All of us who try hard to be Christians know about those times when we seem to be failing, when we seem to be losing our way on His way.
Well, it happens to country singers, too. Let me tell you about one of those times in my life. But first I must explain what can happen at a typical recording session because it so well illustrates the lesson I learned.
Picture a working studio in Nashville. The singer is doing a tracking session, the first phase of recording a song. Later in the overdubbing they will add the background things like hand claps, horns and choir. Then the performer will come back to sing the vocal again, after which the engineers will combine it all into one finished recording.
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The singer, who could be me, is in the little vocal booth while the eight musicians in blue-jean-and-tee-shirt work clothes—guitarists, fiddler. French harpist, pianist and drummer—get ready to run down a song. Eighteen microphones scattered among the group glisten under the studio’s blue-green mood lights.
The engineer is ready in his glassed-in control room: the producer (in my case, Tom Collins) gives the signal to start the song. But then, no recording session ever goes from start to finish without a hitch.
It’s just like life—there’s always some unexpected problem—and in this case the band delivers the intro and the singer is just ready to come in, when cree-yowl!—an electronic amplifier breaks into a howling squall.
The trouble seems to be with one of the guitars. As the guitarist begins checking his equipment, the singer sits back on the tall stool in her booth and waits, and waits. The guitar player huddles with an engineer in his rack of outboard sound equipment. Then the engineer calls: “I found it. Should be fixed in no time.”
He holds up a small section of sound transmission wire leading from the guitar to its amplifier. Pointing to where bright copper gleams through frayed black rubber insulation, he explains that the exposed wire had touched metal, causing a short. “That’s what blocked the sound from coming through,” he says. They quickly switch to a new cord. “It’s fixed!” he says, and the session continues.
Such a little thing, but little interruptions like that can happen in recording sessions no matter how sophisticated the equipment.
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And no matter how well along the path we think we may be as Christians. there are those times when we, too, suffer a break in communication with God.
I point this out because I experienced such a break a few years ago. For several weeks something had been bothering me, and I couldn’t seem to pin down what it was. or why. I had prayed time and again asking God to take away the uneasiness I was feeling, but nothing seemed to happen.
One night after rehearsal I had come home feeling particularly depressed. It had not been a good day at all. I found myself snapping at my husband Ken and being generally fretful. At bedtime I had given our baby daughter Jamie a perfunctory kiss and hardly listened to six-year-old Matthew say his prayers. Then I lay in bed unable to sleep, staring into the dark.
Again I prayed, trying to listen to Him. to feel His Holy Spirit comforting and assuring me. “Oh, Lord,” I pleaded, “please give me a handle on what’s bothering me.”
And slowly, almost as if some invisible engineer had checked out the intricate strands of my life and suddenly called out. “I found the trouble.” it came to me. It had been there all along, the resentment that had been burning within me the past weeks—the trouble with “X.”
There’s no point in telling you who “X” was, but she was someone whose friendship I’d valued and who’d said some things about me that hurt. Hurt a lot. And I was bitter.
But now, just like a spring wind blowing dark clouds away from the sun, it became clear; just as a frayed wire can cause trouble in a sound recording studio, so had my smoldering resentment against “X” been short-circuiting my prayers.
As a serious, struggling Christian. I knew what the problem was. After all, very clearly Jesus had told us: “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also Who is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” (Mark 11:25.26, RSV )
Of course! I had no right to ask for peace from the One Who had forgiven me so much when I would not forgive others.
“Father,” I breathed. “forgive me for resenting her.” And then I prayed for her well-being. I visualized her happy and smiling. And, lying there in bed, I felt at last the peace I had been seeking.
Only a few days later I saw “X” again. And do you know what? I ran up and hugged her. The amazing thing was, she hugged me back. And I’m sure she was sincere about that hug. Why? Because I had forgiven her and somehow she had sensed this extraordinary change in me. And let me tell you, the power of forgiveness is mystifying but real!
The whole incident was such a little thing, really, a small moment so far as my life as a whole is concerned. But all of us who are trying hard to be Christians know that even little things can grow into big troubles. But when you face up to a problem and seriously take it to the Lord. there will come that wonderful time when you know “It’s fixed!” and you can go on with the adventure of living.
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