Author: marettej

I have been dating an older man. It ended yesterday. It started rather innocently. Someone at church said, you have to meet these new people. He plays bluegrass. That’s all I needed to know. I went into the adult Sunday school class and was introduced to Wayne.

It has only been a few years though it seems forever. It began with cowboy church and then slowly progressed to Wednesday morning coffee hour. It grew to include life: at Charlie’s Wednesday night, his home, and eventually in hospitals and nursing homes,. Where Wayne was, I would go with a guitar in hand. I learned what Wayne would teach me. He would come in with his amp and mandolin on the front of Monica’s walker. Oh yes, Monica is his wife and very supportive of our dates. In fact she would drop him off at Charlie’s and I would bring him home. Many times I would go to NE Rochester, knock on the door and let myself in. I would go get the amp and mandolin out if they weren’t already waiting. Wayne would grab me a Diet Coke and we would play until our fingers were sore. Often Monica would be out running errands but if she was home she would sit in the recliner and sometimes sing. Other times she would take a nap and her snoring was our bass. We would laugh, play and enjoy the moment music brought.

Several years ago I went to the birthplace of country music in Bristol, TN. At the end of the museum was a large wall of fame where people could write notes. I wrote Wayne’s name down and sent a picture fo Monica. If anyone deserved to be on a wall of fame in bluegrass it was Wayne. A self taught musician in his mid years, he was amazing. He played in southern Wisconsin in bluegrass bands. His girls tell me he played so much better when he was younger. I heard the cd’s. They were probably right and yet there is something that changes with age in music that can’t be described. It’s beauty in its own right. The most wonderful thing about older aged people, they aren’t too busy to spend time with you. Never did I call and ask if Wayne could jam ( what musicians call playing together), did Wayne or Monica say “nope too busy.” There may have been a dr visit to work around, but never too busy to play. If I could come down, Wayne was ready.

The hardest thing in life is watching the body fail the heart. Several weeks ago Wayne couldn’t play. His mind knew the songs, his heart remembered the melody but his fingers failed to make the music. The last few times We were together it was just my hands playing and my voice singing to Wayne. It was ok but it wasn’t the same.

My dates with Wayne ended yesterday. Jesus called him home. We all talk about the angel band and singing around the throne, and that may be true. Yet I can see Wayne sitting in a corner with a bunch of others who have the same heart. I can almost hear them call out “wildflower in the key of D.” Every jammer knows exactly what that means.

Yesterday I cried about as many tears as the songs we played. Why Wayne and I hit if off, I am not sure. But he knew something and I wanted to learn. What I learned goes far beyond Soldiers Joy, Red Wing, Ashokan Farewell or Old Mountain Church. What I will never forget is how the love of music granted us the chance to become friends.

Love counts not the years.

Love is patient and kind.

Love knows no time.

Except the time that I’m with you

As I sit here thinking, I have no instrument to play. That’s usually my way of handling grief and pain. Instead, I have to use my words to grieve. Our words fail us. We don’t know what to say. Wayne always said before I would leave, “ come back any time.” I can’t come back to where life was but I can come back to the feeling music gives. I can play the songs and they will be memories of the sweetest kind. Tears may come but that will just be softening of the heart to play more music. Just like April showers bring May flowers, tears shed in a song, makes memories last longer. Our dates are over, but forever on my heart will be the moments in the key of D, G and once in awhile C. Those are priceless and I am forever grateful that God, and Monica and Jim (my husband) allowed me the chance to have dates with Wayne.

I have heard this song so many times but for some reason yesterday in worship it hit a twang inside. We are planting corn, flowers and gardens. I am well aware of weeds. When I was a kid we had to walk the bean rows and pull weeds. My dad would pay me one penny for every goldenrod I pulled out of the field. Believe me when I say I earned those pennies. It was one of our defenses against weeds: remove them.

Nowadays we till, spray, Cultivate, respray, listen to the agronomist and add something else to the combination. We are using everything we can, many defenses against the weeds. We would like a great abundant crop. Therefore we attack anything that wants to grow that may take away from our crop growth and yield.

