I’m just going to come out and say it. Last month I cried
while listening to Steven Curtis Chapman.
It was an accident! I was searching my iTunes for a
soundtrack for a drive to Denver, and I happened to see a Steven Curtis Chapman
album, leftover from when I helped my mom load songs on her IPOD, and I decided
to listen to a few songs for laughs, and—
There’s no escaping it. I cried. Steven Curtis Chapman
reduced me to babyish tears—maybe because I listened to him when I was a baby.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Steven Curtis
Chapman—or perhaps you didn’t know he was still alive and able to sing—he is a
Christian songwriter whose career began in 1987, one year before I was born. The
Christian music industry we know today didn’t yet exist. Chapman was a pioneer,
a description easily confirmed by a glance at his stallion mullet and a quick
listen to his lyrics:
Saddle up your horses, we’ve got a trail to blaze
Through
the wild blue yonder of God’s amazing grace!
I don’t listen to Christian—or any other—radio. Having
worked many years for a magazine that marketed to Christian bookstores, I have
a distrust for the industry. I thought I was inoculated against campy Christian
lyrics.
But there comes a day when you’re driving along, just trying
to pick up a lamp from IKEA, and BAM!—Steven Curtis Chapman happens. His golden
retriever soul might make you weep, but he’ll wipe your tears with his
luxurious mullet.
Alright, I’m getting carried away.
This has been a rough [week, month, year…?], which has made
me extra susceptible to surprise jolts of encouragement, especially in musical
form.
Music is emotional. Feeling complacently content, we hum. We
get frustrated, and the humming stops without our noticing. If I want a quick gauge of how I'm feeling, singing provides an easy reference.
A few months ago I felt like God was asking me to sing to
Him. I ignored Him. Far from singing, most of my prayer times had involved me sitting on my bed with a
glum expression and praying with a weary voice. I
knew that if I showed how miserable I was, He would feel sorry for me and respond.
Remember being sick as a kid? There’s a certain showmanship
involved. You must show that you’re sick enough to stay home from school
another day, sick enough to get out of chores, sick enough to justify lounging
on the couch with a drawn face. But you must also be well enough to go to a
friend’s house if they invite you over, well enough to eat the pizza your mom
is making, well enough to enjoy the perks of being sick.
God asking me to sing was like asking me to give up my claims to sick person perks. No more looking miserable, no more begging out of
duties, no more complaining about how bad I felt. I’d been feeling bad a long
time, and I'd developed some fine tricks for surviving in conservation mode. I didn't want to lose them.
When God did speak to me, I was slow to respond. It was just
so ridiculous. I would have been more apt to take action if he’d given me a
prescription for more introspection, more analyzing, talking with a new mentor,
reading a book about despair, reading a whole stack of books on despair. I could have read the heck out of those
books!
But singing was stupidly easy. And it was the only thing I felt God might be leading me to do.
I started singing in my living room when my roommates were
away. Haltingly, with pitiful, uncertain tones, I made up aimless songs with
lyrics like, “I believe you’ve been really good to me,” and, “I think I still
love you, God.”
It’s been awkward, but also really good. I’ve begun to thaw.
I sing made-up songs to God, and it cheers me up almost against my will. The
singing reminds me what it felt like to love God, what it felt like to be
grateful. It’s almost like I could feel that way again.
I’ll admit, it’s hard to say that God is good, to smile, to
tell people how lucky I am to be a son of God. The pain I feel is precious to
me—so precious that I am loathe to let it go. I’m quick to add disclaimers to my
praise. “He’s good but I’ve been let down before.” I prefer the position of a
judge, evaluating a spread of feelings and experiences to decide whether God is
in fact good.
In the Psalms, David continually writes phrases like, “I
will open my mouth” and “I will not hide your goodness within me.” He is quick
to openly declare God's goodness. I want to be like that. I
want to acknowledge the good that has been done to me. There’s so much of it!
I’m not suggesting we ignore our deep pains. The Bible is clear
that those who mourn are blessed, while those who laugh now will soon mourn.
But the blessing Jesus spoke to those who mourn is a promise of coming comfort.
For me, singing has preceded the comfort of the Lord. I sang of God’s goodness
before I felt it, and somehow that opened the door for me to receive.
It’s not natural. Children of a skeptical generation, we
tend to turn up our noses at exuberant adoration. It’s hard to stomach Steven
Curtis Chapman’s optimism, his cheerful assertion that “God will finish what He
started/No thread will be left unwoven… We’ll stand as the ones completed/By
the miracle of His love.” But it’s hard to retain a callous attitude when I
remember that these lyrics were written by a man whose daughter was tragically
killed not too long ago, accidentally run over by a family member in his own driveway. And
somehow he’s still able to sing. That’s something I can’t easily belittle.
I don’t know what God is asking of you, what key He will use
to lead you out of mourning. But I want to encourage you to give in to His
strange tactics. I want to encourage you to praise before you feel thankful, to
stretch yourself for a sure and coming joy.
God has helped me worship Him, even when I felt I couldn't. God has been good to me.
