Last night, Doug and I went to see Rob Thomas. It was a fantastic acoustic set. I mean seriously, in our time, he is a master of his craft and I would have expected no less but it was even more than I thought it would be. Doug, my sheltered pastor husband, who has a limited knowledge of secular music didn’t know who we were going to see. “Rob who?”, he asked. I laughed, “Remember last year on The Voice, he helped Ceelo?” “I can’t remember last week.”

So in the middle of the set Rob Thomas plays and sings, Lonely No More. I don’t even know what happened honestly but I had a flashback that was actually a God moment in which he wanted to reveal something to me. A healing. I rarely have these types of moments, but I was taken back to the moment in which it happened.

I don’t wanna be lonely no more
I don’t wanna have to pay for this
I don’t want to know the lover at my door
Is just another heartache on my list

I don’t wanna be angry no more
You know I could never stand for this
So when you tell me that you love me know for sure
I don’t want to be lonely anymore

In that moment, I remember being very unsure of my relationship with Doug. There were parts of it that seemed unbelievable. The level of love I felt and I wasn’t sure I could trust it. There were so many complications to our relationship and I wasn’t sure I was up to it. He sensed it, or maybe he knew because after all he studies people for a living. In the middle of the doubt he looked me square in the eye and said so seriously,

“Your problem is that you’ve never been adored before. I am going to spend my life showing you what that feels like.” 

That was the flashback moment. I was my dad’s favorite kid. I was loved by my family, but adored? I don’t think I even understood the word.

A-dored

verb – to regard with utmost esteem, love, and respect; honor.

 

No, I had never been adored. I had never had a relationship in which even in the troubles, there was utmost esteem, love and respect. I had loved and I had been loved, but I had never been able to fully trust, until now. I had never had a man trip over himself to make me his, to work so hard to take every single trouble away and honor me the way he does. I was having a moment, a revelation, holding my husband’s hand at a concert last night. Then it happened:

Rob Thomas’ guitar began the intro to Smooth his collaboration with Santana. Suddenly Doug sits up, “Hey! I know a song.” Then Rob tells a story that brings me  back to reality.

He says he had flown to San Francisco to meet with Carlos Santana and possibly work on the song he’d written for him, Smooth. He says Carlos Santana walked into the room and said, “You’re married to a Latina aren’t you?” Rob Thomas said, “Yes, I’m married to a Puerto Rican.” Carlos Santana replied, “I knew it, no man writes a lyric, ‘I would change my life to better suit your mood’, if he wasn’t married to a Latina.” To which my husband snickered and squeezed my knee.

Really? We had to go there?