As a child, I loved bedtime stories. After donning my
pajamas, I thumbed through rows of colorful books lining my bookshelves and
picked as many exciting tales as my parents would agree to read before
bed—usually one, but two or three at most. My imagination was sparked as
rhyming plotlines weaved their way through faraway adventures and framed
lifelike illustrations. But today I realize another more-obvious reason why I
loved my bedtime stories: aside from being filled with the stuff of dreams, they
were written in English. And that’s the only language I understood for most of
my life. I mean, if you tell an American kid a bedtime story in Russian, things
just don’t fly.
It works in the reverse, too: when you tell a Russian girl a bedtime story in English, she doesn’t like it so well.
I speak from experience.
- - - - -
Three weeks ago this past December, I spent a night at
Freedom Home, a place of restoration for those who have been rescued from human
trafficking. I visit weekly to teach English and spend time with the women and
children, and I had been looking forward to spending the night for quite some
time.
The evening, which followed the annual Christmas party of
that afternoon, was marked with merriment and conversation. As usual, I
understood bits and pieces of what was said and communicated slowly in broken
Russian. I am overwhelmingly grateful for the grace and friendship extended by
these women when even simple questions are a struggle for me. Thankfully, my
presence nearly always induces laughter because my language mistakes, which are
almost a given in my interactions, are quite humorous.
Relatively early in the night, the children were put to bed
so that the women could have a time of prayer and sharing. This time was even
more special than usual, however, because a woman from Ukraine had come for the
weekend to tell her story of restoration after human trafficking. This was
going to be a late, powerful night for all except the children.
I said goodnight to a
beautiful two-year-old girl with whom I weekly play as I listened to her mom
tell her a bedtime story; it was in Russian, of course, so I didn’t understand
most of it, although I could tell that it rhymed. One of the staff workers came
into the room shortly afterward and said that the Ukrainian woman was about to
share her story. Both staff worker and mother looked at me. “Can you tell her a
bedtime story? You only have to stay with her until she falls asleep.” “Sure!”
I responded. They looked grateful, kissed the little girl goodnight, and went
downstairs.
I moved to the chair next to the little bed and started
answering in Russian to cries of, “Momma! Where’s Momma?” I explained that she
was downstairs, that she loves her, and that she would be back.
That didn’t help.
So, faithful to my assignment, I started making up a story
in Russian. Since I can probably count the number of Russian words I know at
this point, the story wasn’t that interesting. Or that long. But it quieted her
for a few seconds. As soon as I began hesitating for words, though, she chimed
back into her pleas for her mom to come back upstairs. I tried for a few more minutes,
but gave up when she only grew louder.
Then I switched to English. I placed more emphasis on a
steady, upbeat voice than on picking an interesting story. And it worked—for a
few minutes. But then the Russian cries rang out louder from the little body,
and I was afraid that the other sleeping children in adjacent rooms would wake.
As soon as I started thinking about the possibility of calling her mother back in,
I stopped because this was a special time of healing for the women with a woman
that had traveled to Moldova to spend one night for this very purpose.
I turned back to the screaming child, who had now added
crying to her nighttime repertoire. A good twenty or thirty minutes had passed
since I had been alone with this girl, lights off to help her sleep, in the
second-story of a Moldovan house on a lonely street. The sun had set hours ago
and I turned toward the window to see the falling snow as the cries in the room
grew louder. I tried to keep talking, in both Russian and English, but nothing
was working, and she seemed more awake than ever. I didn’t know what to do. God, I don’t know what to do. I—
Sing.
What? Sing to her, I
heard God say. Um, God? No. I’m not
singing, I retorted.
Sing. It came
again. Never.
Why was I so obstinate? Because this was the third time I
was called upon to sing in the past few weeks.
Confused? Allow me to digress briefly. This is necessary for
understanding my frustration.
I’m not the best singer. I can do it, but I don’t consider
it one of my strengths. As far as strengths go, I’d much rather write something
or perform a classical piano piece or teach grammar. You see, if I’m going to
do something in public, I want to do it well. Those things I do well are my
strengths, and I prefer to operate in them when people are watching.
In the past few weeks, however, I’ve been called on to
operate in areas that are not my strengths—namely, singing. I’ve shown up for worship practice, been given
new songs, and then been asked to lead them for the congregation only a few
minutes later. With a head cold. I’ve been asked to sing with a duet roughly
half an hour before they performed. In other areas outside the musical arena I
have recently needed to do things with and for people that put me in
pride-swallowing mode as I stepped out, knowing I had little to give.
Being asked to operate in my not-strengths—and without ample
preparation time—has been stretching for me. Common sense tells me that people
will benefit more when I do something that I’ve practiced, something that I have
confidence in doing. I was shocked the first couple times that God asked me to
do something more or less “in public” that was a stretch for me. Several times
after that, I was a bit confused. And this final time, I was worn out.
Just for clarification, though: singing to a toddler? Not on
my top-5-fears list. Or even on my top 500.
(But I don’t actually have a top-500 list, just so you
know.)
I wasn’t afraid, and I knew I didn’t have a listening,
critical audience. It’s just that this was like the straw that broke the camel’s
back for me.
Still, I knew was that something had to be done to stifle the
shrieks of the beleaguered child, and all I could do was what God told me. Her
cries begged immediate action. And so I sang.
“Jesus loves me, this I know / For the Bible tells me so—” I
had to clear my throat and cough before getting to “Little ones to Him belong.”
My throat’s sore, and I’m just getting
over a cold. I can’t sing. I tried this Sunday. Remember, God? But I dared
not interrupt the flow of sound too long lest my silence be interpreted as
permission for “Momma!” cries to resume.
