Fortress Yields to Love
Feb 25th, 2008 by spaceagesage
Area 51, Fort Knox, and NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain may seem impenetrable, but they are nothing in comparison to my heart 15 years ago.
But that didn’t matter to him.
Loss of my father, sister, and granddaddy during my elementary school years kept me afraid to love. The message for me from that time was, “Those you really love will die and leave you hurting.”
But that didn’t stop him from loving me.
I grew up protecting my heart by becoming a tomboy; by learning emotionally toughening skills like karate instructor, firefighter, EMT; and by hiding myself behind the pen or camera as a journalist, writer, and photographer.
But none of that bothered him.
He just walked past my mine fields, my fortified perimeter, and my razor wire and to make a warm, fuzzy home inside my heart — like it was no effort at all. I have been amazed by my husband ever since.
He can walk into a convenience store to pay for fuel and leave the grumpy and bored-looking clerk smiling with a renewed outlook on the day.
He can talk to janitors and generals, street people and senators as if he has known them all his life.
He can walk into a hospital room of a friend and make them feel loved as a person instead of seen as a patient or an ill person.
After being married to him for 14 years now, I have just begun to understand what he does naturally — what it has taken me a lifetime to learn: how to live the Tao daily, how to move with the Holy Spirit, and how to see people with the open-heartedness of a child.
I have been a bit of slow learner up to this point, but recent circumstance have helped me turn the corner from negative perfectionist with a wounded heart to a fun-loving, expressive person with a kinder and and freer heart. I won’t say it has been easy but as Dr. Wayne Dyer, says, “You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life’.”
So here I go: “I now release the need for self-limiting barriers between other people and me, while maintaining healthy boundaries, so that my heart and my outlook and my actions will allow kindness and love to abound.”
Goodbye, Fortress.
When we first met him, we weren’t sure what to think. How to feel. I didn’t understand him, wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Wondering how long a hug could go on for. Being at the age I was I suppose that’s just how I dealt with things. He worked his way into my heart, into my mind. Made me think differently. Gave me foot rubs that made me want to cry, and not always from pleasure. 🙂 A few years later, and I value him as a family member. I no longer feel awkward during those long hugs. I feel touched. And loved.
Thanks for the comment!
Yes, he has learned to be more sensitive with initial meetings with people, to quote him, “For some people rapport comes instantly, for others it may take several years, and I am learning to discern the difference.” He is learning to meet people where they are at. The hugs are just his family way of hugging — all his family hug forever, too. As for the foot rubs, they still give me pleasure and pain! But it’s all good, because he has the healing touch to find those spots in reflexology that hurt because an area of the body needs attention.
It’s fun to hear you write like that.
As in the definition of good poetry, you translate a feeling so personal and so strong, that all who read it not only feel it for the one you speak of, but for their own loved ones—cast in a similar, glowing, beautifully framed light…
Thank you.
p.s. I, too, as the gravylady does, think your man made a tremendous influence on our non-hugging, conventional family quite quickly.
Also, my favorite moment was when we all sat a the dinner table and he mentioned how he’d had too much chocolate earlier that day… and well, you’d have to had been there to get it… 🙂
oh man. the chocolate. That’s some funny stuff. I had forgotten about that…
Thanks for your kind words, Erin. Yes, I often like “glowing, beautifully framed light” in words or photography.
I like … ahem … chocolate, too.
What a beautiful love letter. You are both very
special people.
As are you Muriel, as are you!