One Too Many Times

words & music by Doug Howell • © 2022 Creative Measures LLC

I’ve heard you say I love you
one too many times
to keep believing
it’s still true
with no supporting signs
how many times I’ve cried out
for a word, a smile, a kiss
I swear it was the
bitter wounds of silence
that led us here to this

I hope you can show it better
to someone, sometime
I hope I can guard it better
this heart of mine
I hope you can show it better
to someone, sometime
I hope I can find the strength
to open the door
while there’s still time

and here I am accusing you
as if I weren’t to blame
for keeping my emotions
out of view
as if I were ashamed
to tell you
I needed to hear your voice
to feel your touch
and though you won’t confess
I know you need it just as much

I hope you can show it better
to someone, sometime
I hope I can guard it better
this heart of mine
I hope you can show it better
to someone, sometime
I hope I can find the strength
to open the door
while there’s still time

You must dream of pretty things
Of starry skies on golden wings
And songs that only angels sing
And you must dream how love could be
But do you ever dream of me?

I’ve always been a bit naive
But I guess it’s foolish to believe
That just because you haunt my dreams
I’d be the one you close your eyes to see

Reviews

I just gave your song a listen, and I loved it! you are an amazing singer! —M. Phillipps

Seems to feel like my story too. Very poignant and beautiful voice. —S. Allen

Wow. That is dripping with pain. —D. Sampson

Wow. Poignant and powerful. Thank you for sharing the raw and the real. My son could have sung this to his ex. Ouch. [The raw and the real is] exactly what is needed and when. God knew. I’m writing, too. Can’t wait to share with you sometime…soon! The unvarnished soul has a luster all its own. You shine, dear one! —C. L. Stratton

That is dripping with pain —C. Wadynski

…your songs are good enough to have been written by [Jimmy], but I always point out that you also have your own style which you bring to ‘the mix’, and that makes them so wonderful. Take One Too Many Times, for an example, it is superb and could only have been written by your good self. Since discovering it I have played it over and over again. —A. Caseley

This is the full flower of your writing. A larger canvas as far as the width & breadth of the arrangement frame. Lush, but intimate. Revealing of the interior of love and the need for it. And in this case you speak to this with great clarity without resorting to cliche. To feel this deeply (as you & I know) is a curse and a blessing. Rattling around in the interior life can be a curse. To make it into art is the blessing… Just wonderful Doug… —D. Barrett

2021 Notes

No need to read between the lines on this one. The hurt, the bitterness. It’s all right there in plain sight.

I remember a friend once telling me he felt like I was a desert, and that he’d never have enough water to quench my thirst. Strange, but at the time, it seemed to me like even a snowflake would have been enough… But it’s funny how different things can look from opposite sides of a relationship, isn’t it?

I did see the unmistakable truth in his metaphor though, even through the hurt, and down deep, I realized he could never satisfy my need—nor me his. And I knew when the right person came along, the water would just flow. I could believe that for him. But would it ever flow for me?

Those plentiful desert times forced me to depend on the God of plenty all the more. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness. A wilderness it felt like it was gonna take about 40 years to get out of. And like them, I’ve done my share of grumbling. I certainly knew from all the scriptures I studied since I was a kid where Living Water comes from! But sometimes, being human, you just need someone “with skin on,” as Bob Laurent used to say in his sermons.

Some of those out-of-the-depths songs end triumphantly, but some do not. (Just like the Psalms, come to think of it.) Some end in the doldrums, or the valley of despair, like this one (although I think there is just a tiny glimmer of hope there at the end). I know a lot of people—including most of those I met in the contemporary Christian music world—are not too comfortable with that. But, thank goodness, sometimes God gives us the song to express how it feels to be down there in the valley, and to remind us He knows all about it. “The Word became flesh,” after all. He knows how to wear skin.

Thank you, Lord, for being here with us through all the hungry, thirsty, human times. For being with me. Thank you for (somehow) slaking my raging thirst, for filling my empty soul’s belly, even when there’s no one with skin on in sight.

Music Notes

Only sang this once or twice in concert that I can remember. (You can only do so many downers in one concert, and I’ve been blessed with many.) Tell you what. Why not put on the headphones, imagine we’re on the stage together. Sit with me on the bench for awhile, and I’ll sing to you about one of those down times. Some string players are waiting back there too, back in the shadows, among the curtains. But they’re just gonna listen on the first verse. And God’s here listening, too.