Love Without Dirty Diapers?

Could I really love Pace if I had never experienced one of her dirty diapers? If I had never spent a night consoling her through a sickness? If I had never had to experience her little sinful nature doing exactly what I told her not to do? I don't think a mother could say they loved their child without living through these experiences. If you had a nanny to handle all the bad, and you only loved on or interacted with your baby when they were fresh out of the bath, swathed in sweet smelling lotion, and smiling happily, then could you really say that you knew that baby? I don't think so. When we love people, we love ALL of them...the whole package...the good along with the bad. Part of love, of intimacy, is living through hard-ships together and learning to lean on each other.

I have my own set of special dirty diapers that, unfortunately, Jeremiah has to deal with. Some of them would be easy to tuck away and pretend that they don't exist. There are parts of me that I could chose to hide from him, but I don't. I need him to love all of me, and not just the part that is easy to love. How could we have true intimacy if there was unconfessed rubbish between us? Sometimes, I have thoughts that feel very valid to me, but it's hard to tell if they are scriptural or just part of some romantic ideal. This particular thought, however, I believe I can back up.

God tells us that marriage should mirror his relationship with the church...His people. We know that God calls us to come to him just as we are. Dirty diapers and all. We know that while he accepts us at our worst, he loves us too much to leave us that way. We spend the rest of our lives nurturing our relationship with him, and in the process of growing closer we (hopefully) discover that we are becoming more and more Christlike. Finally, we know that whenever there is unconfessed sin (or a dirty diaper that desperately needs to be changed :)) in our life, our sweet communion with God is broken. He can have no part of sin.

In the same way, I think that a lot of us avoid dealing with hard issues in our marriages. We tuck away parts of ourselves that we consider unloveable, and then we wonder why we don't have a deeper intimacy in our marriages. We wonder why our husbands don't really "know" or understand us. But, if our marriage should mirror Christ's relationship with us, then we first have to have faith that the man God has chosen to walk through life with us can love ALL of us, even the ugly. Next, we have to step out on that faith and be willing to confess that from time to time, we may indeed have a dirty diaper :) Then, we spend the rest of our relationship drawing closer together, and working to be the best we can be for each other. Finally, we confess to each other when an old snare has tripped us up again. Because, our intimacy is broken when we start to harbor secrets.

So, I challenge us all to be willing have those dirty diapers changed and hopefully achieve a deeper love than we imagined possible.