After I lost my second wedding ring (maybe I’ll tell about that some day if I can think of a reason), I went without until my mother could no longer tolerate my bare left hand and gave me her old wedding ring.

Tony watched to see how long I could keep it. Fifteen years later, both of us were amazed I still had it.

So when Tony sold his bird dog Mike for big bucks, he gave me one more chance. Diamonds from my husband sparkle on my left hand again and have for some time now. (I like to think it is the front half of Mike.)

If you’re into symbolism, losing two wedding rings could mean several things. I have decided, though, that what it means literally is enough to contemplate: It means we aren’t perfect, not close, and haven’t had a perfect marriage, but we’ve hung in there, and we’re so glad we did. We’re ecstatic that we did.

The evening we walked together and I told Tony I’d like to start over, he said he understood; he said he would like to have done things better, too. But he has always looked at that differently than I, and aren’t I glad?

He says that mistakes come with living and that regretting the past is futile. He says the years we’re in now and the ones coming up are bound to be the best.

Tony has always given me the gift of “today.“ It is a tender grace beyond compare.

Marriage, as many of us have come to know it, is reason enough to leave father and mother. It is reason enough to buy one more ring. It is reason enough to give thanks, earnestly and profusely, until death do us part.

As I draw this series to a close, almost, I want to tell you about one last glorious grace-the combination of acceptance and forgiveness. I hope this is a grace you and your mate extend each other.

I’m always amazed when I hear someone who has lived a long life say he or she has no regrets. How can that be? There are times, when melancholy comes in uninvited, that I wish I could start over and do things better. That’s what I told Tony on a walk many years ago—I wish we could start over.

Well, why not? Even a very benign example—believe me there are worse ones by far—will serve to show you why I’d like to revise or completely delete certain scenes from the book called Our Marriage.

When we had been married only a couple of years, we had little money but saved enough to buy some cute little pink, sheet, dotted Swiss curtains for Stacey’s nursery. I loved those curtains and the due date was approaching, so I could hardly wait to put them up. Or, more precisely, to have Tony put them up.

He came home after work and decided to get the job done. We didn’t have a stepladder, so Tony stepped on Stacey’s brand new toy box to put up the rod. Unfortunately, I had placed one the delicate curtains there. When I heard the dreadful rip, I gasped, walked out of the room, and cried. Yes, you heard me, I cried.

After I collected myself, I walked back down the hall to find my husband and that miserable curtain. I found them in our bedroom, where Tony sat on the side of the bed with my sewing basket. (A wedding gift I had never used-where did he find it anyway?)

Tony, who had as little experience sewing as I, sat there patiently sewing up the torn curtain and doing a good job of it.

Now this is what’s amazing: when he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, he didn’t say a word. Not a “What a baby you are!“ Not a “That’s the thanks I get for helping?“ Not a “You could have sewn it yourself, you know.“ He just looked at me and showed me the curtain was fixed. Then he hung it.

This little grace was before I lost my first wedding ring. I’ve lost two—if you can believe that. Two.

I’ll tell you more about that next week when I close not only this section but this whole series of tender graces in marriage.

There’s an old country song called “Freedom of My Chains.“ It’s a sad song, of course, because the speaker has left the marriage to go off in search of something or other, but found herself in the end longing for what she had thrown away, longing for the freedom of her chains.

I married a good man; thus giving up certain freedoms hasn’t been that difficult. But I am glad that a wonderful tender grace of my marriage is a good deal of freedom; it is a grace we have given each other.

I am free in many ways.

I am free to be myself. My husband hasn’t tried to change what and who I am: my diverse sense of humor, my emotionalism, my introspection that bores even me, my excessive curiosity about some things and utter lack of interest in others, and my propensity for chitchat. He allows me all these things, although they are for the most part a complete antithesis of him.

This isn’t to say he doesn’t want me to stretch or grow. On the contrary, another aspect of my freedom is the freedom to become. Tony was not only glad for me to return to college but helped me, and he continues to encourage my involvement with anything educational or enlightening. He supports my teaching, writing, and lecturing-even though it has taken time away from him. In fact, and this kills me, he feels good about what I do, thinking it an extension of his own service to God.

We are also free to pursue our own interests. To his heart’s content, Tony can work in his yard and garden, tend to church responsibilities, fish, and golf. And I can take my time exercising and thinking, read until my eyes can no longer see the page, and type on the computer for days.

But we remind ourselves not to get too involved with our individual pursuits, because of the most important freedom we have.

