Favor in Your Sight

on seeing in marriage

"I know," I say with some satisfaction. This kind of encounter occurred a few times over the course of a week, and this time the Holy Spirit brought with it conviction. This was the hour of the morning when the kids wake and want and wish to be tended to, immediately, without interruption from a wanting, wishing sibling. When their wills collide into one another, the holes in their character become clear as they react, mostly, without virtue.

I run to my closet. I refresh my resolve to endure and simultaneously get dressed, and I hear my husband behind me, "These kids!" he says in exasperation. This time I smile, because he's not quite emptied of patience or humor, and I sing to him in response, "Com-pas-sion," to which he quickly harmonizes, "I don't have any!"

I chuckle, and this is when I say it, that thing I've said a couple of times without any qualms, but now, as soon as the words I know leave my lips, I know it's a boast.

After Bible study that day, my friend tells me of a Tim Keller quote, that marriage is seeing in another person who God is making them to be. I'd heard it before, but it gave me pause. I asked why it resonated with her, what glimpses she was seeing in her husband, and her insights lit up the awareness tucked away inside me of the boasts I'd made, of the knowledge—the seeing—in my husband not what God is making him to be, but what is left for God to do.

A particular lens will lend to this kind of seeing. You put it on from your own point of view, the one that looks at a situation and sees how it might go well or at least much better, for you. This lens sees the clothes on the floor as an afront to your aching back, the lack of affirming words as invisible words of disapproval, the extra glowing appendage attached to his hand an escape from your presence. You make yourself the sun, and the light which shines from you onto the dark corners of your house and your husband can only be visible when it revolves around you.

My friend leans in, and before I know it, she's counseling me about the glasses I've put on, the lens through which I'm seeing, how there's more beyond what I've chosen to see. The glasses reach a dead end, a sense of defeat, that what I see in my husband will always be. They're one-dimensional, able only to conjure up the images of the past where my boasting is true—not the times where he's shown compassion to our children, to our neighbors, to the cashiers, the widows, the lonely, the needy, to me. They're hope-less, casting a vision of the future without the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit to bear good fruit in trying moments to come.

Knowledge without faith, hope, and love puffs up, like smoke blinding the eyes. In marriage, you see. You see the habits, the hurts, the presence or lack of virtue. You see the past, the pain, the power of those to infringe on a point of frustration. You take to heart the efforts, the failures, the attempts, the apologies. You notice the moments ripe for that conversation and the moments when speaking would come to naught. You see how your husband is solution-oriented, justice-strong, and fear-averse when faced with problems, and how in some cases, that leads to a lack of compassion.

In marriage, you give the gift of seeing, and it is only a gift if your vision contains faith, hope, and love in what God is able, willing, and committed to do.

As the Spirit gently pressed this kind of loving knowledge into my mind and heart, I read with pulsating attention a quote in the chapter I picked up from Madeline L'Engle's Walking on Water:

"A French priest, conducting a retreat, said,

To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from the moment at which we identify [pigeonhole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able to become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love."

O Lord, you have seen me and known me. I judged. In my boast of knowledge, I defined and reduced him and gave him no room to become. I limited my confidence not only in my husband, but in the God who dwells inside of him. In this, I failed to love, or rather, I did not dare to love.

I closed my eyes to take this in. I am exposed and seen and known, not for the purpose of conclusion and condemnation. I am seen by the Lord so that I may see him seeing me with a look of affection and compassion. With a look of love that gives me space to confess, to grieve, and to hope that I may change, not by any strength of my own, but because of my union with Christ.

My husband is flesh of my flesh, a holy union joined together by Christ. Naked and exposed before him and each other. Given to one another to see each other seeing. And what if we saw with affection, admiration, and hope? What if we dared to see in each other who God is making our spouse to be? What if in our mundane acts of charity, the gospel is revealed to one another in such a way that when the shadows of our character illuminate, our spouse receives not only the exposure, but also the gift of courage that comes with love?

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, and I am desperate to be pure so that I may see God in my husband's heart and join him in the work he's doing by love. Not only by knowing, but by bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.