That couple right there? The young ones in the frame with the broken wing?

They celebrated 12 years of marriage 10 days ago; a feat for any couple, but for these two? Well, it’s a bit miraculous.

Let me tell you a bit about them.

He had this presence that pulled people to him; they wanted to be near him. He was fun and kind, a good friend always.

Even in his too big glasses and a few added prepubescent pounds, he was a light to people. His laugh was contagious and his smile, well, it could make your day.

She, with her too permed hair and Aussie sprayed bangs, thought he was a bit obnoxious (what 8th grade boy isn’t?), but he made her laugh.

In high school, these two were big flirts with raging hormones, but good parents yielded moral kids who remained just friends with only flirting benefits.

College separated them, but visits home tended to bring them together again.

Just like old times. Flirting friends who shared relationship woes and cried on one another shoulders.

A wedding and too much to drink carried enough courage for both to put judgement aside for a moment waiting at the counter in a San Francisco bar.

One kiss.

One kiss collapsed walls and awakened a sleeping love neither had ever acknowledged.

One kiss led to the kiss 12 years and 10 days ago. The one, the first one as husband and wife.

These two? In the frame with the broken wing?

Theirs is a love few experience; a love that gets pushed and pulled, stretched and tested.

Their love is one bound together in suffering.

That couple? In the frame with the broken wing?

On August 16, 2005, she very great with their first child, stuck that unbroken frame in her purse as her heart and mind raced and the cubicle walls started to close in around her.

That frame, with that couple, tossed around in her hobo bag as she boarded a plane unexpectedly to be by his side.

As she had always done, she went to be his friend, his wife, caregiver, shoulder to cry on.

She flew thousands of miles to try to mend the damage found at the end of 80ft.

And once home, with a breath to catch and tears to cry, she dug in her bag to pull out that frame with that young couple with the now broken wing.

Her wing man, broken and bound by the darkness of coma, had slipped from her grasp.

But praise be to the One who is Love, for he had never slipped from His grasp.

Those two? The young couple in the broken frame?

Theirs is a love bound by suffering, each carrying the others hurt and happiness as they’d done as friends with flirting benefits.

Those two? Now three?

Those two with the broken wing?

Don’t you see?

The broken place has yielded a story, a love story worth sharing. A love story molded together in the refiner’s fire. A story about faith and mercy, love and justice.

It’s in broken places that God bends down as the Potter to shape us as He sees best with a love that is the foundation of this love story.

This story of this young couple in the broken frame.

Photo by Donna Robinson Photography