Monthly Archives: July 2010

  I was watching this Indian gentleman chatting on his cell phone with the beautiful backdrop of the Salalah coast and I was thinking about how poetic it looked.  (You might have to zoom in to get a good look!)  I found myself wondering who he might be talking with.  Could have been anyone.  But in my own situation of missing my wife and baby who have been gone for 45 days, I imagined that he was in awe of the beautiful scenery and so he felt compelled to call the one person in all the world that he wished he could share it with.  This is how I felt during my trip to Salalah.  I kept thinking, “If only my wife could be here to see this!”  Other times, like during museum trips and dangerous driving, “Che really wouldn’t enjoy this!”  There were several times during my trip when I simply had to call my wife and share something beautiful I experienced with her or simply to hear her voice.  I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make.  Life seems so much better when shared with someone/people you love.  (Same man croaching down talking on his cell phone 10 minutes later) 

Of course we all have thoughts/feelings/experiences which can never truly be shared with another.  Those “solitary moments” are between you and God.  I think that’s mainly the point in this Bible verse: “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” (Proverbs 14:10)  In 1990, I left home for the Canadian Armed Forces and this began my “solitary life” where I really felt ”on my own”.  The more years away from my family, first in the military, and then years overseas teaching English, the more I felt the distance growing, physically as well as emotionally.  It has come to the point where I don’t feel compelled to return to visit home at all.  I remember one of my family members writing in an email that I’ve been gone so long that I’m rarely ever even thought of.  I always thought that my theme song was “Solitary Man” by Johnny Cash.  I always played with the idea of sharing my life with another but I refused “to settle” as I saw so many others do.  I pledged never to marry unless I found the woman that I could easily share my life with without any regrets or looking back.  Like Johnny Cash sang so beautifully in that song, “Don’t know that I will but until I can find me a girl (the 2nd time he says “the” girl!  Exactly!) who’ll stay and won’t play games behind me, I’ll be what I am.  A solitary man.  Solitary man.”  So, those solitary days have come and gone.  Now, only by the grace of God, I am with the only woman I could ever imagine sharing my life with.  How life changes!  A single friend at church asked me the other day, “Do you feel like you have more freedom and more peace and quiet since the family left?” and the answer is a resounding “NO!”  I feel like part of me is missing.  Like a hole in my life.

The wife and baby return in exactly 28 hours.  I will feel complete again and it will seem once again that all is right in my world!  This is how God intended life to be lived!