If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then a thousand hallelujahs begin with just a single note. For many seasons, I experienced a crisis of musical worship. I didn’t question God or salvation or grace upon grace upon grace but my heart felt critically fragile. Memories of the music were tethered to the stuff of earth. I thought of other things, painful things, when I played my guitar or tried to sing old familiar songs. Worship is an expression of reverence, adoration, and devotion to God. It ought never to be about how I feel. It should be vertical, directed straight up to the Father and not dependent on what is going on horizontally around me or, even, within me. But I am a human being and I often get it wrong. Within the crisis, there were moments and even days of pure and genuine praise, but my guitar hung ornamentally on the wall. A thousand hallelujahs lived inside it but with them, a thousand shadows.
For many months I struggled to wrench victory from painful memories, to hunt for treasure while I buried remembrance. I would hear certain songs and, instead of prompting worship, they would provoke a visceral sensation of shame commingled with sorrow strong enough that I disconnected immediately. The Father of Lies convinced me that I would never be able to play or sing solos again because that part of me belonged in a past too confounding to escape and any music I offered was stinging with its splinters. Even after all this time walking with Jesus, it still surprises me how quickly a spark can turn into an inferno on the lips of the Accuser.
One day, in the midst of my struggle to reclaim the music, my pastor husband asked me to sing a familiar solo. Instantly, I felt a surge of unease and self doubt. I valiantly fought back a wave of tears and whispered, “I don’t think I can.” There was so much behind that statement. Could I even begin to offer it purely to my Savior without the weight of all the baggage I’d been carrying? I was out of practice vocally and so off kilter emotionally. But he asked me to pray and I promised him that I would. When I asked the Lord what He would have me do, I sensed that it was time to sing, that I needed to figure out a way to wrestle that song from the past and give it back to Jesus. It belonged to Him from the very beginning. His mama first sang it while He was still hidden in her womb. But, before that even, when the Word spoke words and worlds into existence, it was His. It was recorded for us in Luke 1 and repeated by other voices throughout the ages but it was always only His. I cloaked that solo in prayer and God graciously allowed me to sing without reservation, to worship as genuinely as I know how. Something in my heart healed ever so slightly.
Throughout those hard months, I would occasionally pull the guitar off the wall and pluck halfheartedly at it. Each time it sounded worse than before as my skill atrophied. My tender fingertips would scream and my fragile heart whispered, “I can’t.”
When I, as with anyone, first started playing the guitar, the soft tissue on my fretting fingers was repeatedly forced against the hard strings of the instrument causing painful micro trauma to my fingertips. Eventually, as a response to the constant friction, calluses formed a buffer between the strings and my nerve endings and I played without pain. But my guitar had been shelved for too long–a physical reminder of remorse, anger, sorrow, and confusion–and I lost my calluses.
Metaphorically, calluses had formed in my heart in an attempt to shield me from hurtful memories. While the guitar had hung soundless, I’d spent months confronting the pain by exploring my emotions and sitting in the discomfort of them, allowing them to move through me. So, in the end–which isn’t really the end of anything but only another beginning–my fingers and my heart felt exposed and pliable as their protective layers were shed. I knew that, if the time ever came to play again, the pain in my fingers would be excruciating, rivaled only by the experience in my heart.
Not long ago, I was forcing myself to listen to an album of worship music that is firmly anchored to hard memories, in the hope that I could reclaim it. Suddenly, from nowhere and everywhere all at once, I felt the desire to help lead worship at an upcoming event. It was a fairly irrational thought. My voice was still rusty, my guitar was dusty, and my fingers were soft. But as I prayed, asking the Lord for confirmation, I suddenly wanted nothing more than to pull the guitar off the wall and play it.
It was painful. Without calluses to stand between the chords and my fingers, the strings were like needles piercing my skin. But the pain reminded me of the battle and the battle belongs to the Lord. I had shed the old calluses which were bound and tied to hurt. The new ones are entirely mine, forged by the fire of reclamation.
I cannot claim to have come up with the idea of a thousand hallelujahs. That phrase and the song by the same title were penned by Brooke and Scott Ligertwood and Phil Wickham. I discovered it at the precise time that I picked my guitar back up. The song was brand new, bound to nothing that has come before. I shared it with my friend who has walked much of this confusing journey beside me. She said, “I know the hitch in reality when you come to a song that can’t be given without reservation. But thankfully there are thousands of hallelujahs that do not bear the weight of the past. And we are free to sing any of them.” I know that the Father of Lies will continue to torment. I will struggle through the days of taking the music back. I may hang up my voice and my guitar time and time again before the last chord of my life is played.
But today I will take the weight of past baggage and set it at the altar. I’ll hold my heart out to Him, handing over fragments of brokenness. I’ll cry out, “Lord Jesus, this song is forever yours. A thousand hallelujahs and a thousand more.” The journey begins with just a single note sung, one callus shed or formed in devotion, one piece of one song offered in the truth of absolute adoration. He meets me where I am, taking the weight of all my chains, accepting one clumsy chord at a time. In these days and moments, I find myself longing to play, willing my heart to offer a thousand new hallelujahs to the King of Kings.
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