Girl They Stole Away

GIRL THEY STOLE AWAY 
Hey do you remember Sending these words to me 
Sometimes I had to wonder
If I would ever be enough 
Said that this would show me 
The kind of man you need
By these words I'll live my life.......
The strength of a man is not in
How hard he hits
But in how tender he can touch
The strength of a man is not in
How many women he has loved
But in how true he can be to
The one he's trying to love
CHORUS:
All of this I'm going to be
Man enough to find the girl
The boys have stole away
The boys have stole away........
Given so many bitter kisses
Sometimes you swear your through
Late at night you wonder
If this love will make a fool of you
Oh do you remember
Someone sending these words to you.......
The strength of a love is not in
The burning of a bridge
It's in the turning of a page
Do you remember us
Could it be just you and me
Regardless I am here
Despite the ghost you bring
Because through you I've learned
Strength of a man is not in
The deep tone of his voice
It's in the gentle words he whispers
Whispers in your ear
Strength of a man is not in How he makes love
But in the understanding
That there is more to making love
Than just making love....
CHORUS: All of this I'm going to be
Man enough to find the girl
The boys have stole away.........
The boys have stole away........

The Girl They Stole Away is about loving someone who has been hurt by those who came before that is almost always the case in the age of dating. Our current “Dating” Culture has brought with it so many troubles into marriage and relationships. We have miniature marriages that end in miniature divorces, or pseudo-marriages that end in pseudo-divorces, and for hearts designed to love one person forever the damage can be invisible yet significant. Any time we run against the design for our minds, our bodies, our hearts, our spirits, we experience pain in those areas to hold us back from doing more damage to ourselves.
This is why the dating world is defined by the term Heart “Ache”, as an ache is a warning sign giving by the Creator that something inside is being damaged and there needs to be safety and healing or the place in pain will not be able to perform its role. Somehow along the way we have come to find acceptable and to expect a myriad of breakups and heartaches on the road to marriage, an unavoidable tragedy. Somehow we have come to expect a partial heart or a broken heart from our spouse instead of a whole heart. Somehow we have to come to expect a haunted house when we look into their eyes for all of the ghosts they brought along from the past. Somehow this is normal and acceptable for our daughters and our sons and for ourselves? Somehow, no longer having much heart left to give the one who has promised to love us until the bitter sweet end is now acceptable to?
“But under the skinned knees, and the skid marks, at the place where you use to learn. You listen for the echo of angels who won’t return. You’re waiting for someone to put you together, you’re waiting on someone to push you away, there is always something more you wish he would say. There is always another, wound to discover. He is everything you want, he is everything you need, he says all the right things, at exactly the right time. But he means nothing to you and you don’t know why, but he means nothing to you an d you don’t know whyy.” Vertical Horizon
Dating wasn’t always how people found a Covenant Partner to share their lives and their hearts with, and years of loneliness between biological readiness for marriage and emotional/social readiness for marriage was not always the case either, and no I’m not referring to arranged marriages which were only common amongst the extremely wealthy to maintain the wealth of their families. Strangely enough though, as we reject arranged marriage as a culture because it is based on obtaining wealth at the cost of a heart, we support dating, which is based on obtaining wealth at the cost of a heart. The reasons we as a culture delay marriage and with it, delay getting ready for marriage and delay preparing our children to be ready for marriage one day, is because wealth has become our priority.
Dating began with the car culture among the wealthy who owned vehicles, and continued with young men and women in large numbers living apart from their parents or their spouses or pseudo family such as military unit or a nunnery, for the first time in history with the Industrial Revolution. Feeding the sheep to the wolves of the world became acceptable if it was in pursuit of the dollar for the next sheep. Families were willing to be separated from their children in order to send them to the cities to work in factories so they could send money home which left these young people to find a life partner all on their own, without the guidance or protection of those who loved them most.
Now instead of the factory we send them off to colleges for the same reasons, wealth. Since the preparation is for college, we neglect to train them to be spouses and parents, and since nobody lives where they grew up, no one has to worry about their character or reputation and can treat other hearts as they feel like in the moment. Since wealth became the priority, marriage (the family) took a backseat, and was delayed until the degree was achieved or one found a spouse who could earn double the income of the female factory work, which became significantly more difficult in time women in the workplace drastically increased prices and reduced available jobs for men.
