I Believed
I BELIEVED
I believed
In the power of a lonely smile
I believed
That just this one kiss
Could light the skies
If we really wished (this moment would never die)
Tomorrow became today
Then you wouldn’t know me
Cause there’s a child inside of me
Broken boy you had yet to see
All the love he’s never known
Is the wind that kept him froze
But he could have burned for you
If you wanted him too
But he could have burned so bright for you
Did you want him too???
Chorus: We said Let us burn the skies Let us melt these walls tonite
And the door that we’ve kept closed
Blocks the hallways that leads us home
And all the love we’ve never known
Is waiting just down the road
Is waiting just down the road
But that Road didn’t lead us Home
-You relived
The night your stars were stole
You relived
The times your tender hands were burned
By a kiss that lit the skies
And fluttered down into the sea
Did you really think (this night it would be right)
Tomorrow would never become today
Then you wouldn’t have held onto me
Cause there’s a place beside of me
That you would never like to stay
All the memories you came to see unfroze
Didn’t let you stand too close
But could you have rested safe yes, you
If you really wanted too
But you could have been blessed in this place yes, you
If you had wanted too
Oh did you ever want him too??
Chorus: We said Let us burn the skies
Let us melt these walls tonite
And the door that we’ve kept closed
Blocks the hallway that leads us home
And all the love we’ve never know
Is waiting just down the road
Is waiting just down the road
But that Road didn’t lead us Home
I Believed is my song about co-dependence and love in an isolated society. Sometimes a person who has lost nearly everyone can hold on very tightly to those few who remain in their life, or a person in our society that is more aware than others of just how unnaturally alone we all are, a burden carried by this generation but by few others in History. If we look through the past generations of humanity we cannot find a more isolated generation than this generation. We as Generation X or Generation Y Americans often have only one sibling if any siblings at all to share life with, few aunts and uncles, grandparents that live across the country and are barely seen, and many even suffer from the lack of a parent after a divorce. This is coupled with a dating culture instead of a courtship culture that looks as the opposite sex and an opportunity for either sex or entertainment but not as a possible future spouse.
This has led to many of the social ills of our society. Latch key kids and day cares and abandoned children or abandoned spouses and abandoned parents in one form or another, separated from those designed to rely on them, has led to child abuse of every form and to drug addiction and alcoholism and date rape and suicide and pornography and abortions and bulimia and anorexia drive by shootings that can all be traced back to our isolation.
This ungodly isolation is literally killing a generation of Americans. The solutions are not easy though, they require an emotionally expensive prospect called “Community” which will cost us some very valued independence in exchange for interdependence, some pride in exchange for humility, some freedom in exchange for duty, and some opportunities in exchange for some stability. The Creator never intended for each man to be “an island unto himself “as Milton so eloquently penned in “Paradise Lost” in fact, He intended for families with wives and husbands and mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and grandparents and cousins.
These are the Creator’s intentions in place of daycares and public schools and nursing homes and psychiatrists and prostitutes and short order cooks and waitresses and babysitters and police officers and lawyers and family court judges and social workers. These are all the places in our lives we have had to pay to fill as a society that is simply too busy chasing dollars to be concerned with hearts, but all things bought with money cannot replace what should have been freely given in a family sharing life as the Creator intended. Children cannot be taught life when there is no one around to teach them.
“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:7
I Believed is essentially the story of my love life in a very condensed version. It’s an endless string of six week car crash romances marked by months and years of absolute solitude in the middle which leads to a thirst for companionship and the longer we are unloved the more unloveable and more scarred we become. This thirst for companionship could be likened to drinking salt water, it just makes you more thirsty and leaves you making terrible decisions a well hydrated person wouldn’t. For many this thirst for love has been mediated by family growing up, by friends in adulthood, these sips of affection throughout the week through phone calls from mom or dinner and a movie with friends that kept a lonely single from dipping their canteen off the side of the life raft. Others have always had the reassurance that love will simply be there waiting when they want it, because of their good looks or their charm or their well-paying job or because wherever they went there was always a new stranger ready and willing to pour love into them.
