DIFFERENT GOOD
I'm
waking
I'm
up
diving
in
What if you do everything right and the worst still happens? That’s the question we were forced to ask ourselves when our “normal life” was interrupted by a torrent of painful events, including the sudden death of a father and the recurrence of a cancer we thought was gone for good. Shaken and depressed, we diligently navigated funerals, doctor’s appointments, and the everyday work of raising our young children, as if on autopilot. But beneath the surface,
our souls cried out,“Why?”
We prayed for answers.We prayed for escape from our circumstances.We received something else unexpected instead:
​songs.
Songs that raised questions we’d been afraid to ask.
Songs that expressed feelings we didn’t think we had permission to feel.
Songs that allowed us to stop running from our grief.
In his novel Perelandra, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a man named Ransom who travels to a distant planet and meets an alien creature named Tinidril. What makes Tinidril so bewildering to him is not her emerald-green skin, but the way her soul is infused with peace as she lives in complete trust of her Maker. As he struggles to understand her carefree way of life, he presses her with questions about her acceptance of unwelcome circumstances:
"But in our world not all events are pleasing or welcome. There may be such a thing that you would cut off both your arms and your legs to prevent it happening--and yet it
happens with us...When you first saw me, I know now you were expecting and hoping that I was the King. When you found I was not, your face changed. Was that event not unwelcome? Did you not wish it to be otherwise?”
Her response only bewilders him further:
"What you have made me see," answered the Lady, "is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given…It is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good.”
"And have you no fear," said Ransom, "that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to the thing the Maker sends?”
"I see," said the Lady presently. "The wave you plunge into may be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim into it. You mean, He might send me a good like that?” "Yes -- or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little.” "It often happens that way in swimming," said the Lady. "Is not that part of the delight?"
For us, the cancer treatments are completed and life is back to “normal” - for now. On the other side of this story, we hope to live more like Tinidril:
​
to see the unwelcome circumstances of our lives as part of the “Different Good” that our Maker has for us.
​
Our prayer for you is that one day, you will be able to look back at even the most painful events of your life history and know that there was never a moment that you weren’t seen and loved.
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Wherever you are on that journey, we hope this music will help you along the way.