In our living room is a CD player that can handle five discs at once. I like to put as many CDs by one artists as I can fit into the player and hit the button that will scramble up the songs. Lately, I’ve been doing that to Point of Grace. I like to put them on when I’m cleaning, so I may be in the basement to “Jesus Will Still Be There” and my bedroom to “Yes, I Believe”.
I memorize songs (or at least choruses) pretty easily, so I can usually sing along to my favorites. The other day, however, I ran into a song I didn’t know. It’s called “Waiting in the Wings” and the refrain just floored me.
I believe
Though God is out of sight
He’s working in the middle of all things
Evil may have its time in the spotlight
But love is waiting in the wings
Love is always waiting in the wings
I’ve been on stage once or twice, so I know what “waiting in the wings” means. I had just never applied the sentiment to my life…or to my marriage.
See, I’ve been thinking about my marriage a lot lately. Kenny and I have been together about thirteen years and had our tenth anniversary this summer. Looking at us now, I can honestly call us best friends and partners.
It wasn’t always so. Evil didn’t rear its ugly head in any traditional form. I wasn’t an alcoholic or a porn star or an out and out adulteress. But I was…and still am…selfish. Kenny’s not very…oh, what’s the word? Flashy…or…exciting…and I spent most of the past decade looking for something, anything, to take the boredom away, to satisfy the craving for entertainment.
I hurt a lot of people along the way, most of all my husband. My life was a game of -Survivor- and I was lying and backstabbing left and right.
And then it happened. I fell in love.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to fall in love. I’d been so in love before that my brains fell out of my head and I couldn’t think straight. Love, to me, was dangerous. I wasn’t happy in my stupidly selfish existance, but at least I was in control.
Life…love…and God, had other plans. Love, real love, stepped out of the wings this summer and slowly began taking center stage. My sedentary, non flashy husband became something else. I saw him take care of problems for frantic customers and I began to see him as a man with solutions.
I watched Catherine Grace climb into his lap and suddenly I could envision watching him hold our own little Miracle.
When he printed off smiley face stickers for my five year old class, he became a man of ideas. When he held our smallest cat up to his face for some nuzzling, I saw him as someone solid, yes, but someone tender.
And boom, Love stepped out of the wings and into my heart.
I’m still selfish. I’m still a Princess, at least in my own mind. And yes, Johnny Depp is still an acceptable gift for any and all holidays. But love, real love, my love, resides in the form of a no longer average, no longer as boring man whom I’m proud to call my husband.
And life isn’t a game of -Survivor- anymore.
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