Don't Show Me My Blind Spots

My morning devotional yesterday was all about blind spots—asking the Holy Spirit to reveal habits or mistakes in our thoughts or behavior that lead to harming our relationships.

It makes sense; in fact, I preach this to other people. As a writing coach I’ll edit another author’s manuscript and find recurring pet phrases or prose mistakes that the writer doesn’t even know she’s making. Then once I point them out, she can see them, fix them, and avoid them in the future. And her writing becomes stronger overall.

Theoretically that’s how relationships work, too. Learn what you’re doing wrong, change it, get better. Grow stronger.

But what if you don’t want to know? Your blind spots, I mean.

What if you just don’t want to see them?

Because seeing them means you have to face the possibility that YOU are half the problem. And it’s so much easier to blame somebody else.

So, no thanks, Holy Spirit. I’d rather sit here eating chips in front of the TV wallowing in my anger over how my husband didn’t ask me how my day was with enthusiasm. I mean, how rude. He just walked in the door and grunted in my general direction, “Hey,” like I’m one of the neighbors out walking the dog. And then he waltzed into his basement office to check his email. No smile, no kiss, no gushing over my presence. How insensitive is he? Clearly I am not the problem here.

Besides that I need my man to throw me a freaking party just because it’s 5 o’clock and I exist. Just let me hold tight to this resentment for a while because apparently it’s my woobie.

After 25 years of marriage, I’ve traveled the full circuit from apologizing when I wasn’t in the wrong, to mustering self-respect and speaking up for myself, to flat-out casting all the fault on my husband for just breathing in my space, back to realizing maybe I went a little too far and I could watch my own attitude once again.

He’s not such a bad guy. He’s a great guy, actually. He’s the best. I love him with my whole heart. I just know his flaws now.

And I know my own.

Which is why I’m telling you, I don’t want the Holy Spirit to reveal my blind spots. Because I’m not really blind. I know they’re there. I just don’t want proof of life.

Because that means I still haven’t made any progress from where I began—a fresh bride without a clue how to communicate with the other half of an imperfect but hopeful relationship. And I should be so much wiser by now, right?

Are you?

If there’s anything I’ve learned as a married woman in midlife, with kids flying the nest and a few decades of adulting under my elastic joggers waistband, it’s that I need Jesus. Because I cannot get anything right without His help. He is the source of that wisdom I seek.

And wisdom is inseparable from humility.

“Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” (Proverbs 13:10)

I used to think growing more mature meant being more confident in myself. Now I realize it means being more confident in God—discovering from experience that His faithfulness absorbs the impact of my mistakes and somehow fits them into His good plan for my life.

And if that’s not humbling, I don’t know what is.

So at this stage of my life, my blind spots don’t need illumination. They need an off switch. I want to hurl them into the darkest void of outer space where they can’t hurt my relationships any more. And the first step toward that kind of progress is to get off the throne of entitlement and give the seat back to God.

I can’t just read His Word in my morning devotions; I have to recommit to taking that counsel to heart (James 1:22). The Bible has a ton to say about kindness and patience and forgiveness. We know this, amen? I think I might’ve allowed daily irritations to accumulate like a layer of dust on my relationships, covering my heart so that I forgot its original color and shine.

That is the blind spot. Not so much an inability to see, but a discoloration of what we used to recognize as love.

If you’re there, too—if you’re a midlife woman whose relationships went pale underneath a build-up of hurt feelings, misunderstandings and mistakes…

Then let’s clean house together. God will show us how. Our prayers are the Mrs. Meyer’s all-purpose spray, and His Word the Swiffer cloth. If we apply them daily to the thoughts we feed and the words we speak, we can restore warmth in our hearts and homes.

Next time my husband walks in the door and says, “Hey,” I’ll say “Hey” right back and smile. Because the most important part is he walks in the door. He still comes back to me every night, still the one who loves me through my faults and makes our home a family. When I honor him, I honor the God who gave him to me. And that’s the wisest move any one of us can make.