Well, we duked it out with our words—mine in raspy song,
hers in high-pitched wails, interspersed with whimpering sentences. I’ve never
encountered a worse reaction to my singing.
By the time I reached the end of the song, significant gaps
existed between her cries, so I moved onto the next song that came to my mind:
“Jesus Loves the Little Children.” My voice was really starting to crack. Oh, God, just help me keep going so she
falls asleep! I don’t care how it sounds anymore! I started in a key too
low for my voice. I modulated up. I wheezed. She was still awake, but she was
less noisy, less agitated. I sang it four or five times.
After that, she was out. Her mouth was silent, and her body
turned from side to side every so often in the beginning stages of sleep. But as
I sang, I realized something: the fact that I was nervous to sing in front of a
little child who does not understand English showed me that my qualm is not
with who is listening so much as it is with what I have to give. I grow
uncomfortable when I’m not putting my best foot forward. My reluctance
indicated that I had been willing to sacrifice meeting the needs of the moment
for my own personal comfort. I was making ministry more about me than about God
and others. And that’s a serious problem.
The child was asleep, and I was free to leave. But I was not
moving. Conviction welling, I knew that I had to compose my own hymn of praise.
I began to sing my own song.
I suddenly grew tired of using others’ words from worn-out choruses,
during which I oftentimes focus more on the sound of my voice than the
alignment of my heart with the words I utter. All at once I was fed up with
trite melodies learned by rote and sung by rote while my brain went on autopilot.
I had a song I needed to sing from within my heart, so I began to tell God what
He meant to me. What came out of me wasn’t ground-breakingly original or poetic.
A modest, hymnlike melody and chorus coalesced rather quickly in my mind, and I
kept singing them, each time inserting fresh words with my croaking voice. I
told God how thankful I am that He fights for His children. I told Him how
grateful I am to know that I am never alone. I told Him that I will tell His
story all over the world. All over—wherever that takes me and whatever that
costs me. Because I am His.
As I sang from my heart, something inside of me broke. And
at that point, it wasn’t about who was listening. I could have opened the
windows, could have stood on the roof, could have shouted down the stairs. But
it wasn’t about who heard; it was about Who heard.
And in a darkened room on the top-floor of a Moldovan home
on a snowy night, I found freedom.
As I write this, I hum in vain, trying to recover the lost
melody. I probably will never hit upon it again, but the reality of that cold
Moldovan night still rings out.
-----
I had a revelation that night. God wants to stretch us out
of our comfort zones even when that includes doing something that is not our
best work.
Sometimes we get the idea that God’s going to use us only in our strengths. I beg to differ. And
so does the Apostle Paul. Second Corinthians 12:7 says that to “keep him from
being conceited,” Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh” that ultimately resulted
in weakness. We are not told what this thorn is, although many plausible
suggestions abound. But the fact that the “thorn” is not further described
makes me think that its type and size is not as important as its result; so
many things can render us weak. Even singing in a nursery.
Paul asked the Lord three times to take it away. Huh. I also
had three instances, singing-specific, in which I asked God to remove me from
or change the situation. And, true to His timeless nature, the Lord’s response
to Paul was His same response to me: “Each time He said, ‘My grace is all you
need. My power works best in weakness,’” (v. 9).
Upon hearing that, Paul turned glad. He realized that his
weaknesses were disguised opportunities for the power of Christ to rest on,
work through, dwell in, and reside within him (v. 9).
So, this is my weakness-boast. And it’s not about my
singing; it’s about Christ’s power being displayed through me.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul also connected
weakness and power. He reflected on the first time he visited the church in
Corinth and noted that he didn’t come with “superiority of speech or of wisdom”
but “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (1 Cor. 2:1,3). Robin
Dowling and Stephen Dray, in the Baker Bible Guide to 1 Corinthians, note that
upon his first visit to Corinth, Paul “decided to do without the…philosophical
flourishes of Greek ‘wisdom’ [and instead] proclaim[ed] the most scandalous of
all truths to the Greek thinker, the humiliating crucifixion of Christ.” In
sum, Paul “felt vulnerable and even the message itself seems to have caused him
anxiety, making him feel inadequate to preach it” (Robin Dowling and Stephen
Dray, 1 Corinthians: Free to Grow [Baker
Books], 34-35).
Paul says himself
that his message was “plain” and “without persuasive words of wisdom” (v. 4),
but somehow, Paul’s message was still effective. This effectiveness came from
outside himself. His message and
preaching did not reflect on his own skill as much as it demonstrated the Spirit’s
power (v. 4). Why this pairing of personal privation with spiritual power? “So
that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God”
(v. 5).
May God shake our misplaced faith in us and rightly rest it on His power.
Are we okay with being used by God when it stretches us out
of our comfort zones? Even if we know that we are being called upon to give something
that’s not drawn from our reserve of well-polished abilities?
He’s okay with it.
We must trust God enough to allow Him to bend us in
initially uncomfortable ways if He so chooses. This is not always His method,
but such actions do not conflict with His character. He has more in mind than
keeping us comfortable and happy. He desires to display His power through us,
engendering joys vaster than any happinesses contained in a passing moment.
What a deep love—to look into the caverns of our soul and
grapple with our insecurities, to lead us to an understanding of His activity
which extends far beyond our self-stuck views, to call for vulnerability in
order to foster in us a self-trumping desire to see Him glorified. God, “grant
[us] a willing spirit, to sustain [us]” (Psalm 51:12b).
As we enter this new year, may we ask ourselves whose story
is at the forefront of our lives. And whose song. May God’s pen write bolder
and God’s melody ring louder than ours.
Still singing,
Renée
