A Cry for Help

I don't know how to receive the love that my husband has to offer. This is something that is breaking my heart and I feel is ever so slowly choking our relationship. I feel trapped by his consistent acceptance of me. Does this all seem backwards? That's what I keep thinking. I have a wonderful, healthy marriage and yet somehow I feel "too loved". What?!
I have expressed how I feel that I have lost myself. In this feeling of being lost, my husband still comes home to find me beautiful, captivating and the love of his life. This makes me feel terrible. I do not feel worthy of this love. Especially when inside I feel like a horrible, boring, wretched woman. I have done nothing to deserve this kind of love. I have no way to repay him. Or even to make it seem worthwhile for him to invest all this time and effort into taking care of me and being my "knight in shining armor".
We had a discussion tonight. It came up that I felt like he was a knight and I was a prostitute. Him white and shining; me dirty and stuck in the mud. Through our discussion the question arose of how I have accepted Christ's love for me being an unworthy, sinful human. My answer brought me to tears. Christ knows me, inside and out. He knows I will mess up. But He knows my heart. He knows that even when I am a mess, I am trying. And He can see that I love Him, even when I don't know how to show it or I am not following His ways as much as I wish. He knows me. Besides that, it took me my whole life to accept His gift, to learn how to forgive myself. I had to be hit with harsh realities. It was only when I read that when we accept God's perfect forgiveness but fail to forgive ourselves that we are putting ourselves about God that I realized I didn't want to put myself as better than God. Above God. I didn't want to squander the gift He had given me. So I began to forgive, and let go of all those things that held me back from my relationship with Christ. It took me 2 years to grasp that concept from the day I read it until the day I was able to forgive myself and let go of all my pain. My husband asked if I could use some of those same principles when it came to how he loved me. I don't know how. Then there's the part that took me 25 years to get where I am today. God doesn't operate on a time scale. In 25 years, if that's how long it takes for me to accept my husband's love, will there even be any part of me left of the woman he loves?
To make matters worse, I have pet peeves, annoyances, and then genuine "problems" with my husband. Whenever we talk about these I ask him if he has any so called problems with me. If he does, he doesn't say so. He says no. It makes me feel like he thinks I am perfect. Which makes me feel horrible for ever thinking I'd like him to change a few things. Thus, we are stuck in a vicious cycle. Somehow, no matter how many times I get annoyed with him, his feelings aren't the ones hurt at the end of the night. Just me, because I feel so terrible to be accepted so unconditionally. To be looked at as though I have no dirt, no blemish, no scars.
Just as I look at my stretch marked, loose skinned, misshapen belly button, scared stomach and only see the damage of what used to be something beautiful, my husband sees his wife, who is still beautiful. I don't know how he does it. I don't know how he can still see something beautiful under all the scars. They aren't even faded yet. They are big and purple. Even old scars I thought that had faded now show up darker than before due to being stretched so thin.
I thought I had healed before I got married. I tried so hard. I worked everyday with my Maker, self assessing, healing, hoping, praying, opening up wounds to finally let out the infection within. And now, somehow, all those places I thought were healed, have begun to stretch thin and glow purple again.
If I can't find a way to see beauty when I look in the mirror, to see someone worth loving, to find the me I was proud to be, I will be the only one to blame for ruining the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I pour out my heart, because it is healing for me, and I share it with the world because God has given me the gift of being open with my life as a testimony for others. To help others. So friends, while it may be tempting to give me advice, to judge, or to try to convince me I am worthy, I just need prayer. Please pray. My husband deserves his wife. Please pray I find her soon.