Sing to me

This is one of those times that an understood silence would find a happy home. The times when something utterly overwhelming, and beautiful leaves you speechless. The times you have nothing intelligent to offer the air.

As a songwriter, I love to write songs to my Jesus. I love to sing to Him, to play with melodic prayers. The pressures of my fingers on black and white keys that throw themselves with abandon onto strings that vibrate into perfect sounds. The feeling of strumming a line of six strings with my fingers tightened across the neck of my guitar to hum an ache my voice never could.

Then, there are the times I cannot share even the beginnings of.... when God writes to me. I contemplate how to write a song to Him, but then He literally puts a melody in my head, words under the lead of my pencil, and a progression that fits perfectly.

Whitney and I have written about 13 songs together or so in the last year. Strangely enough, we haven't gotten around to writing together again this semester until tonight. Tonight, I sat before my desk, wanting to wash my face, and end the day with sweet slumber. My eyes have been pleading for me to do just this. However, my head was wide awake and I didn't want to surrender to sleep just yet. Whitney then popped up on my computer screen saying she wanted to write a worship song.

So I popped next door to her room with my song writing journal, my quiet time notebook, and my bible. And a sweatshirt. I've been freezing all night. Whitney has been playing guitar all day, much to my ease and delight. The sounds that come from a guitar, as Caleigh would say, are equivalent to the reckless love in an embrace from someone you love. It massages your heart. The way I will follow someone to the ends of the earth if they play with my hair... it's the same way the strings of a guitar are to my ears.

Whitney and I caught up with each other. We had a few things we hadn't told each other from the last few days. We found ourselves echoing the aches in each other's hearts. We're both in very similar situations with a few things. She started playing again, playing to the emotions of our conversation. We sat across from each other on her black futon. And at first, it really wasn't coming.

Then it did. And literally wiped us out. I stopped singing. She stopped playing. I couldn't sing anymore. The words I had just written down... the melody I had just sung... the chords that fit like we shared the same fingers attached to the same brain... a song was just written to us. And we were broken by it.

Whitney started playing again. I had to wipe my eyes, covered and closed. I sang in my head and slowly started again. Whitney added her perfect harmony. And we worshipped.

It's not done yet. But it will be soon.

I have a new prayer. I never really thought of it this way... but I'm going to start asking God to write songs to me.

I've never had a song written to me by someone I'm in love with until tonight. How precious, how unearthly... I love to write love songs to the Lord. But it's entirely dumbfounding when the opposite happens. When He writes one to me.

I'm broken by this love. The love that ties up my tongue and makes rivers inside my eyes, and closes up my throat because it's too good to be true. And in the midst of pain and uncertainty, and heartache, His Love makes it all go away.

So I'm going to pray. I want my Love to write songs to me. And I want those songs to be the songs that fill my head, the ones I sing while I'm walking to and from class. The ones I sing while I'm drifting to sleep. And I mean this in both the theoretical sense and the literal sense. I'm a songwriter. But I want the One who created the very idea to write songs to me. It's a bold request. And it's a quest I'm willing to make.