Dark River

I awoke a little earlier than usual this morning... a bit after four a.m.

I took the dog for a walk. I went down to Molalla River State Park and walked along the river, out into the fields...

This is the same field where the Lord once spoke to me, telling me He understood what I was going through.

The silence was too much. Feeling in the darkness I carefully pulled my iPod out of my pocket, unwrapping the ear buds, placed them carefully in my ears (I have an infection in my right ear) and put some Amos Lee on, soft and low.

Woah, black river,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, black river,
gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

I watched the Willamette River flow through the darkness, as it has for centuries... and I wished I could cast my troubles into it. I wished that I could float away on it... away from the heartache that has me walking before the sun rises.

I raised my hands up to the darkness, singing loud to music only I heard... my dog scampering in the darkness,


and sang my heart to my Lord:

Woah, dear saviour,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, dear saviour,
gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

...and though I felt Him within my aching heart, I heard no reassuring voice, no mighty divine words ringing through my wringing heart...

The song moved on... a musical groaning about loss and heartache and the oblivion men sometimes find in a bottle:

I had tried that a week ago, drinking a half bottle of Merlot... but I'm not the drinking type and as soon as I felt a little tipsy I had set that bottle down and let my aching heart set the tempo for my ragged breaths.

Woah, sweet whiskey boy,
c'mon,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, sweet whiskey boy,
you're gon,
you're gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

Amos Lee's song swept up to that fevered pitched of soulful sadness and I sang loud in the empty acres the verse of pleading and prayer:

You're gonna take my bottle, my Bible, my mess.
You're gonna take all of my empty and my loneliness.
Gonna take all of the sadness inside of me,
gonna take it all and set me free.

And I went back home... two hours of walking and praying without a satisfying resolution...

When I arrived home I found that the local gang had tagged our fence, the second time in two weeks.

There was a police officer there, talking to my wife, and writing up the incident. Several cars had also been graffitied.

So I had my chores laid out for me again... a trip to Rodda Paint in Oregon City (they gave me one can free and wholesale price for the second gallon!).

But before I could start our dog had run off and we spent over two hours hunting him down. (He was sorry.)


Soon the task was done, while neighbors dropped by, commiserating and congratulating me on tackling it so quickly (the local paper even came by to get a photo of us covering the blemish left by the foolish young men).


These little irritants, tagged fence, an ear infection, a missing dog, seem a staccato beat to the rhythm of the troubles facing my home on a larger scale.

Yesterday a friend from church emailed me that there are rumors circulating about my wife and our marriage. I feared that it was because of my careless posts on my other blog, Job's Tale, but it turns out the source was simply speculation over her plastic smile on Sunday mornings and her obvious discomfort over the continual reminders of the fire which destroyed our church, the flames sparked by my son.

I am more than a little irritated at these gossips. I am praying to my Lord, going to a counselor, seeking advice and tearing at my own identity to reveal the flaws which have let my wife down, and these women, in the name of being concerned, threaten to discover, have actually imagined correctly, the troubles which plague my home!

The visit to the marriage counselor yesterday went as well as could be expected. On a scale of 1 to 10 she feels only a 4 or 5 to committing to repairing our broken relationship. She wants to go to the person she feels makes her happy, and he isn't me.

The psychologist told her that she would have to choose between him or me, that one can't have two relationships. She is holding this other man in reserve, asking him to wait six months while we sort things out...

Oh...

That hurts so much...

I can see that she is thinking it over, I think she may choose me...

But I represent responsibility and work and failures and guilt and shame...

So I'm thinking about me... for I cannot change her, and wonder what it is I can do to make certain that I see her for who she is... to be the sort of man, the sort of husband, I am supposed to be, even if those changes are not in time for her.

I am the sort of guy who is always holding conflicting, sometimes opposing, ideas in my head, seeking to find solutions where many simply grasp a single paradigm... faith and science, art and engineering, what I think I am and who I might truly be.

And so I am spending a great deal of effort in examining my assumptions, the beliefs I have about the sort of man I am, seeking the honest truth.

And that honesty often hurts.

And so I listen to music that fits my mood, fits my circumstances, moving from classical to jazz, country to blues.

And I see that black river... the one running through my life... and I wish I could float away on its deceptively smooth waters.