Confession and healing

It's been a while since I posted on here and I'm feeling like it's time to revive this thing.

A thought occurred to me today. It was this: "Love doesn't hold you to your wrongs, but it does require you to admit to them." It came about after listening to Kathryn Schulz TED talk "On being wrong." ( http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong#t-175384 )
I married Daniel a year and a half ago and if there's one thing that will make you learn your ugly parts it's marriage!! Gosh, it just brings it out of me. It's also brought a lot of patience and love out of me, but wow it brings out the most intimate insecurities that lead to pushing love back and fighting against total relinquishing of rights and independence, because I am now we. It makes me have to discern between when to push back and when I'm just being selfish. Even re-learning how to talk: What do I sound like? What vibes am I giving off with my tone? Why am I already coming off as defensive and we haven't even started talking about what's bothering us?! When you are for the other person and for your marriage's health, you start seeing yourself as an "other" in certain ways. I've started seeing myself a little more clearly and it's rough picture to look at sometimes. It's almost like what I've said in past posts about living in a different culture and seeing your own culture much more clearly. It's made me start wondering why I do certain things.
To be totally honest, our minds can be our worst enemies when it comes to trust, insecurities, and how we come off to our significant others. And, we….. Ok enough of second person. I can control my mind. I've learned this in the past few months. When something bothers me a little I can let it grow in my mind instead of dismissing it. I'm learning to direct my mind away from that pattern of "protect yourself" thinking and turn to trust, and not let my mind be consumed by fears or frustrations. It's actually pretty beautiful, and I'm thankful God's giving me insight to how my mind works and what is behind some of our marriage struggles. While on our wedding day we became one legally, in word, and before our friends and family, we didn't automatically become one in our thought patterns and living patterns. That is taking time and intentionality and changing the ways we trust, think, fear, and act. One thing in particular that has been so hard, and yet brings healing and growth is admitting wrongs. When we're both for us, searching ourselves and admitting wrongs is about reconciliation and the importance of truth in our marriage. It's more about us being healthy than one of us being right. Understanding unhealthy emotional responses to actual issues that need to be talked out, and distinguishing the emotional response from the actual thing that's bothering us and needs figured out. We're so human it's ridiculous. Love, pride, frustration, patience, zeal for truth, all bundled up in a conversation between two hearts who can hardly articulate it all. But when we know that each of us is for us, and we're struggling not to be right, but to be well, together, as a unit, it's easier to admit wrong doings. And it's easier to forgive and move on because we know the other person is fully human and fully for this marriage: you two as a strong unit. Selfishness, not being for the other and therefore the us, is usually the root of wrongs. Before we started dating there really wasn't an us to fight for and to see as more important than the I so, really, this is new territory. Forgiveness is only really beautiful and mutually healing when there is admittance of wrong. Love will hold you to your wrongs, because selfishness goes against the us, and the glue of us is love. We can't hold both in our hands. But how crazy beautiful is forgetting self and embracing confession for the purpose of a healthier, stronger, healed us. We're in this life together, for each other and before ourselves.

Love is: I will fight for you, even when….. especially when it means fighting against myself.

James 5:16 - Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.