Phwew! It is good to be back to the living world. I have had my nose to the grindstone for a while with brief interruptions over my wedding and honeymoon. Married life is great--though it is not easy. Marriage is not for the faint of heart. Everything you had learned to overlook about yourself and graciously forgive yourself about, those are the brightest things reflected back at you in the spousal mirror. Being so close to a person means that your sharp or rough edges cut and bruise them. If you aren't willing to be hurt sometimes, or to see yourself as you really are, or to be challenged then don't get married. Yet I strongly recommend marriage. I see how marriage can serve to mature a person. The small world of self must grow or else the marriage will suffocate. Individualism becomes communion. Me becomes we. And every petty, prideful, irrational part of yourself will be tweaked out and pressed. If you do not submit to the inquisition you will not grow from it. If you do, then your marriage may have a fighting chance, and you may be able to grow up finally. Don't get me wrong though. It's not like singlehood is just marriage prep. Singlehood is a great stage in itself. But there is a level of humanity available only in marriage. The union of man and woman (not just male and female) is a sublime mystery, an awe inspiring, miraculously mundane interweaving of spirits. Yet I'm just a newlywed. I'm still googly eyed over my wife. I still am surprised at how she changes clothes in front of me. I'm still excited to share a bed with her. Supposedly, all of these things and more are going to lose their luster and leaving us with only with the stench of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes in our nose and no rosey love scent to mask the smell. I think the smell can surface without the spell fading. This is reality, not pessimism or optism. The real is more beautiful than anything imagined.