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Melanie Kleimola is a part-time English Graduate student at Northern Illinois University, a full-time wife to Andrew and mother to her two children, Aidan and Catie.  You can find more of Melanie’s insights and stories on Does This Blog Make Me Look Fat?
When I was single, I hated being alone. In a lot of ways, for much of my adult life, I hated my singleness. This was not a long period of time, as I married at age 24, but still, I longed for marriage: to experience unconditional love, intimacy and let’s be honest, sex. My husband and I wasted no time. We met, dated, married, and even bought our first house within one year.

Last month, Cara posted something here about marriage being filled with unexpected things about your partner. Unbearable morning breath, odd bathroom habits, and general sloppiness are a few things that might surprise a young bride or groom about a person who had been on their best behavior prior to the wedding. But for me, the biggest surprise didn’t come from my husband; it came from me. Marriage has revealed many things about ME that I either did not know were there, or was simply able to ignore prior to the wedding.

As a single person, I think I was generally able to keep my own undesirable qualities in check most of the time. When I found myself in situations that brought out the worst in me, I had the opportunity to remove myself, take a break and regroup. While marriage does afford a person some quiet alone time, if a couple is really about the business of becoming one, then even if one or the other finds herself alone, her husband is still with her. On a practical level, the sharing of one’s space and world and life and relationships and friendships and time and money and self can be overwhelming at times. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I am always Andrew’s wife.

What was once a selfish need for perfection can now impact the way my husband feels about himself. My problem with anger is now my kids’ problem with anger. These people now have an all access 24/7/365 pass to my life. It forces me to look at myself, to see myself good, bad and ugly. And sometimes this really sucks. The hardest thing about marriage and family for me is that they challenge me more than anything ever has, as such bringing me to the end of myself where all the tired, anxious, ugly habits hide. There is no escaping now; I HAVE to deal with it.

While I have found my marriage is a place of grace and forgiveness most of the time, looking into the eyes of that person I love the most knowing that my shortcomings have hurt him is not an easy thing. There are times when I’d prefer his anger over his kindness. Nothing leads the heart to repentance like forgiveness. Sometimes when we argue, my husband and I have said to one another that we feel undeserving of the other’s love. Awhile ago, I started responding that no one deserves love because it’s a gift.

Sometimes in marriage we just have to receive the love, grace and forgiveness our spouse offers us. In the same way marriage and family can bring out the worst in us, it can also bring out the best in us. When we face the ugliness in ourselves, knowing that it impacts the people we love and cherish is a great motivator to submit to the transforming power that God offers each of us everyday.