On Which Side Will You Sing?

I'm a little less than one month since surgery. And with a total of 41 staples to my head in the last 3 months, I'm feeling and looking a little less like Frankenstein these days and more like a Chia Pet. As previously noted, I had to buzz all my hair post-surgery (there was no good way to salvage the surgeon's handiwork. Also as previously noted, neurosurgeons don't always make for good barbers), so I've had a pretty short buzz cut going this past month. It's slowly growing out, taking on a slightly fuzzy look with a deep trench running down the middle where my scar is and no hair has grown back thus far.

I haven't ventured out beyond my parents' house very much in recent weeks other than for medical appointments, mainly because I just don't feel great a vast majority of days. I tuned into the online service at my parents' church this past week and the sermon was incredibly timely, so much so I've listened to it twice now. I frantically took notes the second time around. So many reminders I needed. It was about suffering and how we respond to it. One such response is to worship God, which feels so dissonant at times and certainly is not my intuitive response, though I wish it was. I immediately thought of a piece I wrote a little over four years ago. I included it in its entirety below. The circumstances noted are obviously not my current circumstances, but the bottom line truth remains and I think it is worth repeating, especially now. I spoke of this before, but one of the hazards as a writer is that you find you write something, thinking it's for some other intended audience, but really it's just the past you writing to the future you. This piece is a prime example. 

I don't want to reach the other side of this chaos and discover I missed an opportunity to worship God because I was too busy being a narcissistic navel-gazer, consumed by my own pain and sadness. Look, I write not as an expert on this matter. I've had cancer for all of like 5 minutes, so I'm not sure that merits me any kind of authority on what it means to praise God amid suffering, loss, and grief. I write as a fellow sojourner who is in survival mode. I write as someone who is aspiring to a certain perspective, but has by no means arrived. I love what Ishah Broad had to say on this aspiration:

“Writers thrive on having regular time to reflect. We think deeply and can ruminate on ideas for months, even years. We attempt to process emotionally and mentally the narratives of life, the experiences we have, and the existence of those around us. We are often deeply empathic, sensitive, intuitive individuals with strong ideals of how things could and maybe should be. We attempt to write in a way that leads others to realize how things could be.”

I write below of what I hope is true of me when I look back some day, and what I hope is true of you, whatever your own circumstances. I write of how things could and maybe should be, not as they are. Did I praise and worship God despite my circumstances saying I should do otherwise? That's why the writer of Hebrews calls it a sacrifice of praise because it is costly and counter to our nature, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name" (Hebrews 13:15).

I hope to worship God on both sides of this Red Sea standing before me.

______________

Last weekend, I moved for the third time in a little over three years.

Let me just say this in light of this fact: I'm tired of pulling up tent pegs. 

I look back on my 20s and marvel, wondering who on earth that girl was who delighted so much in bouncing around the globe, restless at the mere thought of even being in one place for every long, aching far more for wings than roots. 

My mind and body must have been inhabited by some other woman back then because now in the latter half of my 30s, I am going kicking and screaming at the prospect of not being in one place for very long. I ache far more for roots than wings these days.

The decision to move is one stemming all the way back to mid-August, and the months in between were filled with stress, tears, meltdowns and temper tantrums of the adult variety. Life felt like a rollercoaster and a yo-yo all rolled into one, first searching for a house to buy, not finding anything, then deciding to rent, then deciding to search for a house again, and finally just deciding to rent again. The reasons behind the decision aren't all that significant - it was practical things like getting a new landlord who raised the rent, wanting to save more money for a downpayment on a house, and generally being sick of living below people who owned two large dogs who felt the need to turn their apartment into their own personal tumbling gym.    

And through it all I felt like God was silent. Oh, there were whispers of his promptings, but were they really him or my own thoughts? I struggled to discern, there was so much racket in my head. 

In the seeming silence, I doubted. I protested. I worried. I stressed. I complained. I panicked. I became anxious. I became fearful, consumed with self-imposed pressures and timelines. I practically begged for the heavens to open up, for angels to descend and declare, "Behold! This is the house you should buy," or "This is where you should live." My belief that God could provide evaporated in a cloud of unbelief.

No angels descended from on high, and there certainly were no words of gratitude flowing from my lips, no song of praise pouring from my heart. Not on this side of the matter.

I have thought often of the Old Testament Israelites as of late, people of tent pegs and tents, wanderers and nomads. 

It wasn't always that way. They had roots for over 400 years in one place and it was their undoing. They sank roots deep into Egypt, roots that would eventually enslave them. I wonder what songs they sang in those 400 years? Surely laments, but were there songs of praise? If they knew their prophecies, then they had to know that some day the 400 years would end, that it wouldn't always be like this, that they wouldn't always be slaves to a slave-driver. 

After 400 achingly long years of breaking backs and breaking hearts, God gave the Israelites wings and they took flight,  pulling up stakes, and fleeing Egypt.

But even with wings, there still was no song. They had the cloud by day and the fire by night, but no song. (None recorded anyway.) They had the very presence of the living God with them, but no song. They had been liberated from four centuries of bondage, but no song. 

And then their wings lead them to the Red Sea. A dead end. A brick wall of water before them and an angry army behind them. "As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, 'Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?'" (Exodus 14:10-11).

There is no song on this side of the Red Sea, only unbelief and doubt cloaked in terror and panic. The God who liberated us, provided for us, led us, surely he can't save us now!

But save He does. The wind roars, the waters part, the people pass and the army drowns.

And then - and then - a song. 

"Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:

“I will sing to the Lord,

    for he is highly exalted.

Both horse and driver

    he has hurled into the sea. 

The Lord is my strength and my defense;

    he has become my salvation.

He is my God, and I will praise him,

    my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

The Lord is a warrior;

    the Lord is his name...

Who among the gods

    is like you, Lord?

Who is like you—

    majestic in holiness,

awesome in glory,

    working wonders? 

You stretch out your right hand,

    and the earth swallows your enemies.

In your unfailing love you will lead

    the people you have redeemed.

In your strength you will guide them

    to your holy dwelling...

The Lord reigns

    for ever and ever." 

Exodus 15:1-3, 11-13, 18

It's amazing the difference parted waters can have on a departed perspective.

Will we be like the Israelites and only sing on the other side of our Red Seas? Will we only worship after we've been delivered, after we know how it all ends, and after the happy ending? Or are we willing to worship in the space between beginnings and endings, pronouncements and deliverance, prophecies and fulfillments? Is not the song on the far side of the Red Sea, when the waters have not been parted, far more powerful than the one on this side of the Red Sea? Must we always wait for hindsight to inform our worship? Why do we not lean more on our foresight, our foreknowledge, which is built on the character of God, to inform our worship? 

I want there to be a song flowing from my mouth no matter which side of the Red Sea I'm standing on because the God who saves me on one side is the same God who saves me on the other. He is worthy of praise either way. I don't want to wait for hindsight to inform and determine the song I choose to sing. 

I want God to catch me singing on both sides, no matter whether I've got roots or wings.