Young Love…Again

One of my favorite lyrics of all time comes from Andy Squyres’ song, “You Bring the Morning.” This song is a modern psalm, speaking to life and God and everything in between. 

The line I love goes like this. “Young love that we lost, we will find when we get older.” It happens 2:56 seconds into this live version.

This statement isn’t prominent in the song. You won’t find it in the chorus or even the bridge, just a few words slipped into a verse somewhere near the end of the song. But they punch above their weight, offering hope, redemption, and new things to be discovered. It’s the assurance of something solid in a murky future. It’s the kind of line that I bump up against in my mind from time to time and feel a profound sense of gratitude for.

I’m a lucky guy. I haven’t lost many of my young loves. My wife is still my best friend, and I still feel giddy around her. I still find transformers to be the best robots, and my writing desk is guarded by a squadron of Lego Star Wars ships. So maybe I can’t feel all of the weight of lost goodness. But I’ve walked away from things in my life for years, only to find them again later with gratitude. My guitar, for one thing. Somewhere between college and having kids, I just lost all feeling for the instrument. I played every now and then, but nothing like how I would describe the behavior of a “guitar player.” There were a lot of contributing factors: Work, kids, shame, awkwardness – A real cocktail of adulthood. But the truth is that my guitars ended up sitting in their cases for years.

Then something happened. I can’t describe it completely, but I got an itch. An interest. Then an opportunity. It was a slow process, something akin to spring after a long winter. I started to play again. Then some more. Soon I was adjusting my guitars and restoring them to playing shape. It all happened gradually, almost imperceptibly. That young love that I felt in my bedroom years ago was back, but mature and real and beautiful.

It may seem a small thing, but playing music is an important part of my life again. I look forward to picking up the guitar and seeing what happens. This gives me hope for all of us that those other young loves that seem to have gone away might one day return to us. May it be soon!