Marriage Misnomers: Love is Blind.

"Love is blind," the old saying goes. But is it? People warned me against blind love when I was dating, saying I wanted to see the person for who they were, faults, flaws and all before marriage. That way I'd know what I was getting into. The intoxicating effects of love could have a "rose-colored glasses" effect, people said, so "Wise up; see things clearly," they advised. I thought I did that. I saw my husband as he was. I accepted him. What I didn't see was me.

I brought plenty of my own baggage to marriage: my fears, my perfectionism, my white-knuckle grip on my routine. I expected these things to continue to plague me. What I didn't expect was how they would affect my relationship with my husband. My husband is more of a laid-back, easy-going, lighthearted person. Very little troubles him deeply. I, on the other hand, am troubled by much, and often. I knew my husband was different when we were dating. I appreciated it even. I didn't expect (or want) him to change. I didn't know, however, how hard it would be for me to have my own weaknesses exposed in marriage. I was blind to myself.

I was blind to how deeply entrenched my own negative beliefs about myself and the world were. I was blind to my selfishness and self-centeredness. I was blind to how my need to control could drive my husband and I apart. I was blind to my deep-seeded self love. I didn't realize how hard it would be to selflessly love another. I truly didn't see.

Over one year into marriage, I'm here to tell you that love is blind, but not in the way society suggests. Love and its accompanying cascade of feel good hormones, does make you blind, blind to yourself. Love makes you think your own flaws will go away. Love makes you think you can be selfless without it costing too much. Love builds you up and makes you think you have superhuman power to do anything and everything. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. True love, the kind of self-giving love that makes marriage work, is very, very hard. So hard that it requires superhuman power. 

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters" (1 John 3:16, New International Version [NIV]). That is not a blind love. That is an eyes-wide open, eyes fixed only Jesus kind of love. That is a self-sacrificing, self-abasing, deal with the log in your eye and not the speck in theirs kind of love. That is an all-seeing love, not a blind love, and the only kind of love that will last eternally. May God give us eyes to see.