Monday, January 09, 2012

Tower of Strength


About a month ago I came across an unmarked CD in the mess of CDs that I have in my car. I pulled it out and stuck it in my CD player to see what was on it.

Well, as it turns out it was a mixed CD that my husband had made for me a while ago. It is full of songs back from the days when I used to listen to the radio station CFNY (now called The Edge) and it is pretty awesome. I has stuff by bands such as The Cure, Simple Minds, The Smiths, Ministry, The Housemartins, Nine Inch Nails, Yaz, Erasure and a few other goodies.

One of those goodies is by a band called The Mission. The song is one of my all time favourites - Tower of Strength. Now my boys enjoy it because I play it so often!


First of all, here are the lyrics:

Tower of Strength (The Mission)

You raise me up
When I'm on the floor
You see me through
When I'm lonely and scared
And I'm feeling true to the written word
And you're true to me
And still I need more
It would tear me apart
To feel no one ever cared
For me
For me
For me
You are a tower of strength to me

You stand firm and proud
When the wind blows in your face
And when the sun shines in your eyes
You just turn your head away
To me
To me
To me
You are a tower of strength to me

You rescue me
You are my faith
My hope
My liberty
And when there is darkness all around
You shine bright for me
You are the guiding light

To me
To me
To me
You are a tower of strength to me

You are all passion and heart
When I lay in your embrace
And heaven is in your kiss
Salvation lies just a touch away

To me
To me
To me
You are a tower of strength to me


So...why am I sharing this with you?

Well...I was just out running an errand in my car and I was by myself - a rare thing! - and so I put this song on a little louder than usual and started to really think about the words.

Of course, being a sucker for words, I started to then think about who I would consider to be my "towers of strength".

I know. Deep shit, right?

Now I know the song refers to embraces and kissing and stuff, which of course eludes to romantic relationships...of which I only have one...and that would be my husband.

And yes, he is one of my towers.

Our wedding day. I am wearing 4-inch heals.

He is a rather high tower.

And in this case I mean it both literally and figuratively. He is vertically gifted for one thing and at 6'6' tall, he comes in very handy when I need something on the top shelf. I won't go into his horizontally giftedness at this time as that is another conversation for another post - but probably not cause that is kinda personal but I don't have any complaints and let's just leave it at that.

Aaaaaaaaaand....I digress.

Metaphorically speaking, he is a loyal husband and dedicated father to our boys. A family-first guy, he never leaves me with any doubt that he would do anything for us and while as stubborn as a bull (which he would agree to unless he is being stubborn), he is also kind-hearted, generous, affectionate and hard-working. He also does laundry which I quite enjoy.

But who else?

My parents are amazingly high (not high as in "hey man, this is really good shit I'm smokin'" high...I mean "tall" - not as in "Wow, that basketball player is really tall" - like my husband - I mean tall as in a frickin' metaphor for really big (and my parents are not fat...get it? Got it? Good!),  strong, amazingly resilient towers of strength to me.

The coolest parents I know. And they are mine.

That was confusing. What I mean is than my parents have ALWAYS been there for me. They are two of my greatest friends and the fact that I won the "parent lottery" is not lost on me.

So...moving on.

Let's be predictable here shall we?

My kids are incredible towers of strength to me. Sometimes, of course, they can be the ones who require me to require other towers of strength to help me because they can also be giant wrecking balls of mass destruction! And by that I mean destruction of my mental well-being.

Bet you know who these little monkeys are!

But honestly, kids really do know how to put life into perspective. If I am down, they know how to "raise me up". They love me unconditionally in a way that only boys can love their mothers and as I recently said in my post My Son, My Sun, they "shine bright for me".

I feel a different song coming on!
Is it any wonder why Stevie popped into my head?


Frick. Constantly I digress.

I continue to be predictable and now move on to my friends. And I have different kinds of friends like we all do.

I have my lifers. The ones that I may not see that often because we don't live around the corner from each other and the ones that I miss terribly because life has gotten in the way of us getting off our asses and making the plans we should be making. It sucks - but I know that if push came to shove and I needed one of them by my side right this moment...they would be here. Towers of strength they would be for me and I would do the same for them.

Me and some of my "lifer" gals. I really miss all of you!

I have friends that I have made along the way. Not my lifers, but good friends I like a lot and enjoy spending time with. Everyone needs these towers of daily strength - otherwise we would be lost in our won little worlds in our own little heads.

And I, being a bit of a social media butterfly, have actually garnered some pretty special relationships with people I have never even met in person. To the social media un-savvy, this may seem a little strange, downright bizarre or even completely pathetic - and that's fine - but this is 2012 peeps, and the world is a very big place. It is so big, in fact, that I can't possibly go and make friends all over the world from different walks of life.

The Internet has made this possible for me and has created many a tower of strength.

Oh, and Oprah. She has been good to me as well. (If you are reading this "O", let's do lunch!)
Call me!

So yeah. Many towers. Lots of strength. I'm a lucky lady.

So thank you to my city of towers...my peeps as I often call them.

This song is dedicated to you.



Smiles,

Lora

2 comments:

  1. Lora, You are a lucky lady. Nice to get a view of hubby, parents & children all in one post. Each tower of strength that you have mentioned is important & beautiful. Mine are very similar in a lot of ways to yours. I have many tower(s) of strength. But God is THE Tower of strength that makes it all possible. Oh, And about Oprah; Are you sure you could squeeze her into your busy schedule? ;) Tim

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  2. Lora, you always have a way of making me smile! And your digressions are GREAT!!
    P.S. Love this song!

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