The One About Melancholy, Old Records, and Singing vs. Sighing

Dear West Family

I hope and pray that you are ready for Spring Break and that you have some sort of plan for a measure of rest over the next week or so.

I have a terrible habit of retreating into melancholy when I get stressed and tired. It is a weird but comforting sadness that sits on me like a weighted blanket. Just like one of those blankets, you wish it would be lighter but you also find comfort in the forced stillness of the weight. I know that these seasons make me no fun to live with, but I am fighting against them way better than I used to.

One of the things that marks seasons like this is that I begin to sigh a lot. I am not aware that I am doing it but others around me usually are. I’ll often get a post-sigh question of “what’s wrong?” from a concerned loved one, but I will usually deflect with an answer like “I am just breathing.” A counselor once said to me, “That sounds more like coping than breathing.” They were probably right.

One of the other things I like to do when I am stuck in “melancholy avenue” is to feed my soul’s sadness with great old records. I have gotten to the age where I think the best music was 30 to 40 years ago. That is as significant a passage of time as it was for those who told me that The Beatles and Elvis were music’s heyday when I was listening to Nirvana and Soundgarden.
Yikes. That does little to lift the mood.

This last week though I discovered that U2’s breakthrough album “War” was 40 years old. So that was a great excuse to sit in the nostalgia of that old classic. I listened to it right through a few times, but found myself very reflective on the last song of the record which is called “40” and is a rendition of the Psalm of the same number. 

The chorus of the song simply asks … “How long, to sing this song?” It echoes the sentiment that David asks of the Lord on many occasions. Lord, how long will we have to wait to see you, to see your work, to experience the fullness of your rescue? How long, to sing this song?

All of this was in my weary mind when I read Psalm 13 this week. Gosh it is disarming to hear David’s honesty and pain before the Lord.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? 
How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, 
agony in my mind every day? 
How long will my enemy dominate me? 
Consider me and answer, Lord my God. 
Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death.  - Ps 13:1–3(CSB)

Apparently it is okay to pray like this! My eyes welled with tears and my lungs filled with future sighs.
But, and gosh I am glad there is a but in all of this, David didn’t stay there. 

Later in the Psalm he resolves to do something other than sigh. He resolves to sing. 

But I have trusted in your faithful love; 
my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 
I will sing to the Lord 
because he has treated me generously (v 5–6.)

David found reason to sing, where before he could just sigh.
He found reason to trust, where before he only doubted.
He found reason to rejoice, where before he could only lament. 

What changed? 

The truth is that none of his circumstances changed at all, but he paused and remembered the biggest truths of all. 

He remembered that God’s love for him would never fail. He remembered that God was bringing him salvation and making him new. Lastly, he remembered that God was really good to him, and these remembrances changed his posture in the present and his approach to the future.

And so friends, though some of you may find yourself in a season of sighing, in a waiting and a desperate wondering of “how long, oh Lord?” Though these seasons are real and though the wait feels long … we don’t have to wait to sing. It might be some time until God makes it all right but we can all say with David …

I will sing to the Lord 
because he has treated me generously

The music this week has to be U2’s 40. This was live from Red Rocks and it was a concert that seared this band into America’s hearts.
If it looks cheesy, just remember that it is 40 years old!

Enjoy.

U2 - "40" (Live From Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Colorado, USA / 1983 / Remastered 2021)

See you Sunday.
Ross