A crack in the hymnal
My mom grew up in an old picturesque country church where, as the legend goes, congregants in generations past could hear the cannons firing in the Civil War battle at Wilson’s Creek mere miles away as they sang hymns together.
On the occasional Sundays when my sister and I would go to church with Grandma and Grandpa during a weekend sleepover, I’d hang on the old wooden fence along the church’s cemetery, trying to make out the names and dates on the moss-covered stones marking the graves of people who had died in Christ, some even before that battle raged. I loved the sound of the old church bells calling us to worship, and felt a sense of age-old awe that felt too big for my wisp of a little girl body.
“Faithful, faithful, faithful,” the bells rang out to me.
My grandparents came to know Jesus shortly after my mother was born, and they were discipled in his love and ways at that old country church. Their “heroes of the faith” were all right there in some form or fashion. The faces of so many of the faithful there, many of whom are at home with Jesus now, are still so clear in my mind. Even though it was not my home church, they embraced me as “Leah’s girl.” People loved to tell me how much I looked like my momma at that age, “but, gracious, if you’ve got your Daddy’s long legs,” they’d say.
Miss Linda was always at the grand piano on a Sunday morning. Sometimes, she would even invite me to play a song on it after church was over. Mr. Gordon loved to tease, and Miss Emma, his wife, loved to fuss at him for it. She had the kindest smile. I remember Miss Thelma framed in the buffet window of the kitchen in the fellowship hall. My grandma recently told me that when Miss Thelma found out that my grandma was going to be coming to her 90th birthday party that Miss Thelma baked her a cake—angel food cake with seven-minute frosting, my grandma’s favorite. I remember thinking in wonder as a child that her husband Uncle James (who is not my real uncle—that’s just what everyone called him) was the oldest person I had ever seen in real life. If I’m not mistaken, there’s a clip in my parents’ wedding video of him falling asleep in the pew during the special music.
My parents were married in that country church in 1987. One of my parents’ favorite pictures of me as a chubby-cheeked toddler was taken on the sanctuary steps at my aunt and uncle’s wedding a few years after theirs, with me all dressed up in a poufy burgundy velvet dress and white bow held to my to my still-bald head with a dot of corn syrup. My sister and her husband were married there in February 2020, the last normal thing we did before the Covid shutdown.
Matt and I married there too in 2012, and I walked slowly and smiling down the same red carpet I had run down as a kid, being careful to step over the same sure-to-suck-me-in grate in the middle of the aisle.
The two of us burst out of the church doors with those same church bells ringing, running through flower petals and the cheers of our dearest ones.
“Faithful, faithful, faithful.”
There’s a blank wall in the entryway of our home, right next to the second-hand upright piano that my grandpa bought me when I was a girl. The empty wall makes the room feel unfinished, but I’ve learned through too many purchases of regrettable, “it’ll do” wall art not to rush to fix a blank space, but to wait for something meaningful and personal to complete it, something that tells the story of God’s faithfulness to our family.
In a rare burst of interior design inspiration, I decided to frame the sheet music of the hymns that were part of our wedding ceremony. And in a not-rare-at-all moment of sentimentality, I left a message with that old country church, sharing my family’s history with the church, and asking if they happened to have any old hymnals tucked away in the room downstairs (the same one where Grandpa and I found a recently-shed snakeskin in the closet when I was tagging along while he made some repairs, and also where I put on my wedding dress. You had better believe I stayed well-away from the closet.).
A few weeks later, I slid a canvas-bound hymnal out of the shipping box, burgundy with gold-foil lettering across the front, faded and worn at the edges from decades of use. I flipped to the cover page. A 1970 edition. Maybe my mom’s little girl hands held this exact one. Maybe someone’s tears of laughter got on it that Sunday when my uncle imitated a staggering, convulsing John Wayne-style death on stage while the rest of the children’s choir continued on with their rendition of “I’m in the Lord’s Army.” The tears of laughter certainly would not have been from my grandparents…
I looked in the index to find “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” one of the songs that played while our grandparents (four of whom are with the Lord now), parents, and my bridesmaids processed into our wedding. I flipped through slowly, thumbing through other favorites until I came to the right number. Tears sprang to my eyes. The page fell open without effort, the binding cracked from top to bottom from weeks and months and years and decades of the beloved of God singing together as he poured out “grace to trust him more!”
“Faithful, faithful, faithful.”
I want a life like that, split to the binding with well worn places of returning and rest, telling the story of the enduring truth and goodness and beauty of our Maker who all along has had me firmly in his grip.
’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take Him at His word;
Just to rest upon His promise;
Just to know, Thus saith the Lord.
O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust His cleansing blood;
Just in simple faith to plunge me,
’Neath the healing, cleansing flood.
Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just from sin and self to cease;
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life, and rest, and joy, and peace.
I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee,
Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er,
Jesus, Jesus, Precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more.