Yesterday morning I noticed a rather vulgar cropping of zits on my chin. Knowing that Seth’s and my anniversary was the next day and in an effort to eliminate the glaring distraction before celebrating, with great hope I applied my magicical zit-be-gone ointment throughout the day. But, alas, this morning when I woke up and looked in the mirror there was no improvement.
Terrific. To celebrate our five years of marriage Seth gets to look at a bacteria infected face. Lovely.
But then I remembered…
Seth is blind! This won’t be a problem at all.
That’s right. My husband is blind.
I didn’t always know this. In fact, it wasn’t until after we were married that I started to make this illuminating discovery.
How could I miss such an obvious handicap, you ask? Let me explain.
When Seth and I met, I was still recovering from the after effects of my previous marriage, though I didn’t realize it. As far as I knew, I had healed from all the wounds associated with that period of my life. Full forgiveness had taken place in my heart long before and there was no more pain in the memories. This allowed my heart to be fully open, to be completely and wholly available to someone else.
On April 28, 2011 Seth and I knelt across a holy altar and covenanted with each other and with God to do just that. My heart was now his, and his was mine. Together we offered our hearts to God.
It was a heavenly day.
Celebrations…
Honeymoon…
Adjusting to a new “normal”…
A month or so into our new life together I started to notice something was wrong…with me. Major insecurities that had been lying dormant within me during our two and half year courtship began to emerge. Nightmares returned. Looming doubts and feelings of worthlessness resurfaced. Irrational perceptions over my appearance hindered my ability to feel worthy of intimacy with my perfectly worthy husband. Finally I came to the crushing new realization that I was, in fact, not totally healed.
For almost eight years in my first marriage I had been “trained” to feel as though my sole purpose as a wife, as a woman even, was to please my husband. In every way. And each time I discovered that, despite my complete commitment to him, he had turned yet again to the counterfeit pleasure of other women, I would conclude that I was simply not enough for him. I wasn’t beautiful enough, fit enough… quiet enough. That deceptive voice was always present.
Graciously, there were always two voices. While the one was vicious, cold, insulting, and degrading, the Other was kind, hopeful, encouraging, and full of love. It was that Voice that eventually saved me.
Being able to finally operate without the shrill of negativity regularly berating me was liberating. I began to find my very own voice, to discover my own desires, preferences, and interests. I began to find myself again. But always there was a lingering pull to believing the old deceptions that had become so much a part of my psyche: that my value, even identity as a woman hinged on my ability to please a man.
Dating Seth diminished that pull significantly. With him I felt my authentic self more fully. I felt safe, free, empowered to be simply me.
But once we were married and intimacy was re-introduced to my life, it was as though the pitiless tentacles of the past came stretching their way back into my mind. Every time I looked in the mirror and saw a new flaw I began to fear a similar outcome as my previous marriage. The lines that were beginning to appear on my face, my eyes without mascara on, the softness developing around my hips and waist and my hair doing weird things with this new pregnancy…what if he saw, what if he noticed? What if he figured out that I actually wasn’t beautiful at all?
Well, Seth wasn’t having it. He wouldn’t let me believe those things. He made sure his pull and his love and his influence were so much stronger than whatever false strength my past could muster.
Over the five years that we have been married Seth has taught me a great lesson about love…true love from a true man.
My husband has taught me that a true man loves blindly. And it’s not because he doesn’t physically see the flaws I have, be them physical, emotional, behavior, spiritual. He can see them. He just chooses, consciously, not to.
He looks through my flaws and sees my goodness and beauty. Because despite what I was trained to believe long ago, I do have goodness, and my goodness is my beauty. And I have to believe it.
That is how he loves me. And he couldn’t be better at it.
When I think back through our five years together, the times I remember feeling love between us the most poignantly have been when I have actually looked the worst physically.
Like the time I was so sick with the flu that I passed out while sitting on the toilet and awoke with my head in his hands because he had caught me, and my vomit.
Or when Mother’s Day came just a few days after Emery was born and he bought me a card that played “Unchained Melody” when it opened. I was still plump from pregnancy and felt like a cow in need of a milking, but he took my hand and danced with me to the electronic sound of that card, holding me close and gazing into my eyes as if I were a beauty queen.
Or during my horrendous labor with Spencer when during pushing I thought I was literally dying. After hours of staying right with me, he held me while my body shook, stroking my face and hair, then crying with me when it was all over.
Or when we sat in the ultrasound room last summer and I wept into his embrace as the news of a little girl coming sank into our hearts.
No more love could be possible between two human beings than within those moments.
So this little zit colony on my chin right now? Sure, he’ll see it. But it won’t matter.
Because he is blind.
Oh, how I love him for it.
