Significant Others

Today is September 25. My wife of fifty-seven years died twelve years ago today. I think of her all the time of course but in September each year the memories flood my mind. These memories are usually not just about her death, they relive our life together and rejoice in the love we shared. Those thoughts reenforce three things I have found true about grief.

First: It never goes away, our loved ones live on in our memories. No one is dead until they are forgotten.

Second: Hopefully in time gratitude replaces some of the pain. We either become grateful for what we had, or we will remain a victim of what we have lost.

Third: We do not know what we have lost until we lose it.

I have just completed the first draft of a book of my spiritual journey and, reliving my life helped me discover and define the impact Barbara Maddox Manning had on my life.

On a country road outside of Snyder, Oklahoma Barbara Maddox said, “I love you” and those three words changed my life. I had never heard those words from anyone in my whole life. Those words began a transformation in my life.

I was in my third year of college, convinced I was ugly, rather dumb and had never had a girlfriend nor felt loved until Barbara came into my life, said those magic words, and accepted me warts and all.

There is no way to explain or describe what it feels like for a nobody to suddenly become somebody worth loving. For someone to think you are attractive when you have been programed all of your life to think you are ugly and born that way. For someone to want to be with you and share deep and meaningful conversations when you never knew you had anything worth hearing. Those three words were the beginning of my experiencing fifty-seven years of unconditional love. Whoever I am and whatever I have accomplished began when I heard three words on a country road. But there is more to the story.

Many times, and maybe the vast majority of the time, we learn to believe and accept the love of God after we have been loved and accepted by a significant other. Barbara’s love gave me enough worth to believe and gradually accept the love God has for me and that became the foundation of my life.

Barbara’s love led me to God’s love and the two loves helped me get past what I could not get over. I found self-worth.

Barbara had no idea she was starting a transformation. She thought she was just telling her boyfriend she was in love and wanted to marry him. She did not know about the feelings of inferiority that had dominated my life.

That is a picture of the world we live in. There is no way to know the pain and struggles going on inside the lives of every person we meet. After working with small groups over the years I am convinced that any group of twenty-five or more people will include about every problem known to man. We walk among needs and hurts which we can either build up, or tear down.

Words have power. My deciding I was not as smart as the other kids in school, was caused by my overhearing one sentence from my mother. The belief that I was ugly came from teasing by my extended family about being the ugliest baby ever born. Nobody ever said I got over being ugly.

Words of kindness, love, acceptance, encouragement, or even simple notice can become the impact of a significant other.

Words of criticism, rejection, displeasure or hate tear down and add to the pain.

Each of us have a choice and a chance to be part of the problem or part of the cure. The idea that something I could say or do might have a lasting impact on someone’s life thrills and scares me at the same time, but it also makes showing kindness and love some of the most enjoyable experiences in my life. Who knows maybe someday I might be a significant other.

I took this poem off of a bulletin board in college and carried it until the paper disintegrated but the message still rings in my head.

Isn’t it strange that princes and kings,
and clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
and common people, like you and me,
are builders for eternity?

Each is given a list of rules;
A shapeless mass; a bag of tools.
And each must fashion, ere time has flown,
A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone.

—   R. Lee Sharpe