Hot, Holy & Humorous

Is Your Spouse Flawless?

A college girl died last week. Unexpectedly. Of natural causes.

I didn’t know her, but she hailed from my town and attended my older son’s university. So there was a lot of buzz about her death, and I knew several people with connections to this young lady. I looked up her obituary and was surprised to see that she had chosen a life verse — but not one you might expect from a single, college-aged woman. Rather, it was a verse I’ve cited many times before from the Song of Songs: “You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you” (4:7).

Song of Songs 4:7How wonderful for this young believer to settle so quickly on the truth of her value in God’s eyes! For all those daughters out there worrying so much about their appearance or trying too hard to be like someone else, I pray that they can learn and accept that they are “altogether beautiful.

There is definitely this larger meaning, but the context of the verse itself is a husband speaking to his wife. After going through a long list of her physical attributes that the husband finds captivating (eyes, hair, teeth, lips, etc.), he concludes with that statement: “You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

Look, I never saw his wife. We have no idea what she looked like. But I can pretty much guarantee she had a flaw. If nothing else, she had a mole in a weird place or one hair on her arm that grew longer than all the others or stubby toes that would never grace a pedicure ad. Because everyone has some flaw.

Yet her husband didn’t see any of that: He saw her as flawless.

Altogether beautiful.

His darling.

They say that love is blind. I don’t think that’s true, but it is rose-colored. That is, when you love someone so very much, you don’t see all their flaws. In your mind’s eye, your darling is altogether beautiful — flawless.

It’s the reason parents of “ugly babies” think their kids are the most precious things ever. It’s the reason we put our five-year-old’s terrible art on the refrigerator and beam with pride. It’s the reason teenagers overlook each other’s awkward stages and date anyway. It’s the reason you used to not mind so much when your husband — then boyfriend — wore that ratty Green Bay Packers T-shirt. It’s the reason you didn’t think anyone could possibly be more handsome than your groom standing at the altar and waiting for you to walk down the aisle.

Somehow, we seem to think it’s “growing up” or “getting realistic” to lose that lens. But I don’t think so. I think this verse shows what God intended — that as we deepen our love, we should become even more starstruck by our beloved’s beauty.

Maybe it becomes more of a choice we make: to overlook our spouse’s flaws, to focus on their amazing attributes, to remember that we have a special bond (my darling) that colors how we see one another.

What if you memorized this scripture and said it about your husband? Or wife? What if you practiced it in your mind? Even said it aloud sometime? How might that encourage you toward an attitude of appreciation? Toward gratitude for the spouse you have?

Say it with me, and say it about your spouse: “You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.” See your husband the way love sees him.

And believe he sees that in you too.

♥   ♥   ♥

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17 thoughts on “Is Your Spouse Flawless?”

  1. Thank you for posting this. I’m from Abilene and graduated from ACU 15 years ago. I’m always saddened when a student dies. I know it’s hard on those left behind, but it seems that this girl left a light behind.

    1. Indeed. And did you hear that Holly Dunn, singer and songwriter, passed away recently? She was an ACU grad.

  2. So true. I think that when you start focusing on your spouse’s flaws, it can hurt your relationship. Even if you focus on your flaws it can do the same thing because it causes insecurities in you. We should not put our attention on what we don’t like, rather on what we do.

      1. Canticle is anglicized from Latin cantare, to sing, hence, a song. Some older English translations begin “the Canticle of Canticles, which is Solomon’s.”

  3. We are in our 70’s and married 52 years in December. We are slowing down, have aches and pains. But I notice we focus on what we can do rather than what we cannot do. I still love to see my wife in her birthday suit, I still love to have skin to skin contact. I see her flaws, but I do not notice that they affect our relationship because I love her so much. And, she is the only one in the world I can see and touch anyway.

    1. I’m sitting here in my youngest son’s apartment in Waco, Texas still trying to get into a “Thanksgiving” mood after driving nearly 1,500 miles from Michigan (including a couple of side-trips to visit other family members). I’ve been trying to catch up on J’s blogs, since I’ve been off the computer for nearly a week.