This simply isn’t the life that some have been given, instead they were born with or fell into “This Desert Life” as the Counting Crows sing about, a life that seems to require getting love whenever and however it can be found for the survival of the heart and mind, because living without it is a slow way to die that cripples every limb in life they try to move. Sometimes there has been little history of love in the past, there have been miles and miles of dry spells and sometimes even years of scorched Earth, so when lonely hearts like these find a fountain or sometimes even a muddle puddle, they are very reluctant to leave no matter how muddy the waters.
Those who have spent their years within eyesight of a fountain have never known the thirst for love so they often don’t understand why the choices of those who haven’t seem to not make sense, and the same goes for those who have had guarantees of a fountain wherever they travel. It cannot be explained to those who have never experienced it, and it cannot be forgotten by those who have walked it out. As the Fray sings “Happiness, feels a lot like sorrow, you have to let it be because you can’t make it come or go. And you are gone for now, and gone for now, sounds a lot like gone for good. Happiness, is never meant to hold. Happiness is like the old man told me, live your life and maybe, you’ll wake up one and she’ll be home”.
As I wrote above, we were never intended to live this way, one of the first generations in History to live alone for years on end between leaving our parent’s home at adulthood and getting married sometime in our late 20’s or early 30’s often to only end up living alone or just with children all over again. There are means of coping such as going to Church, going to the movies, sitting in a bookstore or coffee shop, numerous Facebook friends, but at the end of the day when it is time to lay down there is still that haunted empty house to come home to. The spare pillow on the other side of the bed that taunts us, and the silent ache in the hearts of sitting in yet another room full of families that are living your dream.
The worst part of the Desert Life is that you have absolutely no timeline on when it is going to rain, rain could come on the next random Tuesday walking down the sidewalk, in the pew next to you one Sabbath morning a month from now, or next year in the laundry room of your next apartment, or it may finally arrive in a few dry decades when you have no more youth to offer a young love.
This thirst for love has definitely led me into some bad relationships that I wouldn’t have chosen if I wasn’t both the captain of my own ship and also drunk on the pain of loneliness, as I am sure it has all of us. I was married for 6 years which ended in a divorce that left me homeless, my reputation scarred from false accusations, my children without their father for a month and has been taking a significant portion of my income ever since. A few years later I was married in ceremony only for 8 weeks to a lady that I had met online and barely knew. This was sprinkled with 6 week car crash romances all throughout, some of which led into great friendships and some of which “lost a friend to the bitterness”. These are reasons from my life to find a community and stick close to them when you are in the valley of decision, even if they don’t understand you fully, they can care about you and won’t be blinded by the pains and by the fears that you are blinded by.
Focus on the Family has a great resource for singles, a series of podcasts call “Boundless” which helps people like you and I get our heads on straight.
http://www.boundless.org/ its free and it is a great compass when lost in the sea of empty years without many romantic lighthouses anywhere in the distance.
Never before has marriage been so hard to find, as never before have so few been seeking it out, and as never before have a people valued it so little as our Nation and our Churches have in these days of worshiping a very very lonely “Freedom”
Prayer for Those Who Believed
Creator of Second Chances
We come to you with Fractured Faith
Fractured Faith in ourselves, in our hopes, our thoughts, our loves, and even in You
We come to you with the Best Things Broken
Broken by Everything we thought would be our Salvation and Solid Ground
We aren’t sure if you will come Through
We are sure however that there is no other Glue
Cause everyone else failed to bring their cape to save the Day
We believed and it Broke Us
We had Hope but it Choked the Life from Us
We got nothing left but Desperation
We got nothing left but our Hearts on the Floor
We are nothing but the Children waiting on a Father just like You
We are wishing we didn’t live like Orphans,
but to take us Home or not is Up To You.
“In that day you will say: “I will give You thanks, ADONAI, for though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.”
Isaiah 12:1
Resource: “Waking The Dead” by John Eldredge
“Love and War” by John and Stasi Eldredge
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