"My pronouncements of [my future husband's] perfection stretched far and wide, or at least to my meager blog audience, who were treated to glowing stories about his strength of character and witty repartee. The way I saw it, he had saved me from (shudder) a life of singleness as one of New York City’s resident Cat Ladies.
Then we got married, and had kids, and now those cats don’t sound so bad."
"Some readers (and reviewers) — most, if you read the comments section of that review — would be more comfortable with the fairy-tale version of marriage that we believed in when we were kids; the one I unwittingly expected when my own knight showed up to rescue me from spinsterhood. But at some point (usually around the first time one of you farts, or during a sleepless night full of infant screams and threats of murder), the wheels do come off, which is to say that you actually begin to see each other. All of each other. This is when grace enters the picture, because sticking around becomes a choice when both of your flaws show in the marked relief of everyday light. Which feels reminiscent of another kind of love I know.
“Sometimes you fear possibility itself: the possibility of growing into something more expansive and generous than you are now, growing into a shape that might look ugly from the outside but feels beautiful from the inside,” writes Havrilesky, who is describing marital love but could be documenting my own interaction with God’s grace over the years."
