God Save the Queen

When I was in college, or maybe right after college, I was playing with the bell choir, so I was in my black dress pants (permanently borrowed from my roommate after she lost some weight) and my black long sleeved dress shirt, purchased many moons ago for one concert or another. The last hymn in the service was Here I Am, Lord. I don't remember what the sermon was about or even what songs we played as a bell choir, but I remember standing, being on the front pew, and singing my little heart out, never glancing down at the hymnal. And the pastor came up to me after the service and said, "On that last hymn, it looked like something was happening there." I think I smiled and stuttered something and returned to packing up the bells like I was supposed to be doing and the pastor went back to greeting people like he was supposed to be doing, but what I was really thinking was:

"There's always been 'something happening there' with this hymn, ever since the first time I heard it in high school. It's always spoken to me, always been a part of my life. It's been the hymn that I go to, when no one's around and the piano and the sanctuary is all mine, the one that I play and sing and cry to. This is a part of my DNA, it's a part of my soul, it's the very definition of my relationship with God, put into lyrics and tune. I can't help but feel something here.

"And where was this noticing of my reaction to this hymn three years ago when I was sitting two-thirds of the way back in the sanctuary, freezing my face so I wouldn't break out in sobs? Where was this caring when I was lost, when I didn't know my purpose, when I had broken my heart and realized again that I can't even stand on my own two feet by myself? Did you see how I stared at the top right corner of the sanctuary, how my voice failed? Could you feel my heart begging for God to use me instead of setting me aside again and again, for God to call me, just me, no one else but me, to some real and good and concrete purpose? Did you see that? Did you see?

"Or was I too far away?"

On Wednesday, I was singing with the New College Choir at the installation of one of New College's professors as a Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen (pulled that straight off the order of service) and since it was an event with a musical group, I was in my black dress pants (stretched out over the years as I've gained and lost weight) and my black long sleeved dress shirt, a little frayed at the edges of the sleeves. The last song in the service was God Save the Queen, which I could not in good American conscience sing, but the song after the sermon was Be Thou My Vision. I stood on the second row, and glanced at the screen because those Brits changed the words on me, and sang my little broken heart out. No one came over to me after the service. No one commented on what it seemed like I was feeling. But that's all right because those years ago in Chapel Hill, I wasn't really talking to the pastor. What I meant was:

"God, there's something happening here. There's always been something happening here.

"God, this is us. This is You.

"God, why don't you speak to me?

"God, where have you been?

"God, why don't you call me?

"God, do you see? Do you see me, here and hurting and alone again? Do you see what's happening?"

Because I do want to rest here. I want to stay in these hymns and these words and these walls. My heart breaks for the Church like it breaks for nothing else. I want to stand beside it through its travails and trials, to stand in familial shame with it when it falters and to burst with quiet pride when it succeeds. I don't want holiness for myself, but I would strive for it for the Church, to see it built again as a bastion of Christ's love for the world and a perpetual reminder of the deep truth of God in a world that skirts the surface of everything that's out there. I could, in complete unfeigned humility, spend a lifetime in service to a Church bent on loving and caring and saving the world around it, the world it's placed in, to live and breathe and move in. That I can do.

I just need God to tell me that that's God's plan as well as mine. I need God to tell me that I'm leaning on a desire that's true and real and good. I need God to come into my heart like Jesus overturning the tables of the money-changers and wreck the parts of me that I shouldn't have had in the first place. I grab hold of dreams like I'm grasping at straws and I build up capabilities like a person abandoned in a desert. I can weather many a storm. That doesn't mean that I should. It doesn't mean that I have to. And all these thoughts and fears and bastions I've built, some of them may be holding me back from the place that I am best suited to be.

I need to know where that is, like a touchstone, like a path I've walked before, many moons ago. I need to be sure that I'm not sending my life off to live for some cause that's seen its day and its usefulness. If I'm going to invest heart and soul and give up the things that I feel deep in my bones would make me happy, I need to know that this, at least, will give me a happiness worth having. If I'm giving up the world for God, I need to know God's going to catch me on the other side.

I want it to be true. Like a longing in my heart, I want it to be true. But like anything else to do with my heart, I don't trust it.

Not yet, anyway.