A Song You Should Hear - Issue #3
I Can't Breath...
For much of my Christian life, I've felt like a fish out of water in the church.
I still do, I just don't mind it anymore, and go anyway.
The churches I grew up in liked to be excited and yell a lot of "Amens" and sing bouncy-trouncy hymns. I didn't really connect with that. Because I was a sad soul. I was sad as a little girl, feeling the weightiness of life and its sorrows much more than most adults give children credit for. What's more, and from late childhood to well into my twenties, I struggled with obsessive doubts about whether Christianity was true, about the sincerity of my faith, and whether God even existed at all--all while I called out to Him in desperation every day.
A good bit of that agony was connected to my physical illness. I've written about my experience with PANDAS and Lyme in my blog before and its effect on brain function. It certainly took its toll on me. But I didn't know that then.
And when I went to church and everyone was smiling and joking, and when the hymn leader got up and said at the top of His lungs,
"Aren't you excited to be here today? Aren't you rejoicing in the Lord!"
I wanted to say, "No, not really. I'm really heavy and dark, and it's been that way for a long, long time."
But I didn't say that, because nobody else was saying that. I thought I was the only one.
"And if I tell them how it really is with me, they'll tell me to get saved again because the first and second times were fake. Christians don't have doubts."
Lifeline
At some point in my early twenties, I discovered Christina G. Rossetti. I found a collection of her poems in my sister's bookshelf, began reading, and devoured them all. It was as if she reached through the centuries, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, "Me too."
In that book, of course, was the poem and now the song, I'm referring to.
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
Quicken Me, Rise in Me, Drink of Me
The thing about it that means so much to me is that it does not attempt to gloss over the pain and suffering of life. It's all there in vivid, technicolor. The suffering of Rossetti is writ large in the falling, faded leaf, the harvest dwindled to a husk, the broken bowl...because only a person who knows suffering could write those things. But through the suffering, and perhaps even without taking the suffering away right now...
Jesus quickens us
rises in us
drinks of us.
It comforted me to such an extent that I quoted the poem in The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse. A few years after I published that novel, I wrote a tune for it and asked my dad to write a piano accompaniment, which he did most beautifully.
Here's a recording of me singing and Jonathon playing for me on the piano:
Christina Keeps Helping Me
In order to republish The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse, I have to raise money. In order to raise money, I have to put together a Kickstarter campaign. In order to have a successful Kickstarter campaign, I have to offer incentives for people to give...like free downloads of a song I wrote based on a poem found in the novel. See where I'm going with this?!
The song is so perfect, it's practically the theme song of the whole novel, if novels had theme songs.
So, one of my big goals in the next few months is to approach a really talented guy I know about producing a quality, orchestrated recording of this song. From there, I can make it available as a download for supporters, I can do a music video (my brother does videography), I can use it in the Kickstarter video, I can use it as a sound track for an audio book, and so on and so forth.
I'm quite excited.
Still Can't Breath
And that's okay. I think, often, that if you feel like a fish out of water...perhaps that's right where you ought to be. Because to blend in would be contrary to who God made you. And be very kind to those who do "blend in." They may feel just as much a fish out of water as you do.
