My grandmother was a terrible cook. In her youth, she inexplicably lost her sense of smell and taste. Henceforth, everything she ever made on a stove or in an oven tasted like crap. Of course, she no longer cared, so the loss really wasn't hers. However, I remember an awful lot of burnt cookies, dried out pork chops, and Spaghetti-O's that had more flavor than the meat she cooked. I never could figure out why grandpa put ketchup on everything, until I tried her food without it.
My parents often took us camping when we were kids. One year, my grandparents joined us at Lake Norfork in northern Arkansas. As we sat down to a meal at the concrete picnic table, my grandpa said grace, and we began to eat. A few moments later, grandma stopped and a tear rolled down her cheek. After a moment of concern from the rest of us, she smiled and said, "I tasted that."
From then on, she enjoyed her food much more than had in fifty years, but her cooking never improved. But at the very least, she knew how bad she was and dinner out was a much more frequent occurrence. The interesting thing was the look she got in her eye on that day of camping. It was recognition, longing, relief, all rolled into one. Three wars, three sons, and seven grandchildren had come along in absence of her senses, but that long hiatus was not enough to erase her memory.
I believe this is true of many things and a little perspective can go a long way. In my grandmother's case, knowing what she was missing was as simple as knowing what was there. In the case of Henry's wife, finding out who she wasn't was a matter of finding out who she could be.
I know I came at this topic from the wrong direction, but I wanted to illustrate the point that we may think we know who we are and that we are the masters of all we survey. The truth is, all we really know is what we were yesterday. We are the sum of our experiences and we have no idea how high we can reach until someone, or something, shows us what can yet come to pass.
Henry has been smiling more lately, and that vacant look he used to have when his friends were not distracting him has faded to all the relevance of a shadow in a dark room. I'm not the type to pry, but I did ask him how things were going and he was all too happy to share how his life has changed. For ten minutes I listened to him and I was proud for him. Not only in the complete one-eighty that has occurred between he and his wife, but in his willingness to hold out just one more day. He took the worst he could ever imagine and then took a little more. In the end, we find that his diligence has paid off.
What it comes down to, friends, is that he decided to make a change. He decided that he wasn't going to be unhappy. Not with his wife, but with himself. His trials had turned him into a person he didn't respect. After a long look in the mirror, he made the choice to be different, better. Rather than trying to change the things about his wife that caused him grief, he changed the things that he allowed to cause him grief. When his wife saw that he was choosing to be happy in spite of their troubles, she made that same self examination, and made choices that were tough for her too.
As one could have only predicted had her love for him been certain, their relationship was more important to her than all of the insecurities and pride that drove her behavior just a few short months ago. What she stood to lose was of far more value than what she so ardently protected, and it wasn't until it was on the way out the door (literally) that she made a change.
The love of a person isn't something to which we're entitled, nor is it something we're granted. It is something we're extended in the way we receive hospitality from a host. It can be abused and, with a little effort, rescinded. We never own the love of another and sometimes we can forget that in a relationship. It's especially easy to do when we are so certain of another's love that we begin to view it as a convenience to be used when and how we desire. But that's a mistake of colossal magnitude.
Viewing our spouse, lover, girlfriend or boyfriend as anything other than an equal person with equally important needs and wants is to put them on a shelf. In the times when they are not convenient, they are viciously aware of it, make no mistake. They can feel the vacuum of love as acutely as a knife pressed slowly and steadily into their flesh.
That was the pain Henry bore with exceptional dignity. When he stepped out of the place in which he'd been put, he became free. He was free to love his wife for the things she was, rather than to lament the things she could not be as long as she kept him in that place. And in his freedom, she found beauty. And it was a beauty in which she decided she wanted to bask. Being free of the obligation to love each other, they have again found the desire to love each other.
For as long as we wish to love someone, we will always find ways to show them that love.
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