Marital Building Blocks, Part 5

God shouts: “Get naked!” to marriage partners -- “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” At times, this involves the shedding of clothes, but even more the shedding of pretense. This disrobing of our identities can be difficult in the early years of marriage because courtship is often an elaborate game of Hide-and-Seek. If I am trying to win your love, I may apply some makeup to my uglier traits.

Fortunately for us hiders, marriage is designed to strip our masquerades. Mike Mason explains: “One of the hardest things in marriage is the feeling of being watched.” This “constant surveillance ... can wear one down like a bright light shining in the eyes, and that leads inevitably to the crumbling of all defenses, all the customary shams and masquerades of the personality.” Our attempts to hide from each other are about as feeble as a child holding his hands over his eyes and proclaiming: “You can’t find me!”

When our family bought our first hand-held computer game, I became quickly, though unknowingly, addicted. One day I was sitting in the living room chair when Cathy left the house to run some errands. I was so immersed in the game that I lost track of time. When I heard her returning, I glanced at my watch and realized that I had been playing the game for nearly two hours! Of course I didn’t want my wife to see me still playing the game so I quickly stuffed it under my chair and grabbed a book. As I sat there, a stabbing question penetrated my charade: “What are you doing, you big phony?!”

During the early years of my marriage I was asked by friends if I was surprised by what I learned about Cathy. I responded: “Yes, but not nearly as surprised as what I learned about myself.” It is in the everyday interactions of marriage that we see our true selves. Our mates “are mirrors in which we are constrained to see ourselves, not as we would like to be, but as we are.”

It is distressing to have our sins uncovered. Sadly, many people run from one mirror to another not realizing that they are running from themselves as much as they are running from their spouse. God alone can give us the unlikely desire to know the truth about ourselves. And how does he “slip us this bitter pill? Fortunately, the pill is lavishly coated with the mystery we call love” -- which alone “can shield us from the horror or knowing what we are really like.”