This is a great song from Eric Peters that provides some encouragement to me when I’m tempted to despair. Click the image to catch it on youtube.
Sappy Stuff
On Canada
I come from another country. It lies to the north of where I live now.
Ah, Canada. I love that country.
Like most Canadians, I have a pretty decent, realistic sense of our role. We’re not the most aggressive. We don’t have the biggest army. We don’t have a super strong sense of patriotism, really.
But, we’re tremendously blessed up there. We are prosperous. We have a beautiful country. We’re kind (most of the time). We have Timbits, a strong banking system, and chip trucks. We have abundant natural resources that are hard to appreciate until you live somewhere else. I grew up playing in the waters of Kasshabog lake, a very small lake in Ontario. It’s small by Canadian standards, but it’s nearly as big as the largest (man-made) lake in the state I reside in now.
It can be a strange thing to be a foreigner. I’m thankful God let me be born in Canada. I love the place I live now, but there will always be a special place in my heart for the true north, strong and free.
To My Wife, on Our Eighth Non-iversary
Eight years ago, we were together in Charleston
We saw a terrible movie, and ate riblets that tasted like sawdust
There was disappointment in our hearts and arcade guns in our hands
Surely, the heartbreak of vows delayed would never be overcome
It was only two months, but two months felt like forever
I couldn’t wait to be married to you, to have you for my wife
I couldn’t wait to live with you, talk with you, hold you, do laundry with you
Surely, those were the deepest waters we’d ever face, I thought
Of course, eight years is a long time and not a long time at all
It turns out that waters get deeper, and sometimes deeper still
We’ve had great joy together, and also sorrow, sometimes mutually inflicted
Great peals of laughter, and also occasional tears — sometimes more than occasional
There have been bouts of depression and bouts of accomplishment
Frustration: with each other and, together, with the world
Joy: in each other, in our kids, in our Saviour
Surely, these are deeper waters than those eight years ago, I think
We haven’t yet been married for eight years, thanks to men in black suits
But in retrospect, it was just a moment, a deferral, a delay
Seven-point-eight-three (repeating) years , then, of life together
I love you more now than I did then, I know you more now than I did then
I know me more now than I did then, too
Seven-point-eight-three (repeating) years, and I hope for many, many more
Surely, there are deeper waters ahead
And no one else I’d rather journey them with