Our Song

	Truth or Consequences Chapter One Our Song
		Decisions today may force us to tip the scales between our faith and our family tomorrow.

Vince Gill sang a hit country song several years ago entitled "When I Call Her Name". The song begins:

“I rushed home from work, as I always do.
I spent my whole day just thinking of you.
When I walked through the front door, my whole life was changed,
‘cause nobody answered when I called your name.”

This song may as well have been written just for me, but the fact that the song was such a great hit must mean that many other people have felt the sting of someone leaving them. Later in the song, Vince Gill continues with his misery:

“Oh the lonely sound of my voice calling is driving me insane,
and just like rain my tears keep calling,
but nobody answers when I call your name.”

There are many reasons why people come to the agonizing decision to leave someone with whom they have spent the better part of their lives, and whom they have loved for as long as they can remember. Some leave because they find themselves in an abusive marriage. Some leave because of infidelity, and some leave just because they have fallen out of love with the one whom they once loved. Was I one of these monsters who abused my wife and my children? Was I one of the many men who succumbed to infidelity? Was I one who did not provide for my family? Did we fall out of love with each other? The answer to all of these questions is no.

What destroys a marriage is sometimes much more complicated than one might imagine. The forces that can destroy a marriage can come from outside of one’s marriage. Those forces can slip into the marriage like a thief and come to you in the middle of the night to steal your thoughts instead of your money. Steal your confidence instead of your jewelry. A thief that steals your ability to reason instead of your silverware. A thief that can, in fact, steal your very soul.

The 1960’s were a turbulent time for America. The Vietnam War was raging. Civil unrest was everywhere as people protested the war. Racial tensions in the south were dividing the country. People were forced to reexamine who they were and what they stood for. Those who were different racially or politically were not tolerated. Men who had great hopes and dreams such as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were eliminated. In order to survive, it was important to conform to the climate one was in.

I had my own dreams for the future as I left high school. I met and fell in love with my high school sweetheart and we talked of our future together. We talked of having children and growing old together. My dream became OUR DREAM. Because we were different, we knew it would not be easy.

She was Japanese and I, Caucasian. She was from a family with a much different culture than mine. She was raised by parents who remembered the cruelty of Caucasians who took everything they owned and sent them away to relocation camps during World War 11.They were from a culture that saw me as the enemy, not a future son-in-law. They loved their daughter, but were only able to see the pain and the heartache that would come from an inter-racial marriage. We could not see what they saw, however. We were young and in love and could only see a bright and wonderful future together. They say that love is blind, but in our case, we would have been happy to remain blind and in love forever.

And why wouldn’t we remain in love forever? We stood together as one and would not allow the different cultures to distract us. We would not allow public opinion of inter-racial marriage to deter us. And we would not allow even her parents’ insistence that we not see each other, destroy the love we had for each other. We made a vow that nothing in Heaven or on Earth would separate us.

So, when I returned home from work one day after thirty years of a wonderful marriage to find that my lovely wife, Janice, and our daughter had moved out of the house, one would think I would be surprised. The truth is, I had driven them out of our house. There were things I had been learning for years that were slowly driving them away from me and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

Suddenly, I was in an empty house with no one to welcome me home. No more would there be the sweet kiss from Janice as I walked through the door. No more would there be the smell of dinner cooking on the stove. No more would there be the warmth of her body next to mine. I felt like a man who had come home to find that his family had been torn from him in a terrible accident. I would lie in bed wondering if there was any way that I could have prevented this. I would wake up, listening to the sounds of the house and imagine that she had come back to me. I would dream the dreams of a man who wanted everything back to the way it was. The way it was supposed to be.

As with many young couples, Janice and I had “Our Song". The song was "So Much In Love". The words were perfect for us.

“As we stroll along together,
holding hands, walking all alone,
So in love that we two just can’t wait to say I do,
so in love, so much in love.”

What had happened to change our song? Something had separated our love and our song was replaced with Vince Gill’s song,

“When I walked through the front door,
my whole life was changed,
‘cause nobody answers when I call your name.”