Last night I had an interesting, and corrective, experience.
I play guitar and bass with a local guitar club. Mostly just for the joy of making music with other people, and to improve our skills, but sometimes we get to play out, for one event or another. Last night, we had the joy of playing for one of our own, a wedding reception for one of our members.
This is not a group of 20-somethings. They would not likely know the songs. We are not ALL my age, there is a pretty good range, but at 62, I fit right in. I find it fascinating that in the few short years I have been part of this group, this is the third wedding. That seems more prolific than among the groups of those 20-somethings I hung with 35+ years ago!
We got fairly late in the evening, after playing most of the fairly hard rockers we know, into the slow dance music. “Unchained Melody” among them. And several of our players left the stage to dance. A good and joyous thing. We have enough folks playing.
My internal response was one of longing. In my 20’s, I had contemplated with joy the prospect of passionately, physically, loving a woman I had loved for 40, 50 or more years. I had that modeled for me. I knew it was not a wildly unobtainable goal.
I didn’t get there.
A badly broken long-term marriage, 30 years spread over 2 marriages with 2 divorces and many separations, even a good bit of striving to salvage something after the second divorce. Some folks reading will know the story.
But last night, while feeling good about the couples dancing, I felt an intense longing – not primarily for my former wife, but for that state – that relationship. And with that longing, the beginnings of feeling rather sorry for myself.
“Damn. I missed THAT”
But before that thought could slip in to full victim-mode, almost before the thought was fully voiced, a second thought appeared:
“Eric, you know, she missed it, too”
This is nothing about blame. That lies where it lies, I have had years where I wrestled with it from one direction, and then from the other. I am content that it lies both ways.
Neither is it an impetus towards a reconciliation attempt. That has been tried since the late 1980s, never with lasting success. I finally got a clue. It is not going to happen in this world, and I have no desire to act under the illusion that it can. This thought does not lead there.
But S loved to dance. She loved family gathering and celebration. She has lost almost all of that. Probably more than I did.
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The point of this story is not some romantic indulgence.
Instead, it is a real-life example of what I usually mean by hearing “the voice of God”
The correction was to my sinking into a morass of self-pity, by calling my attention to another, similarly afflicted.
God can say anything – or anything consistent with Himself. This is not about WHAT was said, but how.
And the need to listen. My need to keep my ears open. My will desirous of hearing that voice.
And that it is good. Good for me, Good in general. It is a voice steeped in “good”
The “still, small voice” is usually what I mean be hearing God.
Staying open to it is a good thing.
Random Musings 