As we sang that song yesterday it dawned on me. Jesus gives us one option. We don’t have spiritual roundup, or heavenly hoes, or Emmanuel’s eliminator when it comes to getting rid of anything in our lives that keep us from growing, we have only one line of defense. The line in the song, my one defense, my righteousness smacked me right between the eyes. I have tried other ways to keep sin out of my heart. I don’t think I am the only one. I make sure I don’t watch things that divert my attention, I don’t listen to what I shouldn’t and I put blinders on. Although that’s a good thing, if Jesus isn’t turning the wheel, I am going to continue to drive erratically. I don’t need the formulas as much as I desperately need the one who created the formulas. “ I need you Lord I need you, every hour I need you, my one defense, my righteousness, O God how I need you.” Remind me to walk letting Jesus be what I need not settle for other things that may divert my attention but don’t change my heart. Let me focus on his righteousness and not my feeble attempts. Let me confess, find rest, reach for His grace and let that be enough. Then, I will find His defense is a much better spiritual weed puller and heart ground tiller than on my own I could ever.

I  realize how selfish some of my prayers have been. Today while reading my devotionals this line came across my heart. “I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused- I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness.”

It was as if a light went on in the middle of the night. This past year has been a struggle to step up to a different level of prayer. I have lots of prayer journals I have done and different ways I have tried to apply prayer to my life. What I have been convicted about this past year is that I ask too much. My prayers are more about supplications than they are about confession and adoration. I get thanks down pretty good. I am very thankful but I realize I am also very greedy. And it’s not always about me- in fact it’s seldom about me. That has always made me feel better about asking God to heal everyone else and meet their needs. However, my focus this year has been a quest for the time I spend simply with God and listening to what He is telling me rather than what I am telling Him. I realize that I am longing for Egypt and find myself in a wilderness and I don’t like it.

This prompted me to refocus my prayer life on Who God is, What He does and How He feels about me long before I start filling the blanks on my page. Egypt is such a beautiful place. The wilderness is barren. But it doesn’t have to be that way if I see it as the beautiful not the barren. Jesus went off in the wilderness to pray. There must have been something about the wilderness that connected Jesus to God in a special way. Moses and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for many years. I wonder if any of them saw the beauty or did they just see the driftwood and sand dunes.

I am not longing specifically for the wilderness nor have I given up on the Egypt that is in my heart but I am seeing the beauty in the Wilderness and understanding Egypt isn’t ready for me yet. The prayer (taken from the Valley of Vision Prayer Book) also has this line.
“Go on with thy patient work, answering ‘no’ to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it.”

I think Egypt is the cats meow. God apparently thinks the wilderness is a lesson I need to pass before I reach Egypt. Especially now with the changes in our world, we all want to go back to the Egypts in our hearts.  We want our Egypt- to be with loved ones, go where we want and do what we are used to. For now, we are in a wilderness.  And there is beauty if we look for it!

I couldn’t sleep. That’s not abnormal for me especially since the person I married has become a tuba player. No, he hasn’t taken up music, just the competition called snoring. And he wins. I go into the guest room. Tonight, very moved by two Good Friday services, I couldn’t sleep. So, I to the guest room I went and began to think. Then I looked up. It’s a beautiful plaque. Simply says, live well, laugh often, love much, and it’s crooked.

It feels like life. Life feels crooked. I could get on the chair and straighten it. There is no chair in this room I could stand on. It will have to be crooked until tomorrow. Yet as long as I snuggle in the bed and look up, I will see it. I will be reminded it’s crooked. And yet, the best option I have is to wait until tomorrow and then straighten it. That means I must wait.

It’s Good Friday. Jesus could have just popped back up and said, “I’m back”, but he made the people wait until Sunday. There are good things to waiting, however right now, we can’t see them. We are in a waiting, mourning pattern. It’s awkward and is crooked. It’s also something we have no control over. There are times life will jut be crooked. There will be waiting days. We tend to rush to celebrations. In the Bible, many times God chose to let the pain walk. One of the Good Friday services emphasized, don’t rush past the cross to get to the light. Good Friday is a time to mourn and lament. Many of the psalms, especially the one Jesus began to quote on the cross Psalm 22 , was a lament. You don’t get over death, you adjust. Take this time before Sunday to adjust. And until the resurrection changes our life, we lament.