A Fighting Man

Well, you took me in, you stole my heart,
I cannot roam no more.
Because love, it stays within you,
It does not wash up on a shore.
But a fighting man forgets each cut
Each knock, each bruise, each fall,
But a fighting man cannot forget
Why his love don't roam no more.

(Love Don't Roam, Murray Gold)


My wife stole my heart the moment I met her.  We met in an elevator (I'm serious).  We were going to the same floor, the same place actually.  She struck up a conversation and then I just followed her around for the day.  We had coffee, she played me a song she wrote on her guitar.  I was hooked from there and just kept following her around. 

We've been married for almost twelve years now.  We live in a very nice house in a great community with three truly awesome children. From there to here, we've spent a lot of time together.  But along the way, we've experienced many of the ups and downs that good couples do.  We've learned a lot, we've grown up a little (I hope), we've lifted each other up, we've let each other down, we've fought and we've made-up.  We try.  We're together.  Because at the heart of it, we very much love each other and both feel quite fortunate to have found one another. We're better together.  I'm better because of her.

As it should be I suppose...the grand design of marriage for two to become a better, more complete, one.  Yet I've been surprised over the years by how truly difficult marriage is.  Two people aren't just added together.  Marriage is not a sandwich or a cake mix.  Two become one flesh.  That changes your DNA.  And so maybe it shouldn't come as such a surprise that it can be hard and painful at times.  You remember the man you used to be...sometimes you may even long to be that person..and yet you're no longer that person.  Two people are being spiritually fused and recreated into a new thing.  And you find that Love has changed you and its constantly recreating you into a better man.  

You forget the cost if you remember what you have gained.  It's not that it doesn't hurt.  We know it does.  But if I focus on the prize itself, Love, any hurt along the way doesn't seem that bad.  Remembering Love has a way of rounding out the edges.  I suspect (though obviously could never really know) that childbirth is much that way.  If my wife had truly remembered the pain of our first, we might never have had our second or third.  Because truly wonderful things are worth the cost.  She looks at the magic of her children and each knock and bruise (contraction) slips away.  The pain was worth the price.  So too Love.  

And yet I do forget.  I love my wife.  But too often I forget (or at least its not front-of-mind).  I spend too much time fighting with her when I should be fighting for her. And maybe fighting for Love is just that simple.  It's a constant, active and unrelenting remembering of the wonder of her.     

Love doesn't roam.  We do.  At the very least, we forget its there and alive and wonderful.   We stray from it, sometimes running in its opposite direction, instead of being in its Presence.  But it's the process of remembering it that brings us back to it.  And when we're in that place, we're compelled to act for Love out of Love.  A fighting man digs and claws and spits blood for Love in times of war AND peace.  Being in the moment, every moment, battling for Love.  Ever-present with Love.  That's the place I most want to be and stay.  So this man is going to pick some more 'fights'.