That hasn't happened for a long, long while

Categories: music, church, decisions, friends

Date: 13 September 2009 13:34:15

But, it did in church this morning. I couldn't sing the last hymn for the tears...

It's rare for me to cry in front of other people anyway, and even rarer in church, as I go into professional musician mode when I feel tears coming on, even if, as at the moment, I am in the congregation. (For now, I'm a content occasional musician.) So when tears actually happen it shakes me up quite a bit. I had to go home to collect something I'd forgotten, so had a chance to recover my equilibrium before joining the coffee queue.

I do know it needed to happen today. Only I knew about it at the time, apart from the two people I told (or the people near me who may have heard me stop singing). It probably also happened as a cumulative thing all through the service, as if I'd been choosing a Significant Hymn/Song List of the last twenty years, most of the songs we sang this morning had meaning for me attached to them.

For curious minds, from the selection we sang, or had played during communion, or before the service, the ones that would be on my Significant Hymn/Song List included

"At the name of Jesus" (to my preferred tune)

"Lord, I come to you, let my heart be changed, renewed"

"The Servant King"

"All I once held dear "

"Be still, for the presence of the Lord"

"In Christ Alone"

"I, the Lord of sea and sky"

Now, anyone of those on their own could well have done it, but the one that finished me off and left me tearful and shaky was "I, the Lord of sea and sky", especially the chorus.

Here I am Lord, Is it I Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.

It just has so many memories attached to it, of youth occasions, of a funeral, of schools singing it, but specifically of a commitment I'd made that I just didn't ever envisage disentangling myself from. Only the fact that it is becoming clearer by the day that God is leading me in a totally different direction, and has other purposes for my life has made me turn my life completely upside down.

Mostly, over the last few weeks, I've been very calm and relaxed about the decision, but, sometimes, it hurts. Very much. Today, it did that. Especially being surrounded by lots of people who are getting to hear the story, and who've known me for a few years now. But, I didn't run away from it all, or tried to ignore what I was feeling. It'll only come back again and again if I do both those things, tempting as it is to continue the seeming to be calm and relaxed. There are times for that, and professionalism. This isn't one of them.

It'll be OK in a while, though!