We are free to reach out for comfort day or night, free to let the other “take over” for awhile (which was so nice when the kids were home), and free to make love on a whim (nicer now that the kids aren’t at home).

Bound and free—I love it.

My husband has come through for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Commitment is another wonderful grace of our marriage and many of yours. I’ve come to believe it is in the marriage relationship that commitment can reach its fullness.

When I was ten months pregnant, Tony would wake up at three in the morning and help me roll over. When I dropped the curling iron on my nose years ago, he promised the ointment he dabbed on my poor burn would help me look fine in no time. When I ran outside of the bookstore at the college where I taught for 28 years and planted my face in the street, Tony spent days applying Neosporin and baggies of ice to my entire mangled face.

And I’m there for Tony (this section, sad to say, is shorter), making a doctor’s appointment to check out those suspicious spots on his face, putting it on MY calendar, so that it is not forgotten.

We take care of each other in other ways as well. I had no idea when I walked down the aisle how good it would be to have someone to help sustain me emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I could get where I’m going without him, certainly not as easily. And how could I give the three speeches this weekend, if he hadn’t read them, offering good suggestions, and then his final approval?

And what if one of you writes and says you hate me and my blog or, worse, that you gave my book one out of five stars? Well, of course, ultimately, it would be the Lord who would restore my soul, but his servant, my husband Tony, helps too.

When I am tired, impatient, or disheartened, or if I’ve suffered a blow to my self-esteem, though he is a man of few words, he quietly and patiently says the things that will help me.

And there’s one of the greatest emotional needs of all. We were together fifteen years ago as Tony’s mom, our dear Mrs. Stark, lay dying in the intensive-care unit for two weeks. The early morning that she made her passage, I sat by her bed, holding her hand and stroking her arm with the other two sisters-in-law, while the brothers stood nearby, Tony behind me, patting legs hardly discernable beneath the crisp white sheet. Our hearts broke together.

Now in this season of life, my parents are 92 and 84. Although they are still able to live at home and take care of themselves, they love us to come, and sometimes need us to come, and Tony is there, lovingly helping them any way he can. He and my sister’s husband help me and my sister do what we can to make life easier and nicer for them. Tony has fixed plumbing, put in higher toilets, trimmed bushes, put up a stretch of fallen privacy fence after a storm. He takes fish home-bass and crappie he has caught and filleted-and he cooks it for them. There’s nothing Dad enjoys more. He makes chocolate chip cookies, his specialty, for Mom because there’s nothing she enjoys more.

Well, I’m about to cry talking about fish and cookies. The care my husband shows my parents is a tender grace I will never get over.

As I was saying last week, one of the tender graces of our marriage is companionship, and nothing illustrates that better than the rooms we inhabit: the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom—the married couple’s geography I’ve chosen to explore in these blogs. I discussed the living room last week and began on the kitchen, leaving off with Tony’s preparing the corn on the cob and my buttering and burning the rolls (and I’d like to say there’s quite a bit of the roll left when you peel off the black stuff).

But after we’ve eaten and are as full as we could or should be, Tony clears dishes, while I wash them before they go into the dishwasher.

This cooking and cleaning up together, as far as I’m concerned, is a great system. I know women who wish their husbands would just sit in the kitchen and chat with them while they work, so this companionship is a tender grace for sure.

Our companionship even extends into the bathroom, although this I can’t really recommend. He takes a hot shower; I toss ice water on his unsuspecting back. (For one, brief, unthinking moment, this treachery seems worth the terror of retaliation that I will anticipate during my next twenty showers. Unfortunately, he never gets me right back.)

But, as far as I’m concerned, the best place for a companion is the bedroom. Oh, the different nights. While this is a little personal, I think there is value in categorizing them.

Nights I lie there, pouring out my mistakes or triumphs, my regrets or dreams, and I don’t have to suppress sadness or stifle jubilance rather than admit either emotion to indifferent walls.

Nights when I, a grown, responsible woman, can say silly, senseless, preposterous things, and only he and I will know.

Nights I want to read “just a few more pages,“ yet even in such singular activity I feel the camaraderie of his warm, sleeping body close to mine.

Nights when what I need more than anything is this world is to be held, and he puts an arm around me and snuggles close, shaping himself into me.

And then other nights, when I want to give and to take love, and he’s there, knowing me so well.

His comfort is multifaceted, and he makes me glad that it is not yet time for one of us to be alone.