Valentine's Day & a song 4 a friend

Well. So much to say about Valentine's Day. I used to hate this holiday -even after being married! I'm not into being "made to do something". I should not need a day to remember to "date" my wife. Ok, you get how I felt. Now, though, it's more of "another chance to" spoil her. An "excuse" to come up with a unique, romantic way to show her how important she is. [as only a "strange romantic" like me can scheme it] I took a net of white Christmas lights & hung it from the ceiling of our unfinished basement. hooked up the really old Harmen/Karden receiver & four speakers to my TV/VCR/DVD through the TV's headphone jack. So we'll go down there, probably Fri. night & watch another concert. I scored tix to Brad Paisley in Hershey for this Thurs. He is a really good guitar player, & if he lived here & wasn't famous, we'd get along fine. He has a similar sense of humor to me. However, truthfully, [sorry Brad] I have to confess, I'm really not a "big Brad Paisley fan". I'm a big fan of a Brad Paisley fan.
That's what love does, though. It doesn't say "your mine" so much... it says "I'm yours" [often without the use of lips & vocal chords].

Well, for Mom... & for a struggling friend. Here are the many videos, & lyrics of the closing song from Sun. morning... first video, second, with may J. Blige
ONE
by U2, from the cd: Achtung Baby

Is it getting better,
or
do you feel the same?
Will it
make it easier on
you, now
you got someone to blame?
You say
one love,
one life,
when it's one need
in the night.
One love,
we get to share it
Leaves you baby
if you
don't care for it.

Did I disappoint you
or leave a bad taste
in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
and you want me to go without.
Well, it's
too late
tonight
to drag the past out
into the light.
We're one,
but we're
not the same.
We get to
carry each other,
carry each other...
one

Have you come here
for forgiveness,
Have you come
to raise
the dead?
Have you come here
to play Jesus
to the lepers in your head?
Did I ask too much,
more than a lot
You gave me nothing,
now it's
all I got.
We're one,
but we're
not the same.
Well, we
hurt each other,
then we do it again.

You say
love is a temple,
love a higher law
Love is a temple,
love the higher law.
You ask me
to enter,
but then you make me crawl
And I can't
be holding on
to what you got,
when all you got is hurt.

One love,
one blood,
one life,
you got to do what you should.
One life
with each other:
sisters,
brothers.
One life,
but we're
not the same.
We get to
carry each other,
carry each other.
One,
one.

personal history.
I came to this song first as a song to be sung to "religious people". There are many who just don't like me because I... "see life through a radically different lens". Recently re-listening to the whole disc, Acrobat is a song that also works for me from that time. [a pre- LW era, time. which is where the King's X lyric from a previous post is coming from as well]
Now this got old. Achtung Baby is an album that I got rid of for a while. It came out as my world seemed to be burning down. It became a soundtrack for that. I saw all the songs as about what/who I was loosing [& it never occurred to me, that I should maybe be glad...until much later on].
Only in recent times have I begun healing on a "story wide" level, & can see the songs in different ways & get more meaning out of them. It doesn't seem as dark "this time around". As I have listened to one in a marriage "sense", it seemed wrong for a song about marriage, yet the second video for the song lends itself to a "marriage image". I also see the whole disc as being about marriage.

I currently get to hear one side of a struggling marriage. A marriage ...trying not to die, while not sure if it wants to live. Full of painful questions...& doubt. Some look at my parents & think that they "make marriage look easy". Nothing worth anything, is ever easy. We don't write songs about people who did things that were easy. We don't stand up & cheer for people who did things that anybody could have done. We stand up & cheer for people who faced darkness, doubt, fear, false accusations, painful life experiences... And they said I will not be defined by this. I will not stand by & just let this continue. I will not take the easy way out.
People ask: "any good quotes on marriage?"
My Mother asked me this on my wedding day. I'm sorry that only in the past year or 2 can I truly say "YES" to it.
"Don't marry her, because you can live with her.
Don't marry her, because you can't live without her.
marry her, because no one will love her like you will."
[I've told Mickey many times, in tears, the only man who loves you more than me...
has holes in his hands]

Love is not a woman walking down the aisle in a white dress,
it's kneeling next to the toilet, @ 3:30 in the morning,
with her hair in 1 hand, & a towel to wipe her mouth in the other.
Love isn't pretty, it's pretty necessary. We all need it [whether we say so... or not].

Pastor Steve has 2 of my favorite sayings on love:
#1. If you are better tomorrow than you were today, God won't love you any more,
and if you are worse tomorrow than you are today he won't love you any less. Because God loves you to the maximum.
#2. It may be a "match made in heaven", but it has to be lived out here on Earth.

to anyone struggling tonight, hang in there. It is worth it [& so are you]
Bono says it better here...
May his grace drip from your fingers,
B