valued the person to whom I was saying these words, and I valued that I was saying these words in front of our friends and family — even those who were no longer with us.

Back then it was only my word that I was valuing. Today, at this moment, it is still my word, but I am also living my word and honoring my word for all who heard me — those in the seen and unseen world, flawed and imperfect humans, and a perfect, unbreakable and unshakeable God.

I honor my husband as much as I can, and I realize it is not by my strength but His grace giving me the strength to do so. As I choose to love, He rewards my small effort in His big ways according to His plan in my life. God’s Word tells us that “a cord of three strands is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). As my husband and I live in relationship with God at the center of our marriage, we form a cord of three strands.

Roses and Thorns

Life and marriage are not strolls through a rose garden.  Before your start your path, remember that roses are not just things of beauty; they also have thorns. But as you learn to walk together through life, you will learn how to weather the difficulties that come your way, and will know that there is a time for everything, and you will never be always in the midst of roses or thorns; that every present circumstance is just the situation at that time.

And so, to my dear friend who is thinking about marriage or renewing your vows, I come to you in the name of the one who is Love. One of the most tangible expressions of love in this life is to join yourselves in a marriage covenant with the one you love better than all others. It pleases Him to see the love you have for each other.

He wants us to learn to LOVE AS HE DOES, and marriage is the best example of this since we choose to love this person with whom we join ourselves together. He chooses to be with us every step of the way, even on the days when our spouse might not be so lovable. I encourage you to first come to Him individually, and then, even better, to come to Him together as a couple. He can help us to honor our word and keep our promise to always love, in good times and bad.

He is our best model to follow:  our PROMISE KEEPER, our Maker. I am simply one who is a follower of the designer of the three strands that are not easily broken.

Following my loving and heavenly Father,
Designer Ana M. Monterroso