The Imperfect Marriage

Me during my first year of marriage = A match in an oil spill.

I pity my dear husband.  The slightest friction would ignite and engulf everything in flames.

Our first year of marriage was more like escaping Pompeii than a trip to Disney World.  No fairy tales were actualized.  At the slightest provocation, flames incinerated any proverbial glass slippers and singing tea pots.

I am not easy to love. I learned very quickly that sunshine does not exude from my presence, and kind words do not flow like rivers from my mouth, especially when I'm mad, sad, disappointed, or anything other than perfectly content.

Let me preface this a bit...

I started coloring within the lines when I was three years old.  Since then, perfection was more than a goal, it was the expectation.  I took my father's nightly bedtime prescription to heart- "just do your best."  The wisdom of the adage infected my blood stream like a virus attacks a cell.  Such an innocent and well-intended precept became the incantation of my heart.  "Do your best. Do Your Best. Do. Your. Best."  The words motivated and inspired me, until my best had to be "the best."  The words still enslave me frequently.

Throughout my career as a student, my grades never fell below the honor roll. I took AP and dual enrollment classes at a prestigious high school in Richmond.  I graduated in three years with a full ride to college.  I spent time working for a nonprofit abroad. When I returned home, I started and completed graduate school in 16 months while working full-time... and oh by the way, I got married somewhere in there.  I was ticking off the boxes of "Supposed To Do's."  I loved Glenn, and I mistakenly assumed that marriage would be another way for me to demonstrate mastery.

I was wrong.

When done well, marriage brings out the best in people via eliciting their worst.  

The pathogen of perfection manifested some pretty unattractive symptoms in our first year.  I am pretty sure oozing boils would have been more attractive than the words that spilled from my lips.  I resented Glenn for seeing my imperfections, but what's worse, he could see my nasty reaction to failure.  The jealous and petty thoughts that I used to keep hidden were suddenly visible and vile.

The problem with perfection is that it is incredibly lonely. Faults do not exist if they are invisible to others. Friends are kept at an arm's length in an act of self-preservation.  God is kept at arm's length.  When pursuing perfection, God's grace is finite, and He is often at fault for failures that are too difficult for us to own ourselves.

In a conversation with one my newly engaged friends, I was telling her how being married is kind of like trying to color within the lines while blindfolded.   The thing is there aren't actually any lines, and perfection does not exist between two imperfect people, but we make the lines for ourselves.

Somehow marriage liberates us from the lines we once established for ourselves.  It is terrifying and glorious.  Glenn has extended unconditional grace to me over and over and over and over again.  At first, I resented him even more for his grace because I did not have grace for myself.  I would beg him to leave me, to let me go.  I would hyperbolize his mistakes and my own as an excuse to retreat to the solitude of perceived perfection. It was easier to be alone than to accept God's grace and thereby concede my failures.

Generally, when symptoms start to manifest, the pain is at its apex, but the worst of the virus has transpired.

In the thick of my anxiety attacks, blow-ups, anger, and bitterness, something inside me broke apart. The virus released, and the blind fold became a creative outlet, rather than an instrument of cruelty.  

God used Glenn and continues to use him as an invitation to something better than perfection... forgiveness.

I am walking it out every day, and some days it is easier to surrender to grace than others, but every day I am grateful for the man who does not expect glass slippers and singing tea pots.  I am far from perfection, but he loves me anyway.