      Mike and I are the same generation, so I understand where he’s coming from when he says “I still love to see my wife in her birthday suit.” Some of J’s comments re a wife who was raped as a child apply here, also. We men went into marriage pretty much ignorant of what baggage our wives may have carried from their pasts, and most of us were innocent of knowledge about female issues to the extent that it took us a few years to figure things out. Songs 4:7, about the “altogether lovely” wife, for instance, required some maturity in marriage for me to understand, as well as a few years of marriage for her to “get” it when I made apprecitive comments about her naked anatomy. So yes, like Mike, not only do I “still love” what I see–she’s more beautiful with each passing day. This is a precious truth every wife needs to understand and accept as her own–whether she’s 18 or 88. God sees you as beautiful, and it’s appropriate and godly that your husband notices and comments, too!
      Eric

      1. Thanks, Eric!

        And you’re in TEXAS — isn’t that plenty of reason to give thanks?! #BornAndBredTexan 🙂

  4. My wife and I have both had some revelations about this recently. When I had open heart surgery several years ago, I was completely helpless, even to eat or go to the bathroom. The love and care my wife gave me then opened my eyes to what I had been experiencing without really giving it the attention it deserved: she REALLY LOVES ME! Her care had been there for years, but it took me getting knocked down completely to open my eyes fully to her love.

    Our older son recently got engaged. His obvious love for his bride to be got him to quit a job and move across the country to be near her and to be able to marry sooner. After observing him, my wife said she finally realized that all the depth of love she saw in her son was the same as she saw in her husband. She just needed to be able to step back and see me a bit differently.

    I think we get caught up in the familiar, the daily grind, the usual. I know I do. But whenever I stop and think about it, I say to myself, ” She is the most amazing woman! Thank You, God, for blessing me with this wonderful wife.” Flaws? What flaws? It’s like the old hymn says, “Count your blessings, nam them one by one.”

  5. That is an amazing life verse. I am so sorry for her family and friends, left behind.
    I have to say that when I have read Song of Songs, I must’ve skimmed over that line, or at least not thought of it for any length of time, because reading it on your blog, it felt new to me.
    This week during my quiet time, I felt the word ‘perfection’ pressing on me, specifically my ‘perfectionism’ and feeling like I need to be perfect, to be loved. God showed me this verse Hebrews 10:14 ‘for by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified’. So I then started thinking about how to find the balance between ‘needing to be perfect to feel His love’ and ‘behaving perfectly because of His love’. Obviously, we are not going to achieve true perfection in this lifetime, but the next verse I came to was Jeremiah 31:33 ‘I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ – which made me realise that because I am His, He has put in my heart and mind a desire to do the right things, the perfect things. And then in Jeremiah 31:34 ‘for I will forgive them their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more’. Which spoke to me of God’s grace in those moments when I do not quite make the ‘perfect’ standard. So those three verses together somehow worked for me.
    Then, I listened a podcast which referenced the song ‘Flawless’ by Mercy Me, about how we are made flawless by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. And now, I am reading your blog post, it seems like this is too much for it all to be a coincidence!
    Thank you for helping me to cast my eyes outward and instead of looking at myself, I will be looking at the lovely perfection of my spouse when he gets home from work today!

  6. Thanks for writing this, J. It made me think of two things. One is a practice I started when my husband and I first met, even before we were married. God prompted me to start a list (in this case a file on my computer) where I write down little things I love about my now-husband. Whether it’s something he said, did, shared with me, whatever, something positive that reminded me what a great and special man he is. Sometimes it’s little stuff, like the day a stylist cut my hair way too short, and I was upset to the point of tears. I usually frown on being girlie, but my hair is the one exception. Many guys would have been like, “What’s your problem, it’s just hair, it grows back,” but my man held me, and didn’t dismiss my unhappiness. That went in there. Last year when he battled cancer, I wrote down someof the thigns he said or did that stood out to me, and some of them were very deep, serious things. I use that file on those days when I’m frustrated or angry with him, when the Enemy tries to tell me that our relatively new marriage is more trouble than it’s worth. I look at that list and remind myself what an amazing man God has given me. Believe me, it’s helped. Speaking of that cancer battle, Bob’s post made me think of it. My husband was sicker than I’ve ever seen anyone, unable to do a lot of basic tasks for himself, needing meds every four hours to control the violent illness that came with his aggressive chemotherapy. But even during that, he was my prince. That’s what I call him. Even at the worst, I was able to look at him and remind him that he was far more than a cancer patient, he was still my prince, and all that word implies for me. Is he perfect? Heavens no! Neither of us are. But you’re right, loves sees the imperfection, and chooses to still see that person as God sees them.

    1. Speaking of “to the point of tears,” that was beautiful. *wiping away the moisture from my eyes* I pray that your husband has a full healing so that you can enjoy one another for a long time to come. Blessings!

  7. He is currently in remission, cancer-free. Praise God! We’re praying it stays that way. It really is a God thing, since last year the cancer was Stage Four metastatic, and his team didn’t have much hope. When his PET scan came back normal, his oncologist told him, “There’s nothing typical about your case.” His response was, “That’s because there’s nothing typical about my God.” So true!

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