He's The Man

"I love you more..."

My husband capriciously said this to me the other day. It brought me up short because I realized I didn't believe I could honestly deny it. I've had this thought before, that my husband has leveled-up ahead of me in the love department. And when I don't just brush past that uncomfortable thought, I'm forced to own up to old inadequacies and scars that I'd much rather forget.

I took an emotional beating in my relationships before my husband. Honestly, it was just growing up. But my starting point was from such a skewed perspective that I could only have been destined to fail.

I believed the fairy tales. I believed the happily ever afters. There was a level of consciousness that new and understood that relationships were hard, that they took active, purposeful work - but one of my favorite past times was to brush that knowledge aside.

I believed that love was magic.That as long as my love was strong, and true, and devoted, then of course he (whoever he happened to be) would love me too. And if we loved each other, then nothing else mattered; not our glaringly different moral and ethical values, not our opposing views on faith, not our inability to communicate, or our unwillingness to commit. None of this mattered to me in the long run, because if we loved each other, that made everything else fodder - things to get through and look back at in laughter once we reached that happily ever after.

It was a destructive and selfish attitude and it wrought its worth in damage.

Eventually I realized that strife-free happy ever afters didn't exist; that I couldn't wring commitment and perfection out of every Y chromosome I took a fancy to; that I needed to depend more on myself and my God; that I should learn to adapt and adopt those qualities that I kept "falling in love with" in others.

Eventually I realized that life and relationships consist of mostly the hard stuff on the way to that longed-for joy, but among all the bruised hearts and hurt feelings the greatest casualty was my once-irrepressible and essential belief that love holds power.

I threw up my hands and said "Happily ever after doesn't exist. It's time to live in the real world and give up on childish, naive dreams."

And in the deepest well of my soul I am downcast and ashamed that I let go of that dream. Because, of course, as soon as I ground it into the dirt and cloaked myself in a cloud of anger, resentment, and cynicism, along came this guy.

This guy - this Man - he is the dream that I threw away.
He's the man who shows up with flowers for no reason.
He's the man who believes in dating a woman for her whole life.
He's the man who calls me beautiful so often it drowns out the voices that disagree - even my own.
He's the man I don't even have to ask to just hold me after a trying day.
He's the man who won't let me stew in silent anger, but forces me to voice and confront my issues.
He's the man who washes dishes and does laundry to help me out on his days off.
He's the embodiment of what my naive self wanted, plus the wisdom that more mature me learned to expect, with a healthy dash of simple goodness that I didn't even think to hope for.
He's the man who loves Jesus, and looks to him for guidance in order to guide our family.
He's the man who loves his family, and has no problem making room in his heart for mine.
He's the man who's nearly consumed with the goal of providing for us and making a stable home for our children to be born into.
He's the man who tells me - repeatedly, incessantly, unceasingly, eternally - that he loves me, and the evidence of it so clear I couldn't doubt him if I wanted to.

And sometimes, sometimes the weight of his love for me is so real, and so heavy, that I fear I'll never be able to reciprocate on the same level. The girl who believed in this kind of love is gone - she opened her eyes to the reality that it didn't exist; and yet. Here it stands, directly in front of me.

Daunting as it is, I can't bring myself to regret the the distance I feel stands between us in this arena because of the produce it yields.

I work to get on his level.

Every time he forgives me, I realize I should do the same. Every time he apologizes for his part in a fight, I remember that winning isn't everything, and sometimes (most times) humility is better. Every time he calls me on my BS, but manages to do it with grace and compassion, I get to see evidence of accountability in love. Every time he does something for me just because; at every tender look; at every uplifting word; every time he extends me grace that I absolutely do not deserve, I am reminded that love is powerful, and love is real, and I want to know it and show it as well as he does.

He is my earthly reminder of God's incredible capacity for love, and that love makes me aspire to reach such heights -  something I never experienced in the days of my self-centered relationships.
My old selfishness has been borne from me out of simple, stringent desire to love as well as I am loved.

And that has made all the difference.