It’s amazing how you can know someone for so long, yet not know them nearly as well as you should for the time you’ve spent together. As my wife and I began to take our first steps together on the restoration road, we got to experience what very few couples ever find. We got to fall in love all over again. We got to discover once more, what it was about this person, compared to all the billions on the earth, that made being together so right.
Every day was literally like living a dream. I walked around with a dumb grin on my face and made statements like, “I am the luckiest and most blessed man on the planet,” for several weeks, at least. It was even better than I had pictured things being while we were apart, and what I had pictured had been awfully good. I’m sure some people got tired of it, but people were mostly happy for us, especially those who really knew what had been going on.
There was also a part of me that kept being afraid that it really was a dream and that waking up was inevitable. I am well aware of the old saying that, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.” I wanted it to be true, and I didn’t have any reason to believe that any of it was fake, but I was still nervous that somehow, it was all going to blow up in my face. Even some of my friends, although they were happy that we were back together, kind of kept their distance and watched, as though they didn’t believe it was real, or they thought that at some point, some other shoe was going to drop.
As was so often the case, God used a song to speak to me. I like to listen to Pandora while I’m working out, and I have several stations. Which one I choose on any given day depends on my mood. I don’t always pay attention to the songs, but on one particular day, I found myself hearing lyrics that sounded like they were describing me. The song was “So Far Away,” by Staind, and it says,
This is my life, it’s not what it was before
All these feelings I’ve shared
And these are my dreams
That I’d never lived before
Somebody shake me
‘Cause I, I must be sleeping
Now that we’re here, it’s so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
And all the mistakes one life contained
They all finally start to go away
These are my words
That I’ve never said before
I think I’m doing’ okay
And this is the smile
I’ve never shown before
Somebody shake me
‘Cause I, I must be sleeping
I’m so afraid of waking
Please don’t shake me
Now that we’re here, it’s so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
And all the mistakes one life contained
They all finally start to go away
And now that we’re here, it’s so far away
And I feel like I can face the day
And I can’t forget that I’m not ashamed
To be the person that I am today
The song inspired me to begin to let go of all the fears and the bad memories. Instead of being afraid of waking and finding that it was only a dream, I could acknowledge all the changes and celebrate how different things were now. Hope is always stronger than fear, just like joy is so much more powerful than sorrow.
I realized that we had a whole new world open to us, and we could make a brand new life of our own choosing. We didn’t have to be bound to our past mistakes, and we weren’t doomed to repeat them. We could move forward as a brand new couple. We were familiar with each other, but we were now going to get to know each other on a much deeper level than ever before.
The Restoration Tour 