Regrets

If it is possible, listen to these two songs while reading this little post...

“The Crane Wife 1 & 2” by the Decemberists and “Long Ride Home” by Patty Griffin.

When I first began attending my church (15 years ago) there was an older couple.

I don’t remember her very well. Honestly, I don’t remember her at all... She died soon after we began sitting in those wooden pews.

I do remember the man. He had a metal fabricating business and he did several projects for the church.

But that isn’t what I remember most about him.

One day I went over to his house to talk over some project, and we chatted a little before I left. Standing there, leaning against his pickup, I saw a pain rise up in his eyes I had never noticed before.

He looked hard at me, cleared his throat, and gave me some advice.

“Don’t forget to be gentle,” he said. “It’s easy to get busy, to do the things a man does to support his home, and take his wife for granted. Be sure to stop frequently and really look at the woman in the kitchen.”

Someone dug a hole six long feet in the ground
I said goodbye to you and I threw my roses down
Ain't nothing left at all in the end of being proud
With me riding in this car, and you flying through the clouds

I never looked at him the same way again. Whenever I shook his hand on Sunday morns, or in the produce section of the grocery, I saw a tightness about his eyes, a deep pain. Regret.

One day I took your tiny hand
Put your finger in the wedding band
Your daddy gave a piece of land
We laid ourselves the best of plans
Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed
Forty years of things you say you wish you'd never said
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead
I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red

I’ve a friend in pain right now. A good man. A man I respect, who loves his family and is one of the greatest educators I have ever met.

He and I have been praying together.

His younger daughter, a sweet child now with a baby of her own, is in an abusive relationship. Her controlling, angry husband watches her every move, keeping her from making friends, from having money, from making phone calls.



My crane wife arrived at my door in the moonlight
All starbright and tongue-tied I took her in
We were married and bells rang sweet for our wedding
And our bedding was ready and we fell in

Sound the keening bell
And see it's painted red
Soft as fontanelle
The feathers in the thread
And all I ever meant
To do was to keep you
My crane wife
My crane wife
My crane wife

We were poorly, our fortunes fading hourly
And how she loved me, she could bring it back
But I was greedy, I was vain and I forced her to weaving
On a cold loom in a closed room, down the hall



Men are beasts. I suppose women are also. We are all fallen creatures. But men have too much control for their own good, for their level of maturity.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. --Ephesians 5:25-28

There is a reason our Lord made certain these words got to us. Men are beasts.

I think one of the reasons for teaming up such different creatures, a man and a woman, is that there are things we each bring to the table, things we need to learn from each other.

Men are hunters. We were designed to scan the horizon, to spot the herds, to track the prey and grasp our destinies. We were designed to look ahead and take control, and plan the fortunes of our homes and families. We look to the future more easily.

Women nurture. They notice the growing things, the pace of life, the way certain foods heal, the things necessary for warmth and comfort and beauty. They look at the now more easily.

Men are good at dragging the bloodied carcass home and flinging it onto the linen and thumping our chests in victories won.

But we need taming. we need someone to tell us to pick our ephods off the bathroom floor and to wash the grime from our calloused hands.

Now the best of men, the perfect man, was a gentle man. He loved deeply and knew how to salve wounds. But he also knew how to stand firm, to show strength, solidity firm enough to support the foundations of a universe.

“Husbands, love your wives...”

We were made larger, stronger, faster. These are gifts, useful tools granted to us so we may better lead, and support.

But being the head of a household is not the same as being a tyrant.

“Husbands, love your wives...”

We need gentling. We need to remember the light in the eyes of the woman we fell in love with and keep that spark glowing, keep that spark bright, so it may light the darkening years of age.

So we don’t end our lives regretting words spoken, deeds done and undone.