For Wilshire Baptist Church
In the infusion clinic where I go every week for chemotherapy treatments, the IV pumps sound three notes when they need attention. And thankfully, those three notes have conjured not just one but two stories in my mind.
The first time I heard the notes was the first day of treatment. I was up for the challenge but still wary and uncertain about the outcome. So when I heard those three notes – B, C#, E – my memory for music sorted them and I heard the first three notes of a song that’s in my hundreds-long Apple Music library: “Your Long Journey.” Written by Doc and Rosa Lee Watson in 1963 and covered on my playlist by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, the song is gut wrenching from the first verse:
“God’s given us years of happiness here
Now we must part,
And as the angels come and call for you
The pains of grief tug at my heart.”
Heavy words for sure and definitely not what I wanted to be thinking about as I started this arduous treatment journey. In fact, I embody a statement author Robert Benson made some years ago when he gave a seminar at Wilshire, and I’m paraphrasing from memory, “Everyone says they want to get on board the train to glory, but when it pulls into the station, you can’t get anyone to line up.” So, I did what I could to wash those thoughts and that song out of my head and remember these are random notes that summon the nurses to the patients and keep the healing process moving forward.
A week later, having made it through the first treatment and after-effects in pretty good shape and feeling better about the process, I settled into the treatment chair again. And this time, when I heard those same three notes, I heard a completely different song. Or more accurately, my soul heard an old hymn that has been burned into my memory from childhood. The same three-note progression in a different key also begins “How Firm a Foundation.” I knew that tune in my memory, but then I looked up the text and found this message in the second verse:
“Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.”
Now that’s a completely different message, a completely different outlook. And perhaps that is the theme for me on this journey. It’s a journey of faith and trust, and I’m sharing it because I think I’m not the only one who needs to remember the basics of our faith: We are not in control, but we also are not alone. And the journey we are on is not the last but rather is both present and future.