songs for heavy hearts

{With hearts still heavy for Boston, I humbly offer these songs as, maybe, a balm for sore spirits?}

She’s listening, and she says she feels better.

Both our hearts are heavy today for a mutual friend.  Already this morning I’ve prayed aloud with tears, the words stumbling slow, while she drinks belated coffee and tries to summon enough appetite for a banana.  She says she's just not hungry.  What if it were her babies in the hospital?  

What if it were mine?

Even after praying, the burden remains for both of us.  I cut up vegetables for chicken stock while I lift up every thought as a prayer.  

I’ve told her she can borrow my iPod whenever she wants, that she can listen to whatever she wants.  Today it happened to be set on these heart-songs when she arrived, and when I offer to change it, she says she likes it that way.  Says my voice is comforting, even though she doesn’t understand the words.  

She asks for my earbuds, plugs one in, leaves one dangling.  Connected to both worlds at once.  She wears the earbuds and my blue cap with the silver spangles out to turn over the garden.  I see heaven covering her head.  

I make chicken stock, and watch her spading earth through the window.  The stock simmers, and I join her, pick up a spade, shove it in heavy ground and lift.  The sun warms our backs.  I ask her: how does she feel now?

She says she's feeling better, listening.  Smiles, glances at me over the top of her spade handle.  

This music, almost all in a language she doesn’t understand… somehow, she feels my heart beating through these songs.  Somehow, God’s peace is filling her ears, her heart.    

This dear friend, she is sound as a good apple - sweet right through to the core.

It’s her ordinariness that rescues me from thinking too highly of myself.  She’s like a solid oak tree whose very presence is reassuring.

It’s her humble, laughing acceptance of the hardships in her life that humbles me, prods me into contentment.

I don’t know what I’d do without her friendship.  She is the rock for me in this strange land.  Even though I have had to learn her heart language to communicate with her heart,  sometimes I think even if we couldn’t speak a word to each other, we’d still be friends.

And yet, she doesn’t know.  She doesn’t know what I know.

She doesn’t know where to find that welling up of joy, that spring of peace that flows in any circumstance.  She doesn’t know where to find wisdom that actually works, love that is tender and intimate, romance that surprises.  

She doesn’t know how much she is Loved.  

I am here to tell her.  

Thank You for this music.  Speak through it, through my stumbling tongue.  Fill me with timeliness, and courage.  Help me wait patiently until the moments are ripe, then help me speak boldly when You nudge.  

With all else wonderful that she is, she is not yet my heart sister.  

This I long for.  Every. day.