When I was a freshman in college, eight hours away from home and in a totally new environment, I took advantage of a rare opportunity. I attended a piano concert.
This was a very daring thing for me to do at the time. I was on a very strict budget, and just like middle school, you didn’t dare do much on campus unless you had a “bud” along with you. But, when I saw the poster of the well known pianist scheduled to play one of my favorite Beethoven pieces, I knew I had to go. I also knew that I would sit as close as I could, right in front of the pianist’s hands. I was going to go no matter what.
This was an exercise in great courage for me. I was fighting for my own identity, and I was losing more than I was winning. The young man I had thought I was going to marry had “unfriended” me, I went from being an A student to a meager C student, and I was lost in every way imaginable.
You know you’re low when some of your favorite times are mopping stairwells just so you can be alone to pray and sing and cry. God, in His providence, had taken away everything that had been a comfort to me. And I am so glad that He did.
I found myself living on the international floor of an old all girls’ dormitory, surrounded by missionary kids and students from all over the globe. Whining and complaining took on a whole new meaning for me there. How can you cry about a boyfriend when you know your room mate is the only Christian in her wealthy Japanese family, misunderstood, mocked, and left to her own loneliness? God surrounded me with people that knew what real suffering was like, and more than that, they could identify the lack of maturity in me. These young women could speak with great care and love. No “preaching” here. Only quiet grace and solid faith exhibited in the midst of trial and hardship. Nothing can shame you faster than when you see your friends that you know have already been persecuted for their beliefs, have love and compassion for you when you turn into a puddle of mush over stupid stuff.
So, on the night of the concert, I put on my usual Baltimore Symphony finery and bravely walked to the concert hall on my own. I opened the double doors and walked down front, sitting right in front of the keys on the left hand side of the stage. I irrationally felt like every eye was boring into my head and every tongue was whispering. “There’s that girl. She was dumped. She is so desperate. She is so far from home. So lost. So unwanted. Stay away from her.”
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| Our piano at home; one of my daughter's favorite places to be. |
But, as the concert began and the notes that were so familiar to me filled the air, my soul began to soar. I closed my eyes, when I wasn’t watching the pianist’s hands, and took in every beautiful note. It was as if all of the love and strength that I needed poured into my being and a glimmer of hope began to grow. I remember wishing that the concert would just go on forever. That it would never stop. That I would never have to get up and walk out when it was all over. It did end however, and I did get up and walk out. But, I did not walk out alone. I saw one of my dear friends from that old girls’ dorm and she met me with a smile. We walked out into the night and I found that I was ok. I found that I could have hope and I could heal in ways that I did not think were possible. I found that facing your pain is easier when you have the notes of “The Appassionata” to guide you.
My faith was being tested and tried. I was on that all too familiar path we call sanctification. Being sanctified is hard. Everyone knows that becoming like Christ is not easy. It is hard work. No one wants to do it; it comes to you and you either resist or submit to where you are led. Often sanctifying comes through suffering. Suffering is never a friend we like to see come to the party. Everyone says, “Who invited him?” We are faced with a decision; will we be humbled or will we be hardened by the presence of suffering in our lives?
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| My daughter free rock climbing. |
I vacillated between hardness and humility that year. But, my prayers were answered, and humility won out. No one likes to be humbled. You feel naked, laid out on the floor, too weak to move, but you just don’t care anymore. You have surrendered, and you have no more fight left in you, only pure surrender to the Healer of your soul. And that is where I found myself. Humbled and laid low. This was my first real taste of hardship and suffering. Bitter was the bud, but far sweeter was the flower. A new kind of blood was pumping through the veins of my faith. A new understanding that my faith must be built on nothing less than Christ.
I have tasted trials and sufferings in my life that compared to most would be minuscule, but to that timid eighteen year old girl would have been unthinkable. That eighteen year old girl began a journey down a road that few have chosen. She learned that there cannot be any glory without the pain.
Life can burn with a refining fire, but if I have learned anything about refining, I know that I do not want to be removed from its work. So, why? Why do I not want to leave the flames? Why am I not afraid of being burned, incinerated? Because Someone is with me in that fire, Someone who has already walked through the fire and come out on the other side. These fires must do their work so that we can come out “like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times.” Ps. 12:6 When the impurities are burned away, we come out different, clearer, changed. In those refining fires there is a sweet mercy that overwhelms and quiets my soul. I did not say there is no pain. But there is a glory that far outweighs the pain, a pain that can be forgotten in the presence of a Savior. C.S. Lewis has said, “Mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering,”No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”
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| My children learning to follow a trail. |
When the crushing blows of life come again and again, I cry. I ask why. I wish I did not have to feel the pain. But my mind returns to those moments when God has provided a song for my soul to sing and I become like that eighteen year old girl again. I remember being changed from that shy timid girl into the one who could laugh and smile through adversity. For, if the soul would not be consumed in the fires of life’s pain, than it must be purified by the Master artist of man’s souls. And once purified in the greatest places of pain, the soul can sing. It is then that the agony becomes a song of glory.
May your soul find the most glorious of songs to sing,
Your Fellow Sojourner
Psalm 66
Shout for joy to God, all the earth;
sing the glory of his name;
give to him glorious praise!
Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you.
All the earth worships you
and sings praises to you;
they sing praises to your name.” Selah
Come and see what God has done:
he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.
He turned the sea into dry land;
they passed through the river on foot.
There did we rejoice in him,
who rules by his might forever,
whose eyes keep watch on the nations—
let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah
Bless our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise be heard,
who has kept our soul among the living
and has not let our feet slip.
For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.
I will come into your house with burnt offerings;
I will perform my vows to you,
that which my lips uttered
and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals,
with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;
I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on1 my tongue.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God,
because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me!
