Perfection is not Perfect!

As tends to happen when you try to go to bed early, Bekah and I ended up having a really deep conversation that kept us up somewhat late earlier this week. It ended up being one of those moments where God uses someone that knows you really well to shine spotlight on your heart and illuminates something that needs some healing. I can't even tell you how huge this revelation was.

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I realized that I really struggle to open myself up to Bekah and share with her the struggles that I have and the things that I'm going through. I realized that I put so much pressure on myself to be a good husband, a good Christian etc. Something that I've slowly been discovering about myself is that I'm really driven by the need to do the right thing. Now, this seems to be a good desire, but just underneath the surface some major "law" creeps in and crowds out any room for grace. This is such a sneaky thing that it seems so right from the outside and everyone applauds you for doing the right thing. But is there something better than doing the right thing? This is the hard lesson God's been teaching me.

In trying to be the perfect husband for Bekah, I didn't feel like I could share with her my struggles and shortcomings, especially in areas that really affect her directly and our marriage (such as struggles with lust). I thought that if I shared them with her, it would impact impact our relationship negatively and so I just kept quiet and tried to be there for her as best as I could. Over the last year and a half of our marriage, we've been through crisis after crisis which has really allowed me to step into the role of being there for my wife, and it's been a great way to minister to here. But now that we're no longer in crisis, our relationship is moving below the surface again and I can't live like I've been.

I'm realizing that any relationship needs to have intimacy as its driving force and goal, not perfection. My relationship with Bekah isn't about me becoming the perfect husband for her ... it's about us becoming more and more intimate with each other and discovering the joys of deep relationship there. By worrying so much about whether or not I was as good a husband as I could be, I was actually depriving Bekah or the depths of my heart, as well as depriving her of one of her main roles as my wife in coming alongside me in my times of struggle.

I discovered, ironically, that I can only be the perfect husband for Bekah by not being perfect. She needs a human, flawed partner and friend that she can walk alongside in the good and the bad times. It is only through honesty and being broken that true intimacy can be formed. This holds true in our worship as well. We will never be able to fully worship God and we are fully honest with Him. If we are keeping God and these other people out of hearts for fear that they will truly see who we are, we will never be able to go as deep as they desire to go with us. Now I'm only at the beginning of this whole honesty and brokenness thing and I know it's going to be hard, but I so desperately long for the intimacy that I'm willing to give it a shot.