My husband is a type A personality. I’m a type Z. He’s a confronter. I’m a hider. He’s a doer. I’m a sleeper.  Marriage pushes these wildly differing traits of ours to the forefront of each others’ attention, often uncomfortably but not unnecessarily.

It’s taken me this handful of years to learn that arguments and disagreements that must be got through in order to come to consensus on the important things in our relationship – finances, child-rearing, careers – are not fun and probably never will be. But it’s so vital for me, a person who avoids confrontation and unpleasantness at all costs, to accept the difficulty of the conversations as a way of loving my husband. I can’t run away from or sugar-coat the very real, get-your-hands-dirty work of living life. Marriage, like anything worth doing well, requires damn hard work sometimes.

Love is not just a feeling. It is an active choice we make every instant. Grace is the gift that comes out of that choice. We are each the rock against which the other tumbles, our rough edges becoming smooth, our dull surfaces beautiful, our life together becoming graceful.