As I stepped off the bus, I placed my headphones in my ears and scrolled through the play lists on my iPod. The rain had let up in Long Beach, and only the wet streets and clouds hovering securely overhead remained. My finger stopped on the iPod wheel as I noticed a band I had not listened to in quite some time. Remembering how much I loved them, I clicked to listen, but as those first few notes flooded into my ears and the words on that first track came out, I felt a tear begin to draw across my heart. I remembered why, so many times before, I had scrolled passed this band. It was because they reminded me of Sadie. She had given me this album.
During my time in college, I met a wonderful woman named Sadie from Texas. She was beautiful, intelligent, and full of life. However, during the time I knew her and we began to head out from the ledge of friendship toward a relationship, I was also on that same ledge with another woman. As these things usually happen, I had to decide who I was going to commit to; it wasn’t Sadie. Though my time with the girl I had chosen was fine, I always somewhat regretted not choosing Sadie. Even today we keep in contact. From time to time, an email is sent or a comment to one another on a message board, but a long time ago, she found a man who made her happy, a man who did choose her. Needless to say, the relationship I had with the woman I chose ended after my graduation from my undergraduate school, which only pushed me to regret not choosing Sadie even more.
In the church, there is a common phrase which says that, “What God takes with His right, He gives with His left.” In laymen’s terms, this phrase means that when we lose something it was because He has something better in mind. I recall when I was a teenager that I was very broken up over a girl who had dumped me. One night I sat at my friend, Drew’s house and we talked about the frustrations of life. He had recently given up a band because it just wasn’t working, but he wanted more than anything to play his guitar, going from city to city in a small van and flood his music from those speakers to the fans in the audience.
“I remember a story that kind of feels like this,” he said, lying on the top bunk of his bed.
“What’s that?” I asked, looking up from the bottom bunk. He threw his legs over so they dangled down and I looked across the room to a mirror to get a better view of his reflection as he talked.
“See, there was this little girl right? And she had this plastic pearl necklace she loved more than anything. Every night her dad would pick her up and take her to bed. He would lay her down, tuck her in, and then sit on the side of the bed. She would look up at him, and he would look back and say, ‘Will you give me your pearls?’ and every night she would hold them tight in her fist and plead for him not to take them. Being the good father that he was, he would smile, kiss her on the forehead, and leave. The next night the same scenario would take place again. He would ask for the pearls and she would beg him not to take them. This went on for sometime until one night when the father asked, the girl, in tears, took off the plastic pearls and gave them to her father. She wept and couldn’t conceive why he would take something away that she loved so much. As he pulled them away from her, his other hand revealed a real string of pearls for her. Her eyes lit up as he slid them around her neck. ‘These are for you, because you trusted me.’” Drew sighed and looked down over the bunk at me.
“Yeah I get it,” I replied. At the time it was a story that spoke to me and gave me hope that someone better would come along, and Drew would find that right group of guys to pack into a van with and play music all over the country.
The story is a beautiful one and really does offer comfort to those who have lost something important to them. I realized, though, on that day, when I stood in that gray city, with a group of teens singing into my ears through my iPod, that the story was flawed. God does take and God does give, but not what we want, only what we need. If we offer our pearls, we can’t expect pearls in return. That just isn’t how God works. As people stuck here on this planet, we are used to bargaining for what we want; I give you this, but I want that in return. Many times people in the faith, especially, assume that their path is right but the circumstances are wrong, so they just have to wait for that right mix to keep going on the road of glory or happiness. Drew never did find another band, and I dated several other women not unlike my high school sweetheart, who were all wonderful, but which all ended in break ups.
We get what we need, not what we want. I think that wheeling and dealing with God is kind of like trying to do business with a loving loan shark. Sometimes we give up what we had and get a punch in the stomach in return. It just doesn’t seem right to us. We gave up what we had, we let go of that thing or person, and not only do we not get another one in return, but now we’re getting kicked around, too. Drew graduated from high school, only later to get kicked out of college because he didn’t have the money to continue. I dated other women only to find that, though each woman was special, they weren’t that exciting first kiss, that rush of passion at the front door after a first date when you’re 17. Drew ended up working at surf shop for a number of years barely getting by, I ended up living in a friend’s dining room for a time in college in order to make ends meet. Yeah, the punch in the stomach.
The punch line to that joke is: Drew was waiting for a band, I was waiting for a woman I could put up a white picket fence with. God just so happened to know better. I believe its part of the human condition that we think we know our destiny, what’s right and good for us. We are children who know that a cookie won’t spoil our dinner, or that now is the right time to take the training wheels off. Our surprise is, when we realize we had no idea what we really needed, that all along, we were clawing at a door that was never supposed to be open for us. God didn’t have pearls in his other hand, he had something more important.
Today, Drew is known for his graffiti art, and self-designed clothing. I found my way into a graduate program, things that no one would have expected of either of us. During our youth, Drew was always undermined by the talents of his brother, a natural born artist, so much so that he figured it just wasn’t worth picking up the pencil and paper. I was at such a rough point in my life that my parents began to ask me to join the military. A band did not let loose the talent Drew has in contemporary art, the creative thinking of new ways to approach expression through stencil and spray paint. A woman did not get me into graduate school. I cannot speak for Drew or how he got to the point in his life where his art validated him, but I can speak for myself. I came to graduate school alone. I lived alone. It was in the silence that I began to hear God speak to me. It was in those quiet hours at two in the morning when some of my most powerful thoughts began to impose themselves on me. I always felt that I needed a woman in order to be a man, to be a complete human being. I found out I was a man when I lived like one, when I strove for my greatest potential as one. In those cold and quiet hours, I realized that I was doing what I was doing because I was going to make a difference in life, but how? God didn’t tell me, but I knew he brought me there alone to do it.
After I left college with a bachelor’s degree, I wasn’t ready to leave for graduate school. Reflecting back on that time, I wouldn’t have survived it. I would have felt that the woman I was dating was my validation of life and I would have wanted to move home to have that feeling again. It took me ending that relationship and another two years of cosmic punches to the gut to get the message. I gave up my pearls, and I got a hit to the ribs, and from that hit, I was able to stand up straight and keep walking ahead, because really, how long should any one person stay in one place if that is where they keep getting punched?
Sadie could not have made me whole, either. She could not have been my purpose and she could not validate me. The memory of Sadie in that new light in which I saw her was my validation. Maybe things would have worked out with Sadie; maybe she and I would have been great for one another, but then I never would have left. I wouldn’t have taken those two years to feel “down” about my life and decide to take a chance for something great.
I did give up my plastic pearls. My pearls were my control over my own life. The reality is, much like children, we don’t know everything that is right for us. In the cosmic sense, we don’t know what would be best for us or those around us. We all have a potential to make a difference in this world, and that is only possible by letting go of our old ideas and embracing whatever is set before us: the challenges, the risks, the uncertainty, and trust that Someone out there does know what is best for us.
This doesn’t mean that everything is lost from before. At the last art showing Drew had that I attended, he pulled out his guitar and sang his songs through a small box amp as people walked about appreciating his art. Someday I may find a woman who will be the right one for me, but it will be at the right time and the right place. For now, we can only do what we can with what we are given, and just let go.
As I came to fully understand this, the tear in my heart began to mend, and the fond memories that made that music so special began to trickle through me. I let the music play. I smiled and slid the iPod into my jacket pocket and began to walk down the watery side walk and once again gave myself to Someone who knew better than me.
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