As always however, the Creator had a better way. In the time that Scripture was written there was no dating, there wasn’t even Courtship, there was only Betrothal. As society became more scattered however and people began to marry strangers, Courtship became a necessity of sorts. Both Betrothal and Courtship simply mean that the intention of spending time with others of the opposite sex is marriage with the protection and guidance of those that love you, not entertainment or cheap sex or hearts to break and be broken by before those same hearts are promised later. A future book I am working on, “Redeemed, Lessons on Courtship from the Book of Ruth” will cover Courtship, but Joshua Harris has some good works on this subject such as “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and “Say Hello to Courtship”.
“The Girl They Stole Away” was written in High School, or at least when I should have been in High School. I failed the 11th Grade and dropped out of High School because I was working two jobs just to financially survive without parents in my life, but eventually homeschooled myself. Between the time I left High School and joined the Air Force I met a girl unlike anyone I had ever met until that day in my life, she was an artist like myself, well, she was a Backwoods Picasso and I was as Trailer Park Poet. She was the first girl I had ever known who didn’t think that being a “real man” required fixing cars, or throwing footballs, or cleaning a deer rifle. Our first date was the first bookstore I had ever been to in my life, it was over an hour drive from both our towns to get there, as both our towns didn’t have so much as a coffee shop in the entire county as we lived 100 miles apart, an artistic wasteland. I brought my lyrics and she brought her paintings, and I had coffee for the first time in my life that didn’t say “Folgers” on the side of the can. We had a short but intense romance and she received a full scholarship to Memphis College of Art where I had wanted to attend but had to join the military to pay for college instead. I joined the Air Force and moved to Nashville to pursue songwriting afterwards while she ended up with a career in California working for Opera Houses designing their sets in some major cities, brilliant as a painter.
This song came about through a poem she had given me one day as I was worried that I wasn’t “manly enough” for her, which has been a recurring theme in my life. The name of the poem was ‘The Strength of a Man”. I have it in a box stowed away somehow or the other but a line from the poem was: “The strength of a man is not in How hard he hits But in how tender he can touch The strength of a man is not in How many women he has loved But in how true he can be to The one he's trying to love Strength of a man is not in How he makes love But in the understanding That there is more to making love Than just making love....” The author of that poem was unknown, but it was life changing and shows the power of words. The rest of the lyrics I added myself, as part of the song is obviously the poem. The song itself is about loving someone who has been hurt, who has had so many pieces of their heart broken off to be given to those that did not handle it with care that they are afraid to share it with a man that could handle it well.
When we reach a certain point in our lives, we just have this bag of broken heart pieces when collect off the floor where others have left them, and hand them to someone we hope we can trust, knowing that if they drop the bag nothing will be left but dust, and also knowing that this bag of busted pieces is much less than they deserve. Part of loving someone who has been hurt is handling the pieces with care, each individual piece of who they are, handling those like a prized museum display instead of busted China in the dust pan, that is the sacred duty of loving someone who has been hurt, a “Girl They Stole Away”. The struggle of this sacred duty is the daily reminder that it is still a heart worth having, and that you want ALL of their heart, instead of one little piece at a time, that you will take the shiny parts and the dusty parts and the crumbled parts, just as they are. The hard part is waiting on the polishing for the presentation of the small part they will try to offer as the whole until the breakthrough comes in an honest moment, then the next day when they snatch in back, and then the next moment comes when they share double as before, then one day its whole.

(Lyrics in Red taken from a Poem by an Unknown Author)

Prayer for Girl They Stole Away

Father of Every Daughter

We ask that you forgive us for how we have broken the Hearts of your Daughters

We ask that you Restore the integrity of the words Trust, and Honor and Love

We ask for Stronger Hearts, Kinder Hands, and more Loyal Eyes

We ask for the “Wisdom of Tenderness” and the Courage in Pursuing

We ask for better men for our own Daughters than we have Been

We ask for Sons that walk not in our Sins

We ask you for Second Chances at being Brothers, Fathers and Husbands Again

“In the same way, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Though they are weaker partners, honor them as equal heirs of the grace of life. In this way, your prayers will not be hindered.” 1 Peter 3:7

Resource: “Priceless” by King and Country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkJ2B9kHHk