I am a novice and I am not breaking new ground. But I wrote this to a friend a little while ago and after a fantastic adventure last week to Costa Rica with Cristin and some friends, I reflected on it again and how much I love her:
Marriage is simultaneously more wonderful, challenging and confusing than I could have ever imagined. I think there are a myriad of differences between my marriage and any relationship I've been in. Cristin demands the real me. I was hiding in a lot of ways from true intimacy with another person and she won't let me hide. With my previous relationships, it was just not a deep relationship. I didn't give my whole self. I didn't let a girl see my wounds and how I'm broken. Which is hard because those aren't attractive things but Cristin sees that and doesn't always receive it well. Its not that she is he most accepting or gracious person, she is as much a work in progress as i am, though probably further along. But she has such acute sense of the authentic and the real, and even if it is unappealing how I am weak, she deserves to see it and make her own choice.
I hate to say it because of how bad it is looking back, but really with other serious relationships I was not real. I was just kind of guessing that I might love her, guessing that I might be in love and that I might marry her and that that was how it goes. But with Cristin I just knew. The moment I saw her. It took her a couple weeks. But she had the same realization. Ultimately I think it is a matter of choice. But there's just no mistaking that she is the perfect person to both challenge me and heal me, or destroy me. And we spend our days realizing that heaven or hell is our choice. Even with all my hangups and fears and competing desires, I choose happiness and joy when I choose her, even when my fear and anxiety, my false being within dissuades me.
And so I take my greatest step forward into my true self when I love her authentically in the way God has called me. This is the start of the kingdom in our midst and the power of two who are gathered in His name. And it is hard. But it is great.
