Come.
Faults; we all have them. Mistakes; we all make them. Sometimes they’re little ones that we manage to display frequently, as if they are a part of who we are as a person. Heaven knows I have my share of character flaws that drive others crazy and taste to me, like humble pie. Then there are the other kind; the big doozies, the hopefully “only one-timers” that can be forgiven if they don’t become a pattern.
Some days, my character flaws, mistakes, and even my meanness… stand out more to me than others. After one of those doozies I begin to wonder if I will still find acceptance from those who it matters most to me. I am not hoping for my actions to find acceptance, just “me.” Will “I” still be accepted? When I find that I still am, I know that I am loved.
I think my oldest “entering adulthood” son must have made this connection too. There was a time a couple years back, that he made sure that he came home and told me of his actions that he knew I would not approve of. I could tell by the questioning look that I was being tested, or rather that my love for him was being tested. Each time the next situation would be more outrageous than the previous one. After it was made clear that I would never condone his actions and there would be consequences, but that I would always accept him and love him as my son, the testing stopped.
Well, who sees our faults and has to deal with them more than our spouse? After years of marriage we have had plenty of opportunity to mess up. Forgiveness is not always found quickly, even when the love is genuine. It seems no one can hurt us as much as those closest to us. We are more vulnerable to them. Of course that goes both ways. We have more power to hurt those we love or who love us. Everything matters more, because we matter more to each other. Acceptance of our most hidden quirks can be like that. It can take time to come to grips with them or just actually weigh what place in our lives together it has played, or will play in the future.
Recently, my husband and I had a getaway weekend. There was a lot of nakedness in more than the obvious way. I feel like we got to see parts of each other that we have kept hidden over our quarter of a century marriage. It wasn’t so much faults, as it was quirks… but maybe they would be taken as faults… They were those parts of us that we knew without love and devotion to color our glasses, might cause rejection. Quirky, kinky, or just odd, it is amazing after all these years to find there is more freedom to experience and explore ourselves and each other further than before. Secrets and desires were not only told to each other, but also self revealed. I hadn’t even know things about myself that I learned that weekend.
There we were all alone in a special time we had carved out for ourselves. It was very dreamy, and reality of life beyond that weekend was shut out. Everything was so romantic and our location gave us complete seclusion. We were in our own little world.
The morning came when it was time to pack up and go home to our real world of schedules and responsibilities. It was like waking up, wondering quietly to myself how much of it was perhaps just parts of dreams in the little sleep we got during the nights. As we were on the road towards home, we began discussing our agendas of the coming work week. We also talked about the kids and the normal topics that revolve around them.
More than a week has went by, and our conversations have only skimmed the surface of that weekend. There is even more twinkle in our eyes… that “we have shared secrets” or mischievousness. There was no guarantee that it was going to turn out this way, and I am not sure where this is leading us.
The sure thing is the continued acceptance. It doesn’t have to be spoken. We know it still exists every time I cup a breast to offer it to him, and he buries his face in my bosom.