Musings at Altitude

I’ve been very blessed to be home more than gone this year, and I really enjoy spending those quiet moments with Denise and sharing our evenings and weekends together.  In our 26+ years of marriage, I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home, so we’ve learned to cherish the reunions and also truly enjoy those times together.

This evening, I got home from my trip (only my 4th this year), and Denise was gone.  She’s off in Texas visiting our daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law and the house is very quiet.  This role reversal with me here and her gone hasn’t happened a lot in our lives together, and I get a sense of what she has lived with over half of our married life, spending lots of lonely nights in an eerily empty house.

It’s amazing what goes through your mind when you get some time alone in a space that is normally occupied by others.  On the road, I get lots of time alone in the hotel rooms, but that’s really forced isolation and not quite what I’m feeling tonight.  Tonight, I want others around, and this space I’m in is typically filled with chatter, and hockey on the TV, and review of what happened at school, and the whine and wine after a tedious day at work.

But not tonight.  Tonight I hear every creak in our house.  Tonight I hear the wind blowing against the windows.  Tonight I flip through the channels looking for something of meaning to watch.  Tonight I’m lonely. 

At times like these, I think back over my life and remember the choices I made and the separations I caused because of the numerous quests I was on.  And I can’t help but think how wonderfully supportive Denise always was.  And as I sit here in this very lonely house, I love her even more for the loneliness she must have felt.  And through it all, she never once complained and never once asked me to ease off of my pursuits to spend more time here at home with her.

It’s in these quiet times where you open up your heart and you sense and see those things you didn’t see before.  It’s also in these quiet times when God puts His message in our hearts.  And tonight, I turned to a channel that I never ordinarily watch, and I heard this song while thinking of Denise:

The Prayer

I pray you’ll be our eyes

And watch us where we go

And help us to be wise

In times when we don’t know

Let this be our prayer

When we lose our way

Lead us to a place

Guide us with your grace

To a place where we’ll be saved.

Over the years while I’ve been chasing my dreams, Denise has been the rock in our family, and the home which she has single handedly built has been our sanctuary for peace and security.  Regardless of what was happening in my job or in my travels, I could always come home and find that comfort and peace.  God matched me with the perfect mate to ground me, to guide me, to remind me of my priorities, and to make me so desperately miss her when she’s now off on her travels and I’m now sitting at home alone.

I’ve told her before that I finally get a short glimpse of what she went through during all those years of separation when she’s gone now and I’m home alone.  I certainly can’t get those 12 or 13 years of separation back.  But I certainly can cherish even more the time we get to spend together now.

So while she’s gone, I’ll spend this time listening and learning and yearning for when she’ll return.  And I’ll listen to the words of songs like The Prayer, and smile in knowing that God is reminding me of what I have too often taken for granted.

I love you Denise.  And I miss you.